How to be an Optimist in 2025
Or, the digressions of Ivanto Fretski
Yes, my name is Ivanto Fretski. Ironic I’m named that, because I don’t fret about anything, ever. I can’t call myself cool as cucumbers— I peel the paper labels off my beer the same as any other basket case. There’s an easy explanation: I’m too interested with the events of the world, and monitoring international situations. I watch them get worse and worse, the same as every other situation-monitorer.
But I have a serious problem, one that flies in the face of the prevailing attitude of contemporary commentators, bloggers, and newsmedia-digestors.
I’m a compulsive optimist.
You might call it my most terrible flaw. Well, I’ll change your mind on that, don’t fretski. I always, always think things will turn out for the better. That’s a tough card to draw for someone at pains to understand the machinations of our leading men.
I’ll be the first to admit, it’s hard to be an optimist this woeful year 2025. I keep saying the most optimistic things possible, and predicting all things will turn out for the better. I make myself a fool with my insights. It’s all a big gamble, guessing how things will go. But there’s no quicker way to be wrong this year than to predict that things will get better.
Because of my compulsion, my peers think I’m crazy. It’s quite impossible to win any friends when you’re an optimist in 2025.
But between the gutting and looting of the American nation (by it’s own nefarious rulers), and these pugnacious cretins barking for war, and the liquidation-murdering of entire nations of people for no other reason than profit-money gain, I’m forced to say that my positive assumptions haven’t panned out.
But still I’m possessed by this merry optimism!
Yet, I’m at pains to declare I haven’t missed the mark totally, which requires some explanation.
Because what is “getting worse,” anyway? What does it mean when the political aphorism of our times, so readily invoked, is “we’re fucked”? I hear it far too often. We’re fucked? Really? As an optimist’s optimist, I simply find that ridiculous.
Everyone’s saying “we’re fucked,” which confuses me somewhat.
Even the Trump crowd, the Maga mob, the online sickos and television addicts, the kooks and Q anon hippies, are saying “we’re fucked.” Transphobes and xenophobes and selfphobes are all saying it.
The centrist liberals and radical liberals and center-left liberals and inside-out liberals are saying “we’re fucked,” along with the social democrats, the lifestyle anarchists, and the long-retired new-dealers whom I see still puttering around at 92 years young. Their perfect utopia of venerable institutions is wrecked, and there’s no reason to carry on. It’s ovah!
There’s different shades of “we’re fucked.” There’s the despair of “we’re fucked” (things will get worse ad nauseam until we’re all packed into ovens), there’s the fatalism of “we’re fucked” (we’re beyond some pale to change the world for the better), and there’s the belly-shaking excitement of “we’re fucked” — the later group we might label as eager accelerationists.
I throw them all in the same group of bores: vulgar pessimists.
I, Ivanto Fretski the optimist’s optimist, am forced to conclude that nobody knows what to do to save the nation or its power, or reverse its decline, or even what type of future we want to live in, or what we believe in, or if we’re really a nation any longer. Or fix the climate or recover our senses, or tell right from wrong, or truth from lie. Yes, even I can admit the present world is a broken one.
I’ve long resisted the appeal of accelerationism because it seemed too violent and cathartic to me. But everything changes, and if things change fast then that can’t be too abnormal, eh? Accelerationist mentality is a very good way to cope with nonstop catastrophic implosions of US power, economy, society, and ideology, but it invites its own sense of despair known as “nothing ever happens.” Even the accelerationists have their own version of “we’re fucked”— that everything will carry on. They too say “we’re fucked,” because nothings falling apart fast enough for them.
I have to wonder what that means, because to me it just seems like highly-refined cope. Being an accelerationist is no more than cheering when things fall apart. Being an accelerationist means popping champagne when the treasury bond market tanks, or Tesla gets margin-called, or Jerome Powell being lynched in front of the Federal Reserve. Celebrating things falling apart isn’t a very articulate ideology. It’s spectator sport.
Nobody’s an optimist anymore, so my camp is very lonely. Some might say I’m the last optimist in the world. In 2025, optimism is simply unfashionable. But I resent when it’s called unrealistic.
Now— I recant my earlier statement. I actually find it easy to be an optimist, especially now. I’m an optimist for optimism’s sake. I began to think: maybe I’m not wrong, it’s just my time scale needs calibration!
When I, Ivanto Fretski the optimist, said that things will get better, things will be great, etc., I’m still correct. It just happens that the timeframe is off. Things will get better, eventually! Whether that eventually happens within my lifespan (or yours, dear reader) is not for me to say. But rest assured: things are gonna get better. Perhaps we’ll experience those better times, or we’ll die before then! I’m optimistic that at some time in the future, however far away, things will get better.
Does it feel wretched sometimes, to be an optimist? Sure, sure. Like when I’m laying warm and comfortable in bed, spread out and think: all is right in the world, nothing is fundamentally wrong with it, etc… but I remember there’s a famine-genocide in Gaza. Six hundred thousand people haven’t eaten in 4+ days. Even the journalists there are starving to death. Ancient churches bombed to dust, no cities remaining, only corpses with fewer and fewer to bury the dead each day.
