# Have you given up hope for the future? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 22, 2025, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246 "2025-01-22T06:57:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2025, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/104 "2025-02-03T13:02:55Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > About the best one could hope for these days is that the current apparent downward trend is arrested or not as bad as feared, and that the US can improve back to some time - I dunno - maybe 30-50 years ago? So, making America great again? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2025, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/105 "2025-02-03T13:08:48Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > So, making America great again? It wasn’t great back then, either. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2025, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/106 "2025-02-03T14:34:35Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It wasn’t great back then, either. Yeah - but I fear all too soon we’ll be looking back at those years fondly… ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2025, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/107 "2025-02-03T14:47:24Z")
My wife and I are both career aid workers, mostly for projects funded by USAID. Today, my wife was informed that her salary is greatly reduced, but she is being kept on to lay off the rest of the company. USAID owes her not for profit millions for work completed, but just isn’t paying it. Everyone we know is out of work and our industry just evaporated. I’ve started the process to immigrate, but my wife is not sure she wants to leave her parents. My idiot father in law who thinks that America is the greatest nation on earth unwittingly helped my case to immigrate when he told his daughter “I don’t want to talk about this!” When she tried to discuss the current state of America and the collapse of our lives’ work. ---
**Author:** ![Ellecram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellecram/32/18948_2.png) [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2025, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/108 "2025-02-03T14:47:58Z")
> [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](#): > > I have no hope for the future that I _thought_ was coming. > If continuing to live in whatever the US is devolving into is “the future”, I’m pretty apathetic. Virtually everything I’ve known and held dear is being systematically destroyed. Every new, despicable thing one of the cult vomits on the public sucks out just a little more of my will to live. I feel the same. Everyday is more of a struggle. Hope is not even part of my vocabulary at this point. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2025, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/109 "2025-02-03T14:57:56Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > My wife and I are both career aid workers, mostly for projects funded by USAID. Musta been a shock to realize what overpaid horrible people you were, huh? Best of luck. Just so shitty that decent folk who are trying to do decent things - for reasons other than personal enrichment - are among the first (but certainly not the last) to suffer. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2025, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/110 "2025-02-03T15:40:48Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > Musta been a shock to realize what overpaid horrible people you were, huh? Especially since I risked my life for the country that hates me. I have over 30 colleagues of all nationalities who died on the job. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2025, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/111 "2025-02-03T17:36:26Z")
At this point I’m basically just here to ensure my 19-year-old is safe. I’m looking into how to get her money offshore, into a European or UK account, to ensure she can escape Canada if there’s an invasion and occupation and have something to start a new life. If I can keep her safe, that’s my core purpose. That’s something to strive for. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/112 "2025-02-04T04:20:02Z")
I’m in a better mood. I have made my best effort to live as an activist and improve the world I live in. That includes attempting to be a part of ongoing social movements that also attempt to improve things. I’m recently reconciled to the possibility that I am not successful in any of this and that that’s okay. Okay in the sense that I’ve lived life fully engaged and made my best effort, and there’s really no point in kicking myself for not being a great social-political movement leader. And in the plural, that we are not successful and everything goes in the wrong political direction but that collectively we made a passionate effort. We did what we could. I do think we’re headed for Mad Max / Hunger Games / etc territory and things are going to be quite bad. But ultimately you have to be at peace with yourself as the resistance in a way that doesn’t depend on being a brilliant success at it, you know? Make whatever stands you find appropriate. Be brave more often than intimidated by all this. Please know you aren’t alone in all this. ---
**Author:** ![Ellecram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellecram/32/18948_2.png) [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/113 "2025-02-04T05:32:57Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > But ultimately you have to be at peace with yourself as the resistance in a way that doesn’t depend on being a brilliant success at it, you know? > > Make whatever stands you find appropriate. Be brave more often than intimidated by all this. Please know you aren’t alone in all this. This really gave me something to think about. Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/114 "2025-02-04T18:31:52Z")
[quote=“Dinsdale, post:97, topic:1013246, full:true”] > [@msmith537](#): > > And - excuse me - these salt of the earth folk are fucking morons if they allow themselves to believe Fox and to support such a clearly horrible individual as Trump. Unfortunately a lot of people are morons and/or jerks. Social media has enabled millions of them to connect and spread their moronic jerky message and drown out any thoughtful conversation that can actually solve problems with solutions that might require the slightest change in moronic jerky behavior. Trump is just a symptom of that IMHO. My concern for the future is that instead of solving all of man’s problems, AI will simply make everything worse but further dividing people into little stupid jerk islands that use AI to generate all sorts of stupid content that is difficult to distinguish from legitimate facts. But real problems won’t just go away. We’ll just be too stupid to solve them because we won’t be able to separate the truth of anything from the noise. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/115 "2025-02-04T19:06:10Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > But real problems won’t just go away. We’ll just be too stupid to solve them because we won’t be able to separate the truth of anything from the noise. Some agreement with your post, but I avoid the thought that they’re _all_ stupid, or even the majority of them. Or that some collective “we” will be too stupid. Instead, too fragmented, too distracted, too narrowly focused on that one _thing_ that we ignore the rest of the crap heading down the pipe, oh yeah, 100% And while I do not _excuse_ MAGA/Republicans for it, I absolutely understand that for a number of them (and probably a large number of them in the Leopards/Faces Pit thread) that it’s the “too narrowly focused” group that’s deadly. All they see, for whatever reason, is that ONE issue, and no matter what, they want that even if a more rational evaluation of the totality would be different. Historically for that group, it could be guns, abortion, or lower taxes. Recently, I’ve seen people add vaccinations to that list, including a lot of former Democratic voters who for _reasons_ felt that preventing mandatory vaccinations that were going to do “things” to them or their kids was the only issue that mattered. I am 95+% ready for random chance to try with a new species given my disgust with our own. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2025, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/116 "2025-02-05T03:16:40Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > > [@msmith537](#): > > > > But real problems won’t just go away. We’ll just be too stupid to solve them because we won’t be able to separate the truth of anything from the noise. > > Some agreement with your post, but I avoid the thought that they’re _all_ stupid, or even the majority of them. Or that some collective “we” will be too stupid. > > Instead, too fragmented, too distracted, too narrowly focused on that one _thing_ that we ignore the rest of the crap heading down the pipe, oh yeah, 100% “We” (liberals, conservatives, and normals alike) collectively will effectively become stupid because we will be unable to discern truth from bullshit or come to a consensus on what is actually true. You can’t make reasonable decisions if you don’t have valid information to reason from. Absent the ability for critical thinking, people make decision based on emotion. And it’s pretty easy to emotionally trigger people with strong political beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246/117 "2025-02-07T03:14:32Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > I am 95+% ready for random chance to try with a new species given my disgust with our own. I’ve been saying that, nearly verbatim, a lot the last six months or so. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-given-up-hope-for-the-future/1013246.md?page=5)