As of the 20th Jan, my optimism reserves have taken a bit of a hit. I’ve tried to counter this by not listening to the news. It’s not been easy, not gonna lie. Being the middle class, middle aged midwife that I am, I’m normally an avid BBC Radio 4 listener. I wake up to the Today Programme, I have lunch with the World at One, I cook dinner listening to the 6 o’clock news. I’ve barely missed an episode of Women’s Hour for a decade. I consider myself clued up. I find the world and its humans endlessly fascinating. Obviously I often shout at the radio because naturally I know when people hold mistaken beliefs, and clearly the world would be a better place if I were in charge! But also I have literally no desire whatsoever to be in charge, and I know I can’t have it both ways. I am forced to trust that our democratically elected leaders will behave with a modicum of decency, and/or be held accountable for their actions. I still dare to believe that’s the case this side of the pond, but I fear for our American cousins.

I know. I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Scaremongering is a depressingly easy way to make people behave poorly.  It’s the classic divide and conquer strategy in which cynical puppet masters cunningly trick people into believing their natural allies are in fact the enemy, then stand back to watch the carnage. It only ever ends well for said puppet masters. Who tend to be rich, powerful, well educated, well connected, seemingly charming, men who just want to maintain the status quo because it really really works for them.

They will have worked hard to be where they are, that’s undeniable, but they will also have been given a leg-up by the system (which promotes straight white men) not to mention their stable middle class upbringing which is so conducive to study and success. It’s so easy to assume that everyone else had the same opportunities to get ahead as you did because that’s the word on the street, isn’t it: work hard and you too could live the American dream. It isn’t true. There’s no such justice. For each famous YouTuber, there are thousands that broadcast to cyberspace wilderness.  For each multimillionaire entrepreneur, there are thousands who are merely subsisting. For each famous actor/ footballer/artist/writer, there are thousands that fell by the wayside. Not because they didn’t work every hour of the day and night, but just because. Because they couldn’t convince a bank to take a chance on them; because they didn’t get taken to all the training camps or away matches; because they just do not know the people who will display/publish/buy their art. Upwards social mobility is desperately difficult to achieve, not least because those who have clawed their way there are not keen to pave the way for others. Funnily enough, I think it comes from a good place: gratitude… ok, stay with me! When you’ve finally been admitted to the club, the one you never thought you’d get into, you are very grateful. You do not want to rock the boat. You’ve been practicing all your life to be a member but you realise that blending in still isn’t a done deal. You never truly belong. You develop rhino skin, selective hearing and mild myopia to withstand the classist/racist/sexist slurs which are relentlessly persistent, even if usually mindless and unintended. You laugh at the banter. You can hardly be offended now that you’re one of the boys.  Thus you have to deny your actual heritage. And suck it up. For the sake of your kids who will one day reap the benefits of your ability to endure: they’ll be attending elite schools and making the right connections. They will belong. It’s a long game.

The view from the top is awesome but the air up here is thin, and you worry about the cabin pressure. You’ve heard it’s liable to fail. And you suspect that, given the slightest glitch in cabin pressure, you’d be the last to get an oxygen mask, you’d in fact be the one passing them around to the born-and-breds before accepting your own. You would be so grateful for your own mask that it wouldn’t occur to you to wonder why the pressure failed, let alone why there aren’t enough masks.  The born-and-breds haven’t even noticed the problem because the status quo works well and they always end up first in line for oxygen and masks. The recently-admitted believe that since resources are clearly scarce, it’s best for everyone if nobody else gets in. So they back rules that ought to strike them as racist/classist/sexist. They all vote for that man, who (along with his cronies) is hogging all the masks and oxygen. But it’s OK, you’re now in a position to buy these, and the tax breaks you are now entitled to make it easier still. That’s a lot to be grateful for. I’m not even kidding. I saw a play about how the Kyoto agreement was finally reached after over 10 years of brutal negotiations back in 1997. That agreement might well have been reached years earlier but for the greatest obstacle: American oil lobbyist and master strategist, Don Pearlman… who was the son of a refugee: eternally, crazily grateful for the idyllic American life he had led, unbelievably keen to preserve it unchanged.

This fear of scarce resources can also be exploited by puppeteers among normal, decent, hard-working people. The string-pullers get us to self-destruct by drip feeding us fake news, convincing us that it’s OK to distrust your neighbour who doesn’t pray your way because he’s obviously out to steal your job and your wife and your country (I mean, not your friend Mo, or Juan, they’re alright, but you know, there’s only a finite amout of schools, jobs, doctors, even Juan and Mo agree that they should build that wall). And while we’re distracted by imaginary walls, said puppeteers can openly rob us of our rights, our freedoms, and our hard-earned cash. It turns out that imaginary walls are frightfully expensive to not build, and until then, for our safety, anyone who looks just a bit too exotic will be locked up just in case. It’s diabolically clever. They don’t just get turkeys to vote for Christmas, they get them to fatten themselves up with all the junk that the not-so-fat-but-very-rich cats produce cheaply and unethically. They package the food beeeautifully with pictures of angelic turkeys, idyllic forests and beautiful girl turkeys, and write ‘good-for-turkeys’ all over it in bold, colourful lettering. They market these highly processed foods as ‘scientific meal replacement’, or high in protein, or low fat, or vitamin-enhanced or low sugar, or immune boosting… and they stop teaching turkeys how to interpret the mandatory information labels on the packaging, which clearly spells out how much rubbish has actually gone into the food. Because they basically stopped teaching real science. It’s all so brilliant. The turkeys are thrilled – science is hard. They’ve even started roasting themselves because climate change, which obviously they haven’t been taught (it’s too scientific) isn’t a thing. Bravo puppet masters.

I may scornfully mock these poor clueless Americans, but to be fair, it is extremely difficult to teach people how to optimise their health and well-being. I have 3 kids who don’t even hate vegetables, are perfectly capable of making a healthy balanced meal, but much prefer not to. They complain when I serve such meals because they’re bland compared to the ultra-processed rubbish that seduce their taste buds, consequences be damned. They buy expensive protein powders when they could eat grilled chicken or drink a glass of milk.  They take weird expensive supplements that supposedly cure/prevent everything. They swear by expensive, harsh and abrasive skin ‘care’ regimes which are woefully wrong for young skin. I know for a fact that they were taught science, but science is hard and magic is better. I too, would really prefer magic.  I too am seduced by the promise of eternal youth and perpetual happiness and perfect health, at minimal cost and zero effort. I guess that us Gen Xs grew up without these elixirs so we remain a bit more grounded. We hoped to pass on our worldly (but boring, old fashioned) wisdom but how can we compete?

Of course, as the mother, I accept all responsibility for this outcome. If only I’d raised them in an Internet and screen-free  vacuum! Gone back in time, maybe, and adopted 1950s values: men were men, women stayed home, corporal punishment made you stronger, lots of lovely pea-soup fog, smoking was good for you, seatbelts were for crybabies, alcohol made you a better driver, the ozone layer was for wimps who were too sissy to tolerate a few rays of sunshine, lead in your petrol and in your paint was perfectly safe, pesky climate change was fully ignorable, being gay wasn’t legal, being trans wasn’t a thing… and the music was awesome.

Thus, you see, there is cause for optimism. It’s far from perfect but we’ve come a long way since the good old bad old 1950s. Let’s not give up. There are so many  unsung heroes toiling away out of the limelight, fighting against injustice. Teaching, healing, caring, cleaning, helping. Giving time and money to promote social inclusion,  human rights, climate justice. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the spotlight was focused purely on the good guys for the next 4 years? If, instead of repeating the crass, ignorant, racist, thuggish, deluded, utterly soul-destroying cr@p that comes out of that sorry-excuse-for-a-human’s mouth, we just ignored it. Just turned off his mic. Stopped following him on any of the socials. Radio silence. I mean, just last Monday (2 weeks after my self-imposed news ban), his gibberish about tarrifs cost various stock markets several percentage points. Yup, there I was, screaming at the radio at 8am. Clearly it was still too soon to resume the news! Thank heavens for BBC Radio 4 podcasts (thank you Women’s Hour) which keep me company until I can return to current affairs without losing my voice!

Luckily for me, my job means I get to witness so much joy, I get to work with so many heroines (and heroes too) and every day, I get to see people at their best. It’s truly inspiring. I’m not saying we’re perfect or that it’s easy, or that things never go wrong,  we’re not in Utopia… but we can and should be proud of ourselves, and maintain just enough optimism to see us through these cold, dark years. Sometimes like conkers who eventually become majestic life-enhancing ecosystems, we can start our journey of growth in seemingly impossible conditions.