A few weeks ago, my mom asked me why I was so cynical all the time. I couldn’t help but wonder if our president had anything to do with it. I let it roll around in my mind for awhile. It couldn’t be any of the topical things, really: the economy, global warming, wars. I’ve deleted these things from my subconscience. Thinking about them too much would turn me into a crazy person.

way there were ever this many in-your-face news stations before Bush’s presidency. News tickers have been around since Sept. 11, but have stuck around long past their welcome, not unlike an annoying uncle at a family reunion. Using them for 24/7 purposes is absurd, and some stories are so unnecessarily rolled along the bottom of the screen that they could easily be self-parodies.

NN, three stories scrolled across the screen, all of them consequently related to Bush’s dog biting a reporter’s finger.

entertainment? Maybe that was it, I thought, and then I stopped and wondered why anyone would ever want to think about that kind of stuff. A few hours later my dad asked me why I was so cynical all the time.

generation has grown up with much more dismal perceptions than those of the past. We’re riding the crest of the wave created by the Perfect Storm. The economy is like it was in the 1930s. We have modern day communists: terrorists, an image which has been grossly blown out of proportion just like it was in the ’50s. We have civil rights issues reminiscent of the ’60s because people aren’t exactly sure whether or not homosexuals deserve the same rights as heterosexuals. And I thought this kind of stuff had been dealt with already. How could all the principles our parents and their parents’ generations strived for be compromised for this issue? Then add stuff unique to modern times: global warming, AIDS.

doorstep in a cradle with a guilt note attached to it. But will we even be more equipped to handle it than those who wrote the note? I guess that right there is the ultimate question. What will we, the children of the new millennium, be like when we’re older?

fed up with modern paranoia that we try to remove ourselves from it altogether? Will we become vigilantes, devoid of faith in anything higher than ourselves? After the election on Tuesday, I got a Facebook invitation from someone I’d never met before to a group called “Canada Anyone?” I wasn’t annoyed. If I ever actually considered joining Facebook groups as a substantial way of expressing my beliefs, I’m sure I would’ve been a member if my presidential team hadn’t won. I just thought it was funny, knowing the political and social opinions of those in the group, that if they did move to Canada, they’d find a lot more “socialism” there to fret about than in the new America set to come.

outgoing regime has shaped all of our lives whether we wanted it to or not.

to retain hope will be to keep things simple. And after we’ve fixed those simple things, I hope people will feel safe enough to want to see the world, rather than spy on it, watching it through a plasma keyhole while its images are only complicated beyond recognition, plastered with meaningless facts and news stories voyeuristically and tactfully assorted by matters of interest.

the former non-voters who knew if there was just one time to speak out, this was absolutely it. I really do hope America has its image restored, both to its own citizens and citizens of other countries. And I hope I never get so cynical that I pick up and move to Canada, because I feel like I could like it here.