Many times a day over the last year, I’ve found myself thinking or speaking these words.
They sometimes come almost involuntarily as some cathartic scream therapy, an emergency emotional pressure-release intended to fend off a coming explosion, a way of coping with so much hitting the fan at one time.
I say the words to myself, and after a few disorienting seconds, the feeling passes. I breathe and realize my overreaction. There is a brief moment of abject despair, but it soon departs, at least on some days.
But on other days, I begin to believe the words. On those days, the feeling doesn’t pass quickly; it lingers and begins to settle like a stone upon my chest. Some days I’m fully convinced that indecency has the run of the house, that good people are an endangered species, that love’s victory may not be inevitable, but impossible.
Maybe you’re feeling that way right now.
Maybe you’re looking at the decidedly sickening parade passing by you on social media or on the news, and you’re concluding that evil has the upper hand.
You may be thinking it’s all going to hell in a Cybertruck.
You might be losing faith in humanity and be preparing a eulogy for Democracy.
I understand why you’d feel that way.
I also know that you’d be wrong.
Seriously, hatred is not winning.
It isn’t, at least, not everywhere.