The Bright, Shining Promise of 2023
Before getting to the broad optimism I feel about 2023, I always find it odd, on New Year’s, whenever I’m excitedly asked the following:
“Can you BELIEVE it’s 2023?”
Yes. Yes I can. You know why? Counting. That it was 2022 on December 31, and now, on January 1, it’s 2023, well, that is like the most believable thing there is.
Now! Had I instead woken up this morning, clutching an empty tequila bottle in one hand, and a half-eaten stick of butter covered in Nutella in the other, only to discover that it was suddenly 1969, and no one had smartphones and everyone was being like…groovy…I promise you I’d be the first one turning backflips. I mean, THAT would be unbelievable. But 2023? I’m totally buying it. Because when it comes to numbers continuing in order, I’m a hard-core fundamentalist.
Nevertheless, I really do dig when our odometer rolls over and I’ve always loved going out on New Year’s Eve because it feels like it’s everyone’s birthday and everyone wants to have an extra-special night on their birthday. One of my most memorable New Year’s Eves unfolded when our WHOLE odometer rolled over. With Y2K fears abounding — sending the preppers huddled together in their bomb shelters among freight pallets of dried beans, ramen noodles, and Jif — I rode the Metro North to Portchester to attend a crazy party among a fun crew of artists, taking the woman I was dating, Vanessa. (Vanessa is not her real name. Her real name is Gabriella.) Anyway, Vanessa and I had only been dating for five or six weeks when her true colors had started to shine through, and unfortunately her true colors were Difficult-Person Mauve, and Squishy-Relationship-with-the-Truth Taupe. Instead of breaking things off with Vanessa, however, I had misguidedly followed some vague code stating that you shouldn’t dump someone during The Holidays. That was such a dumb mistake on my part because not only was this crew partying like it was 1999 —IT TOTALLY FREAKING WAS 1999! And as the ball began to drop, the music was lowered and everyone crowded around the TV and so I’ve got Vanessa standing on one side, while on other I’ve got (Look, I don’t do a lot of name-dropping, but here we go) the indie actress Chloe Sevigny. Meanwhile, the guy Chloe was dating was sunk in a couch off to the side, digging his own shoes in a smiley stupor, and with just ten seconds remaining in our old millennium, I shared a Bonnie and Clyde-like last glance with the Academy Award-nominated (and Golden Globe-winning!) actress, who smilingly acknowledged her out-of-commission date/boyfriend, and what if all the crazy preppers were RIGHT! What if the world IS about to go haywire! And what if instead of kissing Vanessa,I kissed Chloe Sevigny and-
FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!
I kissed Vanessa. Not for long. And then I spun around and kissed Chloe, feeling pathetically conscious of being the first person she kissed in our current millennium. And in the event that you’re the kind of person who is right now thinking, “You do realize, Mr. Numbers Fundamentalist, that our new millennium didn’t actually start for another year?” Well, yes, I do realize that. But just like any decent fundamentalist, I will forever enforce the rules on everyone else while always granting an exception for myself. Which means that I was the first person that Chloe Sevigny kissed in this millennium, and I couldn’t be more certain that at least one of us remembers that. Anyway, the Y2K preppers were obviously wrong because not only did our global infrastructure not collapse, nothing bad at all happened in our current millennium. Which is why now, in 2023, I actually feel a similar optimism about our prospects for the year to come.
People are often surprised — and even shocked — to learn that I consider myself an optimist. “But-” such people say, “you seem to relentlessly fear our progression toward a fascist, fact-free, oligarchic theocracy amid climate disaster in a country awash in 400 million guns, resulting in warlord-like factions ruthlessly competing for diminishing resources the likes of which would make Cormac McCarthy’s The Road seem like The Big Chill.”
And to those people I generally respond, “You’re making an excellent point.”
BUT! I still contend that I’m the real optimist because I don’t believe that such nightmare scenarios are foregone conclusions. Part of why I’m looking forward to 2023 is because it really does feel like the extremists on all sides are finally being put in Time Out, that factual reality is making a comeback, and that we might finally be creeping our way back toward a decent, common-sense center that actually yearns to break free. And so here are three things about which I’m feeling optimistic:
1. Ukraine is Kicking Ass.
Sure, Zelensky came to Congress with cup in hand (and in an olive-green shirt worn with the dedication of Gilligan’s red one) but it really is like he said — our support is an investment. Because when a democracy-loving underdog stands up to The Biggest Bully on the Planet, and then starts kicking his ass (and with the sudden, satisfyingness of Harrison Ford breaking Amish cover to kick ass on those bullies in Witness) he’s putting a beat-down on autocratic bullies everywhere. This guy is our Churchill and our Congressional support of him is a bona fide bipartisan effort about which all Americans can feel proud, with the totally-makes-sense exception of Representatives including Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert who can all go suck big, fucking donkey dicks.
2. Iranian Teenage Girls are Kicking Ass, Too.
Yes, it’s true the protests are not raging like they were in the Fall, and yes the Islamic State has long proven expert at quashing such uprisings, but those Mullahs are still crawling on their hands and knees and picking up their teeth. They will never keep those girls and young women down, while the ripple effect of women rising up against sexist oppression continues to reverberate in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and United Statesistan, where women voters in the reddest states have shown local lawmakers where they can stick any ballot measure sizing up their autonomy. And ever notice how the Mullahs basically wear the same outfit as our Supreme Court?
3. Renewable Energy is ALSO Kicking Ass.
You’ve probably seen the headlines that Renewables are now cheaper than the dirty shit. So going green is no longer some high-minded gesture favored by effete liberals, but a smart economic choice for everyone. And now, obviously, the U.S. government will immediately stop subsidizing outrageously profitable fossil-fuel companies to the tune of $20 billion a year! Yeah so unfortunately it’s going to take longer than any of us want to kick those pigs out of the trough; but in the meantime there is a growing divestment of fossil fuels, more and more people are plugging in their cars (and holy crap the pickup on those things!) and to top it off, we’ve got Fusion! I’m still not exactly sure how Fusion works, and apparently we need to be patient, but in the meantime it sounds delicious.
So there’s a lot of great stuff to look forward to and I hope you share my optimism that 2023 is primed to be the greatest year of this decade. Now I just need to clean up all this Nutella. So much Nutella…
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