bring them on, all of them

Here's a letter for a dear friend:

I share your anguish. What you describe is true. The system is so rotten I don't know if it can be saved. You remember the spiral theory, the one that says civilization, like a helix, is either going down, down, down, or up, up, up? The one that also says that if the spiral is going down, then even the momentary ups merely serve as a spring to push it down, with an even greater force? Sometimes that's how I view our society, and that means the contributions made, the little ups along the helix, do not matter. Not really. If it's going up, then it's going up. If it's going down, you better brace yourself. Sometimes I'd like to think the helix is going up. But I think that when I'm feeling optimistic.

The thing is, actors or clowns, professionals or amateurs, veterans or freshmen, they won't really change anything. We've tried a couple of them. Mostly we've stuck with the dynasties, but every now and then we elect someone perceived to personify something new, like Estrada.  Yeah, we've tried actors before, and why not? We've tried other things too. None really worked.

I always thought of myself as a pessimist when looking at the present, and an optimistic when looking at the future. Now I'm not so sure anymore. But here's a thought. Maybe if we elect all the amateurs, all the clowns, all the actors, all the trash, maybe we'll hit rock bottom. And then we'll say, OK, we'll fix this for good. But then again, maybe not. People when they become politicians tend to outdo expectations. So yeah, maybe it's a bad idea to bet on the clowns. But maybe we'll go down laughing, and for all its worth, maybe that's the only good thing we can expect from our kind of politics.

You take care of yourself. Bye for now.