January 2010

That damn Hope again

“Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul.” 
— Emily Dickinson

In the zillion years that I’ve been writing this column, I’ve probably written about the sin of Hope at least fifty billion times.  Why does “the thing with feathers” keep popping up as a Sin of the Month?  I guess it’s because I’m one of those people who can’t help looking on the bright side of things, i.e., hoping, no matter how bad things get.  Which technically makes me an idiot.

For example, until quite recently, I was pretty good at taking anything President Obama did and putting a positive, hopeful spin on it.  Why?  Because I liked him.  Why did I like him?  It wasn’t just the fact that he’s cute.  There were people who thought George W. Bush was cute, though I didn’t, and I think it’s safe to say that some of our better presidents were not the least bit attractive (no offense, Mr. Lincoln).

It was also not just because, as I’ve pointed out umpteen gazillion times, President Obama went to the same college I did (for his first two years, anyway) and lived in Hyde Park, the neighborhood in Chicago I grew up in.  It’s true that our semi-shared background has influenced me: I thought having those things in common helped me understand where he was coming from.  The traditional Hyde Parker is a lot like the traditional Takoma Parker, i.e., a left-leaning liberal type—or (like former Hyde Parkers Paul Wolfowitz, David Brooks, and Leo Strauss) not.

I guess I assumed that on some level, Obama was a true-blue Hyde Park liberal—why else would he have chosen to live there?  So when he did things like deciding to send more troops to Afghanistan, I made the assumption that it was all part of his progressive master plan: he’s making some concessions to the right in order to then move left.  Brilliant!

Similarly, with health care, I was certain that in his heart, he was committed to equal access to high-quality health care for everyone.  After all, his doctor, who is also my mother’s doctor and a Hyde Parker of the old school, has spoken publicly in favor of single payer.  Why would Obama have gone to that particular neighborhood doctor (when the fancy University of Chicago system was available to him) unless he had some kind of fundamental sympathy with his views?

But recently, Obama’s positions on health care have suggested that if he does harbor some secret commitment to a “public option” (he never really did voice support for “single-payer”), it’s well hidden.

This is where that damn hope came in.  I kept hoping that just as he did during the campaign, Obama would suddenly bust out with some kind of inspiring speech that would silence all opposition and cause everyone to rally round him.

But finally, even I have had to admit that although President Obama seems to be busy every day doing all kinds of small things that will no doubt improve the quality of life in incalculable ways, in terms of the grand gestures that we will need if we’re going to stop the ongoing handbasket-bound plunge of our society toward hell, he has thus far fallen short.  In fact—okay, I admit it: I think he’s a bit of a disappointment so far.  Not because he’s not accomplishing anything—I think he is—but because he has not done enough to prevent the crazy loudmouthed minority that constitutes today’s right wing from strangling our national discourse. Where are the soaring rhetoric and passion of the campaign trail?  Nowadays on TV, he looks tired and unhappy, like he’s a hair’s breadth away from saying, screw you people, I’m outa here.  If he does that, I don’t blame him, but in any case, he’s not exactly inspiring much hope these days except, perhaps, on the part of Republicans who hope to replicate 1994 in the 2010 elections.

In general, as we move into this new decade, it’s hard to be hopeful.  The 00s, or the Aughts, or whatever they were called (what kind of crappy decade doesn’t have a name?), sucked, from the moment when the Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush president to the present, as a watered-down health care bill is slithering through Congress that will apparently obligate everyone to buy health insurance from the very bastards who have crippled our health-care system in the first place.  How will people who already can’t afford health insurance pay for that?  Who knows—let’s just hope they can.

The election of our first African American—and first Hyde Park—president was the one shining moment of an otherwise unremitting ten-year slough of despond.  The fate of the health care bill serves as a perfect coda to a decade in which corporations in pursuit of profits stopped bothering to pretend they weren’t controlling our political processes.  With their billions of lobbying dollars pouring into D.C., the insurance companies, the banks, big pharma, and other multinational conglomerates are the only constituents whose feelings our political system seems to give a rat’s ass about.

Yes, as we leave the Aughts, there are definitely plenty of things to make us feel hopeless.  The economy; the wars; the fact that most Americans are one serious illness away from financial ruin; the looming environmental disasters; the poisonous climate of our national discourse; the list goes on ad infinitum.  As we enter the new decade (which also ominously lacks a name.  The Teens?), the world is a horrible mess, and everyone is pissed at Obama.  (At least the Right and the Left have come together on something).

What is there to be hopeful about?  Okay, you got me.  Not much.  Realistically, even if someone miraculously solves some of our national problems, such as joblessness and lack of access to health care, or our international ones, i.e., all those wars, it’s still probably too late to reverse the damage we’ve done to the environment—thanks, but no thanks, Copenhagen—and unless we act now, which isn’t going to happen, our descendants, if we have any, will have to live on Mars.

How can we be hopeful?  As Emily Dickinson suggests in her poem, the thing with feathers, though fragile and birdlike, is an indefatigable force whose song is heard in the “chilliest land” and “on the strangest sea.”  Humans are wired for hope—maybe that’s why we don’t solve these huge problems, because they’re so enormous that we can’t comprehend them, so we just go on hoping that things will magically get better somehow.  Which technically makes us idiots.

As we move into the new decade, whatever it’s called, it looks like we are going to have to find a way to do something more than just hope.              Maybe we pinned all our hopes on Obama, and maybe he is letting us down so far—but we’ve still got the energy, idealism, and grass-roots zeal that got him elected.  Let’s stop hoping and get back to work.

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