"The last year has been one of the most depressing of my nearly 50 years as a journalist." So begins Thomas Friedman's latest New York Times column. If you are deep into the grip of such a depression, you might want to skip, for example, catching up with Rachel Maddow's latest MSNOW hour. But if you are looking for a little hope, even a little uplift, try the rest of Friedman's column. (Photo above also from NYT.)
After offering a brief summary of the contributors to that depression ( "It’s not just that I’ve had to watch the Trump administration destroy cherished alliances, like ours with Western Europe and Canada, that have upheld freedom, democracy and global trade since World War II. It’s also been the stunning cowardice and boundless greed with which leaders of big law firms and Big Tech have bent their knees to King Donald and indulged a cabinet of clowns — not one of whom they’d hire in their own businesses."), Friedman quickly continues:
"But then I spent time in my native state, Minnesota, after something else that I’d never seen in nearly 50 years: a spontaneous uprising of civic activism propelled by a single idea — I am my neighbor’s keeper, whoever he or she is and however he or she got here...It was one of the most courageous battles ever fought by American men and women not in uniform."
I've read (and written) descriptions of the Minnesota Miracle, but this long column adds more information and clarity. It is moving and inspiring. It is even joyful.
If you're in the mood for something clarifying and inspiring that is more metaphorical, you might check out the recently streamed concluding first season episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, in which the climax occurs when a powerful villain is exposed as "an angry child with his finger on the trigger, whose entire worldview is based on a lie." Given that this series was castigated for its woke diversity by psycho Steven Miller himself, it demonstrates reassuring bravery as well as a concise analysis. Plus the good guys win. It's Episode 10: "Rubincon." (Another inspiring episode of this outstanding series was #8, "The Life of the Stars," which centers on the Thornton Wilder play, Our Town.)
I haven't seen it yet, but judging from Michelle Goldberg's column about this year's Oscar winner for Best Picture, One Battle After Another, it might be another such candidate. She writes about how it mirrors today's Chaotic America, even though it was made before the 2024 election. She calls it "forthrightly anti-fascist."
On the subject of the Oscars, I'd also recommend as a potential source of solace and uplift checking out clips of the winners' acceptance speeches. They were almost unfailingly generous to the other nominees (there are so many awards shows in awards season and the same people tend to be nominated in all of them, so they've all been hanging out together for months) and instead of just thanking their agents, they acknowledged those who preceded them and paved the way for their achievement.
This was true of the big awards but also especially of some others-- the first winner in the new category of casting, who called out the names of legendary casting directors who were never honored, and the first woman to win the cinematography award, who asked all the women in the audience to stand, because they made her award possible. It all made the term "the film community" a little more real, even across time.
But if you'd like several jolts of pure joy untethered to the depressing political present, I wholeheartedly recommend checking out clips from performances through the past two decades of Paul McCartney. Many can be easily found on YouTube.
Going back to around 2002, McCartney formed a new band that basically has backed him ever since, and their sets are heavy with meticulous renderings of Beatles tunes. Over the years they include some of the earliest songs recorded and performed by the Beatles, as well as later songs that the Beatles themselves never performed--partly because they gave up touring, and partly because these studio-made records couldn't be reproduced on stage, either economically or at all, due to limitations on the technologies of the time. But now they can.
In the first decade or so of these concerts, McCartney's voice was strong and pure. In more recent years his voice has thickened and developed a kind of vibrato that takes getting used to, but that happens pretty quickly, especially as the utter thrill of this music takes over. These are joyful songs to begin with. Seeing and hearing them performed now...well, you might be surprised how you feel.
The audience really accentuates that thrill. Not just the miracle of McCartney playing songs that the Beatles played in the 1960s, or never played on stage, but what the songs meant and continue to mean to these listeners.
These are multigenerational audiences, entire families hugging and dancing. Grandparents going wild next to their enthralled grandchildren. There are girls as young as the ones in the A Hard Day's Night concert scenes (often shown on a screen above and behind the stage) who know every word and every note in music created decades before they were born. And there are men of various ages just stunned, and moved to tears.
After all the angst, Paul McCartney has lived long enough to be completely vindicated, now with fans in at least three generations. You see the same expression on the face of other superstar musicians he performs with as you see in these audiences--they can't quite believe what's happening. It's an out-of, in-the-body experience.
He made amazing music after the Beatles as well, as most recently demonstrated in an excellent new film (currently streaming) on his years with Linda McCartney and Wings. McCartney has written and recorded so many great songs that among them are songs that have fallen into obscurity, simply because there are too many others. Yet it is clear that the past and the Beatles live in him every day, and he brings that music to life again.
Kurt Vonnegut used to say that the purpose of art is to make people happy. He was asked if any artists actually achieved that. "The Beatles did," he replied. They still do. Paul McCartney brings it alive again. Try it, it may work for you, too.
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