That makes it hard to think that everything is right with the world. And it makes me feel very cold, like a frost that spreads through my body. But it will be over, it can’t go on forever, and maybe Israel will topple tomorrow!
But then I remember that the famine-genocide in Gaza is a blueprint for the future, to deal with stateless and stubborn peoples everywhere. That when people rebel and rise up against the system of elites and money and capital and predation, this is how they will be dealt with, whomever they are. The Gaza-blueprint. That makes it hard to be an optimist.
The climate crisis also attracts many pessimists. But I’m a climate optimist, also.
Sure there will be terrible death (maybe even my own, who knows!), but you can’t let things like the collapse of agricultural capacity get you down! Sure the oceans are heating to a boil. Yes, we all know biodiversity is largely doomed. And that it’s too late to stop what’s happening. Of course humanity has unleashed death beyond comprehension, into the scale of billions and billions. And we’re plowing further into it, don’t remind me; I already know.
Sure, sure, the inescapable heat waves will drive millions and millions of climate refugees to pack up and move in great migrations unseen in human history. And yes, obviously the wealthy countries will prey on their insecurity for near-slave labor, and kill the rest who aren’t useful enough. A thousand holocausts on the horizon. Yes, humanity will be stripped of its meaning and potential. What of it? That’s the world we’re entering. That’s what life is, evidently.
And yes, I concede the most effective and predictable way for future states to deal with troublesome climate refugees will be to concentrate them into small areas by baiting them with food supplies, then evaporating them in mass numbers with small, “dial-a-yield” nuclear weapons. Apologies— my body just became cold again, did yours also?
This is the optimists dilemma. Okay, okay, I can admit that things are about to get worse on a magnitude never experienced nor recorded. Sure, sure, the Biblical stories of apocalypse will look like fairy tales compared to the horror that awaits us living today. Fair, fair, we’re lead by the most ill-equipped and evil people ever to live, such that medieval emperors and caliphs (would they were to visit our times) would declare us to be ignorant, barbaric, suicidally stupid rubes, the worst to ever do it.
But things will get better in the future! Maybe sometime, two or four hundred years from now, the Earth will be a decent, peaceful place to live, and North America a jolly place full of smiling faces and new species. Can you doubt that? What now, pessimists? Ha!
Even the Trump supporters tell me “we’re fucked,” because even though they’re in power, they don’t know what to do! I find that very funny. They do know how to do one thing, though: punish the people they hate. They have goons on retainer to rip apart happy families just for kicks.
But they say “we’re fucked,” cus they can’t even imagine a better world. You can only be so cruel and stupid for so long, until it all blows up in your face.
Just ask the old slave-masters, who wore iron cock-cages to bed, because they were scared Gersham the house-slave was gonna creepy crawl up to Master’s bedroom and cut his balls off while he slept. Slave revolt!
Everything changes. If it exists today, it won’t tomorrow. That’s the optimist’s motto in 2025!
When I told Sharpen Quaff (a left-liberal, friend-to-antagonist) I was an optimist, he said, “that’s peculiar.” When I repeated that above written sentiment to his face (over cocktails that I made him pay for) he called me “naïve,” and wrinkled his nose like talking to me was a waste of time. Sharpen Quaff (full name: Sharpen Stixsen Quaff (reason: his parents were illiterate suburban speed-addicts)) wants to wallow in PURE DOOM and pessimism.
I told Sharpen Stixsen Quaff I found his pessimism naïve, and he gave me a look like I’d thrown his last cigarette into a puddle on the road. Like I’d ruined his orgasm by punching him in the nuts. Like I’d attended his solo performance and began booing before everyone else could clap. It looked like I’d ruined his high.
It’s chic to be pessimistic these days. One example, permit me to invoke a rather petty, provincial example: the new, ten year ban on states or cities from regulating AI. Then, an executive order to make AI LLMs “unwoke”. So we have legally uncontrollable nazi-AI flooding the only remaining social space in this ret*rded country: the internet. (Sorry about the R word, I wrote it out, but my backspace key fell off; I can only write forwards, not backwards. Apologies to any tenderqueers who’ve stumbled into this place they don’t belong).
Everywhere I look, it’s “we’re cooked,” and “this is terrible,” and “it’s gonna take a 1000 year democrat regime to reverse this damage.”
As an optimist, all these things could happen and more, and I’ll still whistle and hum down the sidewalk, knowing that in ten or fifteen generations, we’ll have this all sorted out (and don’t for a moment IMPLY that I’m humming to calm any terrified nerves, cus that’s simply never crossed my mind for a millisecond!).
I cherish all the good things in life, like pleasant strolls in the shade, comfortable benches to sit on, children screaming on playgrounds, friendly stray cats, and the sweet stink of a buxom lover’s body. And we could all get herded into camps tomorrow, yet those things still exist somewhere and will probably be enjoyed by someone else, sometime in the future!
