I do not know a greater pessimist than my father, CollateralDamage Sr. A life in journalism earns you that. During that life he covered civil rights movement in the South. Yesterday he told me about being in a housing project in Selma, Alabama, on the night that President Johnson essentially told Congress that it had to pass the Voting Rights Act. TVs were a much rarer thing then and people gathered in one apartment to watch Johnson’s speech on a small black-and-white. He told me how people started to cry on hearing that their government was finally going to be on their side. And then he said with more than a little wonder, “That wasn’t that long ago.”
BTW, let me also mention Mother CollateralDamage. She will tell you that she was not in fact at the march in Selma in 1965. That is because her bus connections were lousy and she got there late. Personally I give her a mulligan on that one.
Collateral Damage 