I'm talking the-Champs-Elysées-are-full levels of joy:

What's lacking to justifiy this?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Hope is a more powerful stimulus than joy. What is lacking these days is a sense of purpose and call for people to participate in improving their lot.

Where is the politician saying "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"?

Every time a child falls down a well or something similar there are always hundreds of people offering to help or sending money.  Instead we get Jared Bernstein's phrase (YOYO - you're on you're own) from politicians.

Have all the politicians become cynical, or have the idealists just given up? Even feeling good about the results of a sports competition is perverse. The fans are not members of the team, they haven't done anything to affect the outcome, and they have no relationship with the players. They just become passionate because they are looking for heros.

Maybe instead of lofty goals we should come up with a list of practical things people can do on their own to make them feel like they are working to solve the world's problems. Sending money to worthwhile causes doesn't have the psychological impact of planting a few trees or cleaning up an abandoned site.

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

for crossposting on dKos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/2/15367/98372

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Well, it's certainly fun in a perverse sort of way to extrapolate every trend to find the worst possible result, isn't it? Everybody enjoys thinking about how horrible things are going to be in the future, since the alternative, Utopia, is so boring.

France isn't so bad off, after all. You have a reasonable energy situation, good social policy, a good economy, good investment environment, good education and health, reasonable political stability, and good food. You also have a huge problem with minorities and immigrants that you haven't confronted (sorry, American viewpoint!), but you're working on it. What is the problem? Not enough American tourists asking for le hamburgers? As if.

 Part of the trick is knowing how to recognize "good news" when you see it:

  18 USC 118 § 2441

  "Google" that!

  ;^)

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

Hey, no need to apologize for a job well done!  

I know sometimes it is cheesy to take part in these mass excersizes in civic pride.  But it also feels great and is usually pretty harmless.  It's often one of the few times we are truly invited to act as a community.  And you are right, in these times, if you have a reason to be joyous, BE JOYOUS.  

Go France!!!!!!


Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

Nothing more to add after poemless.  Jerome, get the hell off the internet.  Go out and party after a spectacular game.  Vive la France!

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.