Realism-based optimism
Well, wasn't yesterday a hell of a day?
To recap:
- Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden
- Rose Twitter lost its shit
- The Wisconsin GOP gambled that people wouldn't go out to vote, and instead lost a seat on the state Supreme Court
- Donald Trump had a press conference which was such a pity party that the normally supine White House Press Corps ate his lunch
- Separately, the Pacific Coast states and the Northeastern states formed compacts as to how to proceed to reopen their economies, scuppering any illusions that Trump may have had that he could do so by executive fiat.
I will have more on the state compacts tomorrow and what they may mean for our federal republic. But today I want to focus on something else.
We had a pretty good day, no? Things went more right than wrong, no? And this is what I want to talk about.
As a Latino, as a man with a disability, I've always tried to look on, as the Monty Python boys said, the bright side of life.
This is also as a result of my being the son of immigrants. One of the many things my parents taught me was: Don't whine. Don't blame someone else for your problems. No, life isn't fair, but you can rise above it. You can do whatever you set your mind to doing. It won't be easy, there will be pain, but you can do it.
In a comment yesterday, I called myself a "realistic optimist". What does this mean?
This doesn't mean that I'm a Polly Anna. This doesn't mean that I live through life with rose-tinted glasses.
I know all too well the world's vicissitudes. Its unfairness. Its lowering of the low and raising of the high.
Monday's piece was about where we go from here. And my good friend Rustbelt_Dem said that he didn't see anything improving, and quite rightly, listing a litany of events when "everything will be different", but, seemingly, nothing was.
The Great Depression was supposed to change everything, but it didn't.
The Second World War was supposed to change everything, but it didn't.
9/11, the Great Recession: the same.
However, I will posit that all these events did change everything, just not on the turn of a dime.
The Great Depression changed how labor and capital interacted. Even to this day in our neo-liberal age, they maintain a wary equilibrium.
The struggle for freedom of World War II didn't free Black people in the South and around the country. But it did lay the foundations for that emancipation, as well as that of Latinos, women, gays, and other disenfranchised people.
9/11 and the Great Recession are too recent, but both events have changed the discourse in which we engage, a discourse about military power and financial power. And both events occurred in a world less connected than we are now.
The Great Plague, and its attendant disruptions, occurring as they are in our hyper-connected world, will not pass in the night. We have capitalist states taking on socialist-sounding policies unimaginable even during the Great Recession. We have states valuing the lives and health of their citizens above pecuniary matters.
You can't have a thriving economy if the workers don't know if they'll live or die. That's the crux of any bromides of "OPEN UP AMERICA". People value their lives. And woe betide any politician who places the health Wall Street above the health of his constituents.
My life has been one of reality-based optimism.
I've had struggles. I've suffered pain. But in this realism, I've sussed out hope. I've sussed out that things will get better, because they have. It's never been an easy road, nor a straight one. But as Dr. King said, the arc of moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. His words are my lodestar. This hope, that we do in fact progress, through fits and starts, is what keeps me going. It's what's kept humanity going through thousands of years. Our ancestors weren't barbarians. They craved the same things we did. We are fortunate enough that we live in an age where our voices aren't silent, where we can move mountains.
I would never ask you to believe in me. I'm just a guy. But believe in yourselves. Believe in your own power. It's that power which the tyrants and autocrats fear. The power of people who no longer fear them, or fear each other. My optimism is based on realism, because the course of human history has been one of long, slow betterment.
Many have suffered and died to give us the opportunity we have right now, this minute, this instance. We cannot betray their sacrifice.