What more can I say.

Garrison that was fantastic. It needed to be said and you said it so well. It's always a pleasure to read whats on your mind. The Emerson quotes will stay with me.

I very much appreciate the basic thrust of this article and the encouragement to approach life with a basically cheerful attitude. I just have one little quibble. We haven't quite survived "the most incompetent leadership ever" yet. We still have about sixteen months of the Bush administration to get through, and who knows what additional havoc they can wreak in that time? I just hope that when it is finally over we will be able to look back and sigh with relief over how right you were.

Emerson really deserves to have his darkness and complexity acknowledged. This is the man who wrote:

"At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, and sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go."

and

"After thirty a man wakes up sad every morning."

Emerson calls upon us to live fully and to make our unique marks on the world. He doesn’t really ask us to be cheerful. I suspect that he’d refrain from telling people how they should feel.

Thoreau, too, was asking us to live more intensely, more thoughtfully, more mindfully. Walden is full of rapture and poetry. Sorehead? Every page is saturated with gratitude for the beauty of the world.

It’s fine to be glib when talking about Bush, but really Emerson and Thoreau deserve so much more.

From the Continent:

"There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge."

"One must never have spared oneself, one must have acquired hardness as a habit to be cheerful and in good spirits in the midst of nothing but hard truths."

--Both from Friedrich Nietzsche

I wish I could be as hopeful as Mr. Keillor that we will survive the current incumbent. To get an idea of what damage he can do in the next 16 months, just pick any other 16 month period of his presidency. And I still hear that he's going to go after Iran's nukes with our nukes. If he does that, Muslims may start doing what he currently lies that they are already doing. And the rest of the world may decide that they have to find a way to bell the cat no matter how difficult it may be. He could still leave office with America a wasteland.

In view of that, it's tough to get up each morning with a smile.

Several thousand U.S. troops, and perhaps up to one million Iraqis, didn't survive Bush. Countless more may still be alive, but have had their lives destroyed. There is no getting a grip, there is no cheering up. The Bush years are a tragedy to be mourned and regretted and atoned for. We will move on, for we have no other choice, but we can never go back. We did not survive the Bush years; we will never be the same.

Get real, Garrison. I agree with DurianJoe. A lot of people did not survive the Bush presidency, and a lot of species went extinct. I also wouldn't call the Bush presidency the most incompetent ever. If Bush was truly trying to be "a pretty good steward of the environment," then yes he has been incompetent. But, if he was trying to kill a lot of muslims and make a lot of his friends rich, then he has been amazingly competent. Also, we won't have survived Bush until Roberts and Alito retire.

The real problem is not Bush, but the American electorate that voted him back for a second term. I'm not sure they've learned their lesson yet. Can we trust them to support civil rights and to resist greed.

P.S. Michael Feldman's show is much better than yours.

a morose teenager. I remember genuinely worrying that we would not have a future, even though the leadership seemed sound enough, if very mysterious, the newscasters were solemnly respectable & daddy came home from work every day. And here I am. My grimness effected no change on this earth, I suspect my disposition mattered very little except in my personal environment.

I love Garrison's column. I really really appreciate his attempt at optimism. Hygienist Haiku---where else we gonna get that?

I suspect the 9 year old daughter has much more to do with this cheeriness than the coming end of the Bush-aster. There is plenty cause to question this survival he speaks of, more tests to come, more incompetence to darken our days.

Today I am willing to be cheerful with Mr Keillor. I intend no disrespect---to anyone.

Garrison, I love your voice on the radio and usually resonate with your peaceful outlook, but...

"We have passed the great test of a republic, to survive the most incompetent leadership, and now we can anticipate a new era, one with no Bushes."

Have we? They're not gone yet. Their lackeys, minions and cronies are still embedded in our very social fabric. They infect our businesses, our churches, our every political front. They waft over the airwaves like so much smelly cheese.

They are the bullies, Mr. Keillor, and we, the rest of us, have not yet thrown them off the playground nor, it appears, can we collectively even see the bastards for what they are. There is still a measure of denial. There is still the belief that, oh, well, the system works, right? No. It doesn't.

People still have to prove they're worthy of a doctor's care. They still have to prove they're worthy of shelter and clothing and food. They have to prove they're worthy of living. But there are plenty of people, Garrison, who don't measure up to the bullies' fist, through misfortune, through accidents of birth, through just plain exhaustion. There is no common belief in the common good. As of 25 years ago, human life is a transaction and nothing more.

No, we haven't survived. We're just not dead yet. It's up to us to finally live up to the promise of our grand experiment of a nation. Cheerful? I'll be cheerful when the scoundrels are properly loathed and put back in their place.