Some musings on "hope"

[PurityOfEssence]

Yes, he may very well wind up being our standard-bearer, and if so, it would be best if support for him can also be kindled with rationality and other emotions than just hope.

Some of the connotations of this word aren't the greatest, and they'll rustle about and echo the more we have the word drummed into our heads like the unstoppable emotional panacae that it isn't.

For one thing, there's something very wistful about the word: it's yearning or projecting for some external force to grant one one's desires. It's like praying. It's a wish. It's a dream. It's essentially passive: desiring something that will somehow come to pass.

There's a strong flavor of willing submission to greater forces that can grant us something if we're just good enough, and this dovetails quite well with the religious flavor of the movement and the actual religion that's continually being used.

It plays to our desires for an orderly and good world, but there's an odd tinge of powerlessness to it. It's only active in the sense that it can spark action, but it's not the action that rings through the repetition, it's the longing for it. There's something rather cloying about all that, and the harsh rebukes to dissent that come from those lost in the bliss show the danger of an emotional bender, no matter how noble the cause.

Life and politics can be awfully prosaic and pedestrian, and poetic dancing can wear thin in the face of that.

It's a condiment or a spice, not a main course.

Just a thought or two...

[NastyRiffraff]

1. I have nothing against "Hope;" in fact I think it's an important component..

IF it's backed by something....a plan, action, hard work. I can sit around and hope that I get a job (unemployed right now), or I can actually look for one, send out resumes, arrange and prepare for interviews, and then, and only then, hope that I get the job of my dreams.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

4. Hillary r/e Kosovo: "I urged him to bomb."

Tomorrow's Neocon Today
Why Clinton II wouldn't offer much change from Bush II

Radley Balko | October 19, 2007

... In fact, the L.A. Times reported last week that Clinton has refused to commit even to pulling U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, which, if elected, would be the end of her first term. TV journalist Ted Koppel recently told NPR that Clinton has admitted the U.S. would still have troops in Iraq at the end of her second term.

The 1990s, remember, weren't exactly a decade of peace. Bill Clinton ordered more U.S. military interventions than any other post-WWII administration, and there's no reason to think any of them were over Hillary's protestations. She supported the U.S. military campaigns in Haiti, Kosovo, and Bosnia. She once boasted that as the tension in Kosovo mounted,

she called her husband from her trip to Africa and, "I urged him to bomb."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/123103.html

[PurityOfEssence]

6. She'll be more warlike to defuse "womanliness" slurs; He will to dispel rumors of being Muslim

Make no mistake about it, these are a couple of "compensation" candidates.

More than "having something to prove" they both will be encumbered with many "things to disprove".

[Skip Intro]

2. You didn't mention Obama's name once in your post. Just "he."

Your hope scares me.

[NMMNG]

3. A hearty K&R

Hope is a good thing, but one cannot live on it. You can't use it to pay your rent or fill your belly. And they don't take it at the grocery store checkout either.

[Sapphocrat]

5. My God, PoE, you hit it in a way I could only "hope" to.

Powerlessness... Cloying... Prosaic...

"...and the harsh rebukes to dissent that come from those lost in the bliss show the danger of an emotional bender, no matter how noble the cause."

OMG, you nailed it to the floor. It kills me that only a tiny percentage will actually hear what you're saying -- or understand it.

I do. It won't make a bit of difference from this irrelevant old wash-out, but I do.

[PurityOfEssence]

7. Thanks. It also rankles the American sense of individualism

In the most jaundiced way of looking at it, hope, is a hand-wringing and somewhat forlorn desire for salvation; this flies in the face of the American sense of the steadfast individual. The concept of the lone cowboy on the prairie is a blessing and a curse: it glorifies personal responsibility and pioneering spirit, but it also dismisses others and rewards selfishness. Still, it's part of our collective self-identity, and it is in stark contrast to the dewy-eyed longing for somebody else to come along and save us.

It's a problem that believers often have: they just can't see why others don't get the same fulfillment they do, and they just bring up the volume of the joy. The problem is that this very frenzy and giddiness is precisely what turns many of their would-be allies off cold.

If he's the nominee, this can be a very dangerous thing.

I'm off to work now, so won't be able to thread-tend for the next 14 hours or so, but thanks for the kind words; it's nice to know you're out there.