General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDoes anyone have hope?
Last edited Sun Mar 13, 2022, 10:43 PM - Edit history (1)
I usually come to DU for comfort during rough political times.
Recently, I have limited my visits. It's hard to read, "welcome to ww3" and nuke this and nuke that. Plus, there are posts like, "oh well, I've lived long enough." Well....I haven't. And neither have my kids.
I've spent over a decade in a domestic violence situation and extreme poverty. Heck, I received help via DU once. I'm 43, I haven't really lived with any ease in quite some time. We live in a shithole apartment with broken floors and no security. We've lost both my parents since 2020. There has been so much struggle and I want a chance to get past that. My biggest hope is for my children to do well and succeed and escape this cycle of poverty and abuse. I want them happy and free and successful. I can't just roll over and say, "well, I've lived long enough." I want a chance and hope, dammit.
Does anyone have confidence or hope that we will not be destroyed? That we will not be nuked away in WW3. Is there any confidence in a future that isn't doom and gloom?
Please, if you're reaponse is to say, "sorry, but putin is gonna burn the planet away," just skip this post.
ETA: Thank you all for your replies and encouragement. I am slowly replying to individual posts, but I am up past my bedtime and will continue tomorrow. Sending hugs to all.
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)Sorry to hear of your circumstances.
Tree-Hugger
(3,364 posts)David__77
(23,220 posts)He has stated it in a strong way and repeatedly.
milestogo
(16,829 posts)and he would have to decide what to do based on that.
If Putin attacks the US or one of our NATO allies, he may change his strategy. And there is no telling what Putin will do.
Earth-shine
(3,854 posts)I believe in the Cristian Serenity Prayer.
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it; ... "
To experience the benefits of this wisdom, a belief in God is not required.
I am optimistic that the world will not end because of Putin.
There are far bigger issues, such as climate change, that can destroy our children.
PortTack
(32,606 posts)Tree-Hugger
(3,364 posts)And one that I forgot. Thank you for the reminder.
Is it awful that I've thought, " I'd like to go back to worrying about Climate Change instead?"
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)It helps me not make the situation any worse. I truncate it after the word "difference." It's easier to remember under duress.
LetMyPeopleVote
(143,999 posts)multigraincracker
(32,531 posts)tend to make think we will get by..a little older and wiser. best to keep chipping away at it and look forward to better days.
We have each other to lean on here.
RKP5637
(67,032 posts)FeelingBlue
(667 posts)And I have been in some of the same circumstances!! If youre still in an abusive situation, Im urging you to get out with help and legal assistance. Get counseling!!!!!!! Be patient as you move beyond your present situation and your present suffering. Do everything you can to encourage your childrens success in school. Live in the best school system you can afford!!!This is a hopeful set of acts. Reach out to friends and maintain healthy wonderful relationships!! You can look ahead to a hopeful life!! Get a library card if you dont have one. READ!! Read lots of non-fiction. Read books by Lundy Bancroft. Find them at your library. You will never regret reading his work.
Stay close to your kids without treating them like adults- because they arent. Be YOUR BEST SELF TO YOUR CHILDREN- with the help of counseling. This is LIVING HOPE. Im sending my warm greeting and very best wishes to you for a hopeful, safe future.
Tree-Hugger
(3,364 posts)I have been working on our independence. It takes a long while, especially when things are convuluted with money/custody/etc. I do have a connection made with our local DV organization. My kids are in a good district and we recently rejoined a few local libraries. They rent out museum passes these days!
Thank you so much for your encouraging words.
FeelingBlue
(667 posts)Check in here when you can and let us know how things are going for you and your children! Im cheering you on toward a safe, hopeful, productive life, free of the insanity of harm and violence. Step by step, Friend!!
Tree-Hugger
(3,364 posts)It's a lot of small steps, but we keep striving. Thank you.
Response to Tree-Hugger (Original post)
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Alice Kramden
(2,157 posts)I will hold hope here for you while you are not able to -
dameatball
(7,380 posts)Jazz Jon
(109 posts)As hideous as the war in Ukraine actually is, several collateral positive things are emerging from it.
1) We are getting a very clear example for all to see about how bad conservatism and fascism really are... today in real time. Not just as a history lesson. Mass murder Putin is now the international poster boy for fascism. He's clearly a brutal and souless liar revealed to all. This reveals our own brutal fascists here are home in the US in a much clearer light. Trump, Fox News, Tucker Carlson. Etc.
2) Funding and interference from Russia for Republicans is essentially shut off for the upcoming US election this Fall.
3) The free world is unified like never before.
Never give up hope. A positive mind set works on so many levels to create a positive world.
Response to Jazz Jon (Reply #10)
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lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Permanut
(5,439 posts)Hitler tried to spread his evil all over the planet and failed. Mango Mussolini had the same thing in mind, but so far there are just enough sane minds with just enough control to prevent it. I have hope that he, and Putin, will be stopped.
That's the big picture. in my tiny little corner of the world, I have hope for serenity, courage and wisdom, as long as I am able to understand those words and fight for them.
Thanks for sharing a little of your journey, and all the best to you.
intrepidity
(7,241 posts)They paint a very dim picture for Russia, but in that, I find hope.
Ocelot II
(115,280 posts)Even if your situation and the world situation look bleak, we have to hope. There is a crack in everything. Thats how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen.
mahina
(17,506 posts)First the hopeful article:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-delegate-says-talks-with-ukraine-may-soon-produce-draft-agreements-2022-03-13/
There is a non-zero risk of what your fear
But I think it is extremely unlikely because Putin does not want to die and he does not want his country to burn. He knows that if he starts something with us we wont just take it.
