Bernie supporters: Could you give me something to hope for? (A serious post.)

[Jim Lane]

21. Take a longer view to see the progress.

Just a couple examples, one public and one personal.

I always remember what Dr. Martin Luther King said about the status of blacks in America:

Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.

That's an important perspective. The civil rights movement made real progress, which has continued since Dr. King's death.

From my own life: When I had cancer, my oncologist told me that, just a few decades earlier, the treatment for what I had consisted of giving the patient morphine to ease his final days. He told me that 15 years ago. Here I still am. I hope you never get cancer, but, hey, even if you just need a cavity filled you'll get anesthesia, which the richest person in the world couldn't get 200 years ago. You won't die of smallpox or bubonic plague. Sure, we ought to have single payer, but even without it, Americans' medical situation is better than it's ever been.

Hang in there!