Farewell 2006

Tonight I am struggling to choose which emotion to focus on as I reflect on the just-passing 2006 and just-arriving 2007. Mostly it’s related to American politics, but it’s personal too.

Should I feel despair over the year that has, for all intents and purposes, been dominated by the suffering of the dead and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, or grateful that my son is still alive and that the carnage hasn’t been even worse than it was? Should I be hopeful for the coming year that somehow the new Congress will find a way to fix the messes we have created throughout the middle east? Should I be angry that so many of my fellow countrymen were unwilling to look beyond ideology and talking points and see what is actually happening? Should I say “Fuck it!” and join the rest who have slipped into apathy and ignorance about what’s going on? Ugh, I can’t do that either. The whole mess seems so bleak right now… there are no quick and simple solutions to the long, long list of problems.

Then again, as John Nichols says over at The Nation:

“Any year that begins with Bill Frist and Tom DeLay running the Capitol and ends with Frist out of politics and DeLay headed for trial gets high marks from this quarter.”

In other good news, several Republicans were brought down by scandals, including Mark Foley, who resigned over sexually explicit messages sent to male congressional pages, and Randy Cunningham, who pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from defense contractors. And Ohio’s Bob Ney pleaded guilty in connection with the probe of lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Events in Iraq were one of the driving forces behind the Democrats’ victories in the Nov. 7th election. They took control of the House with a large majority, gained a slim majority in the Senate, and also advanced in state houses and governorships nationwide. Nancy Pelosi, assailed by the Republicans as a ”San Francisco liberal” during the campaign, will shortly become the first female Speaker of the House.

Still, people will be expecting miracles out of these Dems, and I just don’t think that’s very realistic given the decades of bad decisions on the part of both political parties that helped to create, or at least failed to stop, this whole mess. And then there’s the inaction on Global Warming that threatens all our lives, from the various ecosystems to many of the significant cultural heritage sites of the world. But on the other hand, the world’s largest labor union is being born which may prove to be a challenge to the multinational corporatists.

I guess I should be thankful that Donald Rumsfeld is out, replaced by Robert Gates, one of the key players in the Iran-Contra scandal,… yet I’m frustrated that many of Rumsfeld’s equally-incompetent pals are still employed and making big bucks. I’m not envious of their salaries, but as a disabled vet, I struggle along on a monthly disability compensation check that doesn’t keep pace with inflation and wouldn’t even buy a single plate at one of their ‘big wig’ dinners.

But I also know that there are those who are even worse-off than me. The folks of New Orleans are still in the same situation they were a year ago… with large swaths of the city still wrecked and abandoned after Hurricane Katrina (2005), and local officials promising that better days lie just ahead,… meanwhile the contractors scramble to vacuum up all the money needed for reconstruction while very little is actually being rebuilt.

There was small progress in some areas, such as the rise of the blogosphere and the changing mediascape with citizens beginning to actively participate in the news cycle. The New Media is here for good — like it or not — and the competition for eyeballs that it’s providing is also pushing Old Media to offer more choices and greater participation.

The first domain I ever owned, DeDanaan.com, will be seeing its tenth birthday in the coming year (I know, hard to believe, isn’t it?), though it’s gone through some major changes over the years,… so have I.

This time last year, I was reporting for Radio News America, and now I’ve got my own column over at Newsvine, where I’ve been lucky enough to be consistently among the top 1% of users on the site and have surpassed the 2,500 mark on “seeded” news items, which helps to explain why I haven’t done a lot of blogging here over the last year. I’ve actually contemplated shutting this blog down for good, but can’t quite bring myself to do it, so maybe there’s hope for it yet.

And then there’s my personal life… it’s been full of ups and downs, and has been pretty much an emotional rollercoaster, but nowhere near as wildly out of whack as 2000-2001 was. I’m frustrated with the state of my life right now and there don’t seem to be any real options open to me to make major changes. I’m confused about my relationships with various people, too, and find myself hanging in a kind of uncomfortable limbo and very much in need of clarity — though I may have already failed in that endeavor, unfortunately. *sigh*

I think it’s time for a drink. *pours a shot of Jameson’s for you* Here’s to 2007, let’s hope it’s better all the way around.