Pessimism and hope (1 of 2): Governmental redress.

The one outcome I simply never anticipated after the last presidential election was that Biden would get elected, but he wouldn't have a Senate to work with. I really don't know how things can get economically better now in any reasonable timeframe, now that his "Build Back Better" is dead. I mean, the infrastructure bill might help around the edges, but it's probably not going to be enough, and maybe there will be a shot again at the big change that's needed in like 2-6 years, but I somehow doubt it, and all this after problems have built up for so long, with such decays in cost-of-living and the safety net and economic opportunities. As for me lately, I don't tell people that I "dropped out," but I rather say that I'm "checking out," and then I clarify that I'm "open to better," with it unsaid that I don't know where that might come from or how (people don't like downers). These past 15-20 years are the years in people's lives where people get professionally established, but that's simply never happened with me and a number of others from my generation, so it's silly to think that that might somehow happen now, especially since the younger and more age-appropriate generations are rising up and scooping up any opportunities as they emerge. I mean, it might happen, but it's nothing you can count on or plan for, so you have to plan to live your life without opportunity And besides, what sense does it make to put in the time and energy and 50 hour weeks all over again to establish yourself now, when you're professionally dislocated and it's the wrong time of life and the wrong age of society for that, not to mention that it's not clear in so many places that the goal will still be there by the time that you might be arriving, if somehow you squeaked out all favorable circumstances? For years now, I've had people tell me varities of "something will come your way" and "when you get a chance, you'll rise quickly," but in the past year or two, I've finally started telling people, "I don't think that's true," and I say in so many words that I'm no longer factoring something like that into my expectations, and I observe, "Some generations lack opportunity," it being unsaid that this generation of mine turned out to be one. It really is like a lost generation, where the shifts were so many and so massive, that a good number of people's possible futures just got closed off and swallowed up whole. All that taken together, I tell people sometimes, "There's worse places to be than [the college town I live in] studying [the ancient language that I'm studying]," and to tell the truth, not a few agree with me. It's like this truth is developing, but no-one can quite say it yet.