Until I met one

I looked down on Black people.  Until I met one.
I made fun of Mexicans.  Until I met one.
I was afraid of Russians.  Until I met one.
I laughed at the Polish.  Until I met one.
I thought Iranians were crazy.  Until I met one.
I thought Jews were weird.  Until I met one.
I thought Muslims were scary.  Until I met one.
I really hate your kind of people...
You know what to do.

Are You a Croaker?

Ever since I read the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, I've tried NOT to be a "croaker".  I've given up on trying to predict the future.  Instead, I think that today is the best time in history to be alive and I feel good about the future.  Tough times come and go, but if you sit and wait for the worst, you might miss out on prosperity.

Here's an example from over 200 years ago.  

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia-a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious, for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us. And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking.