Comments on: World Optimism, World Pessimism

By: Pessimism or Optimism « Andrew’s Amazing Blog

Pessimism or Optimism « Andrew’s Amazing Blog — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:17:33 +0000

[...] or Optimism My cousin recently blogged about how she is extremely optimistic and pessimistic at the same time about world events. She [...]

By: Lynn Mays

Lynn Mays — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:15:14 +0000

I think all of us who remember the early 80’s have been watching with intrest what is going on in Iran right now. I only have a couple of simple observations to make about Andrews post and [Pmoms] blog. First on the statement that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. While sometimes this is true it is not always the case, which leads me to Andrews statement that George W. Bush invaded Iraq because “he wanted to”. This may be the case, (stay with me I promise I’m not a mindless Rush Limbaugh clone) however I feel it was something he went into office feeling he had to do because it should have been done in 1991 when H.W. Bush was president in the first place. Back to my first point, I remember when Iran under The first Ayatolah Khamani(please forgive spelling if its not correct) was in power and was our enemy. Iraq was also their enemy so our friend right? So we provided Iraq and ultimately Saddam with weapons, political and financial backing to help topple Iran thus further empowering him to become the dictator and tyrant we all loved to hate so much. My point I guess is we should be careful what we wish for.
I’m afraid though that as long as any Ayatolah, be it a Khamani or another one is in power not much will be able to change in Iran since they are the ultimate authority there.

But there’s always hope.
Just my 2 cents and probably not worth that.

By: Andrew Lambert

Andrew Lambert — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:42:20 +0000

I too have been watching with great interest the events in Iran. The population there is quite young and vibrant; they seem not to hold on to as many traditional views of the United States; most of the population there was born after the hostage crisis and never lived under the Shaw. It will be fascinating to see what happens over there.

I also feel tremendous pessimism and optimism about our American economy and system of government. On one hand, I want very much for Obama to succeed and to see our nation prosper economically. I want to see positive changes to our health care system. At the same time, I greatly fear government intervention and the massive expansion we’ve been witnessing. As one commentator put it recently, Obama wants us to believe that the recent enormous government spending and intrusion into the free markets was what was necessary to save our system. The truth, according to the commentator, is that the recession was the excuse Obama needed to transform our government/economy into a much more European-like system, where government entitlements are widespread and where the government controls much more of the free markets, making them much less free, and consequently, less efficient. (Kind of the same idea as George W. Bush using 9-11 as an excuse to invade Iraq and remove Saddam from power, something he wanted to do anyway, but I digress.)

The fascinating thing about this mix of fear and hope is that they can somehow can co-exist in us.