Hope.

[MadHound]

One of the basic human emotions, one of the basic human drives is hope. Hope that times will get better, hope that you will find someone to love, hope is a basic human instinct that keeps people going, looking forward, and preventing despair. Hope is what a lot of our society is built on. Hope is what keeps people fighting and struggling against impossible odds.

Yet hope for this country is being bought and sold, and in the process cheapened. Politicians use hope as a cynical ploy to get elected. Lotteries sell hope, one ticket, one dollar at a time. Whole cities are built on the idea of hope, hope that one will strike it rich, hope that one will win the big bet.

Hope has become a commodity, something to be bought and sold, bartered in the political marketplace, sold at the corner grocery store.

Hope has thus become deformed, twisted, almost beyond recognition in some cases. Mixed with an easy cynicism, as the small farmer buying a scratcher ticket, investing, as he puts it, in the redneck retirement fund. Hope floating, on a riverboat casino populated by people numbly feeding quarters into the slots.

The more hope has become a commodity, the more hope has disappeared as one of basic, underpinning emotions in this country. As hope has disappeared, a cynical despair has taken its place, an emotion that inhibits growth, both on a personal and national level.

What we need is to truly restore hope in this country. Not as a commodity, not as a political ploy, but honestly, truly, restore hope in this country.

It is time to stop selling hope, and bartering hope, but instead, give it away for free.

[bobbolink]

1. And the only way to do that is to actually WORK to make life better for "the least of these".

For example, instead of demolishing low-income housing, get busy building lots and lots of low-income housing, to meet the need.

That would create jobs, and return millions to the local economy. Win/win.

But, people aren't interested in doing what is right.

And that includes "progressives".

You can't have "HOPE" when you are ignored.

[snagglepuss]

2. Well said. I am reminded of the trucker who said words to the effect that he wanted

he and his family raptured because heaven looks better than what they are facing here on Earth.

[MadHound]

3. Currently I'm working at truck stop,

Hoping that a teaching job will open up. It is depressing to watch not just the truckers, but people of all walks of life getting sucked into the whole lottery/scratcher ticket madness, hoping to find some sort of relief to their current problems. They know, I think, deep down that all they're doing is making their problems worse, but they keep purchasing that hope, just to get through another day, another week.

[emilyg]

4. k/r