Hope springs eternal...

[readmoreoften]

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest"
--Alexander Pope

For those of you who haven't figured it out: "Man never is but always To be blest" means that hope is the eternal deferment of our dreams, not their realization. Hope is a terrifying and empty deferment. Hope is the empty feeling you have when you have not, when you suspect the goal is far off. My dog hopes I will give him a treat. I hope I will win the lottery someday. Hope is crossing ones' fingers. Hope is begging for mercy.

Why waste time hoping and begging? Why not demand justice be done and take direct action to make it happen.

But we've been notified recently that there is no injustice to be remedied, all that has been done wrong in the past near-decade has been a good-natured but misguided mistake: our enemies are not our enemies but simply friends we have lost along the way. If this is the case, then why do our enemies still act like enemies? Why do they despise us and thwart us? Why do they thwart our attempts to build a more just society?

What will change when those who promise hope come to power if they deny the culpable of those who have and who continue to perpetrate injustice? More hoping? More begging? Hoping and begging for what? Why can't we just speak frankly if our enemies are so amenable to suggestion? Why would we pretend that we are not who we are in order to "win" them, then what? Stick it to them? Tell them we lied? That we really do believe in economic justice? What we really do believe in equality for all and a secular society? Or is that we no longer believe in these things and that's why we no longer perceive a real distinction between the enemy and us?

If there are enemies of equality and justice, then we are duty-bound to fight against them or win them to our side, not by appeasement but by conviction. If there are no enemies, then we are denying that injustices (and atrocities) have been committed at all--or we minimize them as mere mistakes in order to feel good about our fellow voters and politicians.

But what's to "hope" for if we choose a lazy, craven congeniality--Petainism--over standing and fighting based on principles of justice for those destroyed by the current system: the poor, the working class, the middle class, and all those collaterally damaged during this past 8 years of total depravity? Why is it so taboo to hold them accountable? Is it because then we must hold ourselves accountable for allowing them to commit atrocities? Good, well then let's stop coddling them and colluding with them and let's make some demands that will lead to real changes, not just perpetual "hope".

Hope without justice is an illusion. Optimism isn't a virtue. In fact it implies that one is looking at the bright side of a bad situation. Why not just change the situation? Why is there a taboo on real action if there are no real enemies standing in our way?