I don’t cope! I’m not coping! Never accuse me of coping! I simply know that better times are on the very, very far distant horizon, and I don’t know what’s so crazy about that.
In the course of research, I happened to look up the definition for optimism: (n) 1. a doctrine that this world is the best possible world. Unfortunately that stopped me in my tracks and made me doubt everything. I tugged at my shirt collar and looked around for a beer bottle I could pick the label off of (there wasn’t one in reach). Well, I’m certainly not that kind of optimist.
A-ha, there’s another definition! 2. an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome. Whew! I worried for a moment that I wasn’t an optimist at all. That instead I was coping. I’m not coping! I’m not! I’m not!
No, no, I’m an optimist. A respectable and sincere category. This will all blow over in a few centuries, and then you’ll see I was right not to worry! New types of nature will grow back, the climate will settle down into new rhythms, new people will replace the ones we’ve lost to terrible crimes and insatiable greed, the third world war will be over, and a lot of lessons will have been learned.
Genuinely, genuinely, you’re starting to see I’m perhaps the most (last) sane man alive.
The last thing I, Ivanto Fretski, need to point out is the terrible accusation leveled against me by Pepperton Windsorfellow, my WASPy former roommate. He made the fetid and unqualified remark against my character that was so far wide of the mark that it stung my soul and cost me many sleepless nights.
He said (and please hold your laughter), that “you’re getting defensive because you’re scared for the fate of the world,” and (get this), quote: “you’re afraid to stick up for what you believe in because you think it’s impossible.”
Ha! HAA! HAHAHAA! I’d never heard such drivel before in my life. If I had a backspace key, I would’ve saved the R-word for him (if there’s anything I’ve learned about the new-media it’s that you can’t get away with saying it twice).
Let’s dissect that reasoning word-by-word.
First: “you’re.” An ugly conjugate of You and Are! Who the hell does he think he’s talking to?
“Getting.” As in, becoming? I’ve always been this way, Pepperton. I hope you read this, and then hang yourself.
“Defensive?” What about my honest expession feels “Defensive” to you, anyway? Is it my frank appraisal of a world that’ll get better, after it’s finished going mad??!?
“Because??” Sloppy! Inarticulate! Stop this assault on my character, before you’ve you have gone too far, Pepperton, old chum!
“You’re!” Again! Buffoon! There’s not a more competent vocabulary in that skull, Pepperton? Does pessimism make you stupid?!!
“SCARED?!??!??!” I never! I never! I can’t believe this! How dare you! Haven’t I admitted the climate crisis may kill me and all the people I love, and people around the world I care deeply about? What about a New World War do you think SCARES me? Are you obtuse? Are you ret*rded? (Damn). Won’t I face the end of my life standing upright with courage? You don’t think I’ll look my killer in the eye? And you think I’m scared! Moron! Preachy, delusional, moron!
I have to abort this dissection of Pepperton’s libel early, because I’m shaking too much to continue, and my hands are busy peeling paper off beer bottles, which have started to accumulate on the floor next to me, where I’m sitting braced up into the corner of two walls in my house.
The thing I can’t get out of my head, though, is the disgusting insinuation that “I think what I believe in isn’t possible.” That’s the total opposite of the case, and there lies my entire argument, prima facie.
Foolish Pepperton, of course what I believe in is possible, and totally imminent! It’s just around the corner in the grand scope of things! Just give it five or six hundred years, and everything I dream of for the world, like justice and respect and fairness and honesty and integrity and egalitarian coexistence will have panned out, just like I’ve said all along! Whether I’m alive to see better days is totally irrelevant, see!
That is why I’m an optimist. Sure it’s a lonely position to have nowadays, but no matter. I’ll hold the torch aflame until my time passes and I can hand it off. Perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to meet earnest young friends in my death-cell in El Salvador, and they can take the torch from me, or we can chuck it out the cell window and be optimistic it flies far into the future for somebody to catch and keep safe.
I know for a fact Pepperton Windsorfellow and Sharpen Stixsen Quaff (truly intolerable pessimists) are silly and unserious enough to call themselves “Realists,” and you can guess what kind of tripe that entails. I won’t bother dignifying it with a definition.
They’re pretentious enough to call themselves “attuned to the moment” and I can’t even begin to imagine what they mean by that. In fact it sounds miserable! Being “attuned to the moment” sounds like nothing more than indulgent escapism! It sounds like an ape playing with shit!
Pepperton, if you’re so attuned to the moment as you claim, then why haven’t you KILLED YOURSELF YET?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!
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Apologies, apologies. I banged my head on the keyboard, and you recall I have no backspace.
No worries, no fretski. There’s time yet for them to become optimists like I am. Join me in this revolution of sentiment! It’s a happy place! Just think: in eight or nine hundred years, things will be just cherry! And isn’t that a nice thought?
Ivanto Fretski
Somerville MA, 2025