Theres a chance of accidents and theres a chance of the use of tactical nuclear weapons if this conflict expands.
I think, and Im not alone in this, that we have been at war with them for quite some time already- not a shooting war yet, hopefully never. It was definitely an act of aggression to install TFG as the president of this country and to support so many Republicans and probably Fox News, certainly Tucker. Before it was just them against us and we were pretending that there wasnt a conflict. Now, its them against us and NATO, and the world is on our side. His recklessness and lying have resulted in severe consequences to their financial systems that may very well and up deposing him at least.
I know how fear can shut down our thinking. My hope is that you try to do everything you can to be well including get outside if you can and do some exercise in any way that you can, and try to eat and feed your kids as healthily as you can, and cut out negativity to the degree that you can. Those things fight stress and stress is a killer.
Reclaim as much as your control of your conscious mind as you are able and Im joining you in all of these steps myself. I realized last night that Im spending a great deal of time refreshing LBN and looking for whats going on in Ukraine and on Facebook I will admit, which has taken my own agency away from what I do with my time and my mind. Im going to put the phone down and go for a walk and tonight Im going to read a book again for the first time in a month or so instead of scrolling and refreshing.
I have my reservations about the Reuters article at the top of this post but it is hopeful. There are other things we can be hopeful about in the situation number one being this is the beginning of end of Putins reign.
Slava Ukraini. 🕊🍀✨🌸
Ps I dont mean to be dismissive or unfeeling or sound like I think Im better than. Im talking to myself with this message above in the same breath. Aloha.
BlueTsunami2018
(3,461 posts)Theres literally nothing that anyone can do about it if he decides to go ham and blow the world to kingdom come. I cant get caught up in fear and regret and all that because Ill just be miserable all the time. Im just going to continue on with my pointless life as I always have. Work because I have to, try to find what little moments of joy I can when they present themselves and get drunk on my nights off.
And if we get lit up, Ill be gone instantly. 🤷🏿♂️
Response to BlueTsunami2018 (Reply #15)
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Tomconroy
(7,611 posts)Has to bang Putin's head enough times until he figures out he ain't gonna win on the battlefield.
BlueIdaho
(13,582 posts)I have an unshakable belief that America along with its Allies will form a stronger bond and create a more peaceful world. Trying to include Russia in that better world we now see was a mistake. They just arent ready yet. By minimizing Russias stake in the world we can move forward together.
May you find peace and love.
Tree-Hugger
(3,364 posts)PortTack
(32,606 posts)Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
Response to Tree-Hugger (Original post)
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hunter
(38,264 posts)... and quit traditional television entirely about ten years later.
Traditional television is designed to make people anxious so they buy more stuff as a means of relief -- be it insurance, food, or expensive medications that are not any better than cheap generics.
One of our kids, home from college one summer set us up with basic Netflix after we'd quit cable. It's ten dollars a month now. Mostly we watch that, other streaming media, and DVDs I've found in thrift stores. Many public libraries offer free streaming services.
My wife and I have great kids. They did well in school, got accepted to excellent colleges, and now enjoy higher standards of living than we do. They are strong California style Democrats.
Overall our nieces and nephews and other assorted young people in our extended family are doing all right as well, in spite of the chaos.
One of the things that gives me hope is the increasing acceptance of LGBTQ people. That's a big deal in my family. When I was a kid it was all don't ask, don't tell. Three of my grandparents and my parents fully accepted and celebrated LGBTQ people, and their homes were always refuge for LGBTQ people. One grandfather thought homosexuality was a disorder of no consequence. As an officer during World War II carrying a "get out of jail free" card he protected "misfists" (in his eyes) deemed essential to our nation's security. He was a racist too but his sense of justice and meritocracy superseded all that crap. He spoke of my wife as a "Mexican girl" and he boycotted our Big Catholic Wedding because men in his White Wild West family simply didn't marry Mexican girls, but he eventually got over it, possibly because she was better at math than he was. And he'd been an engineer on the Apollo project. Nevertheless, bits of his metal had defeated the Nazis and Imperial Japan and carried men to the moon and back. He was justly proud of that.
I'm convinced we have all the technology we need to abandon fossil fuels entirely. We also know that the political and economic empowerment of women, combined with easy access to birth control and realistic sex education for all children, will stabilize the human population and eventually bring it back to sustainable levels. Those are some of the places I find my hope, and one of the maps by which I direct my energy.
There's some foundation to my optimism in the sense that at my very worst I've been a crazy homeless guy living in his car in a church parking lot, the sidekick of a violent woman who'd inherited a lucrative business from her father, and that strange guy in the psych ward. Yet here I am.
I'd put the very worst of it behind me when I was about twenty five years old, but even so about half my breaks from DU have been psych stuff, the other half quite ordinary vacations.
Response to hunter (Reply #25)
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Stinky The Clown
(67,692 posts)Yes, things are bad. Indeed, they're terrible.
A barrier to WW3 is an old Cold War principle: mutually assured destruction. Without going into details, there are enough nukes and automatic launch control systems that even if Armageddon were unleashed against one side, before the missiles reach their targets and even larger launch would be unleashed on the aggressor.
All sides know this.
No side wishes to test it.
While the Ukraine conflict may widen, please rest comfortably that you and your family will be safe.
Tree-Hugger
(3,364 posts)denbot
(9,894 posts)Bidens got this, sleep well at night.
BlueSpot
(851 posts)Amaryllis
(9,523 posts)Remember part of the strategy is to bombard people with fear and hopelessness. Don't let them win!
Kaleva
(36,146 posts)I do not fear the future. I can't control whatever may happen but I can control how I respond to it.
panader0
(25,816 posts)I am naturally buoyant so hope comes easy. Still, I try to follow the latest developments.