Optimism and pessimism

[Valin]

Power Line: Paul Mirengoff

11/12/12

 

Everyone who engages in politics, or who thinks about public policy, wants to believe that history is on their side. For leftists, such a belief comes with the territory. They retain the view of Marx, lifted in part from Hegel, *that history is steadily progressing on a predetermined path towards their vision of the future. That’s why, when the outcome of an election suggests otherwise, left-liberals tend to lash out at both the opposition and the electorate (“What’s the matter with Kansas?”) with more than a little hysteria.

 

By contrast, conservatives traditionally are pessimistic. To be sure, Ronald Reagan provided the movement with a needed coat of optimism. But when elections turn out badly, that coat tends to wash away for a while, leaving some conservatives with a sense that, as much as they wish it were otherwise, history may very well not be on our side. Because this sense is hardly alien to most conservatives — as it is to most leftists — the prevailing mood among some, at least in the short term, is sorrow, not anger.

 

Eventually, however, the optimistic strand of conservatism reasserts itself, insisting on its place as a roughly co-equal partner in the movement. And it is the tension between the two strands — optimistic and pessimistic — that produces an intellectually serious mindset that mature, stable adults typically find more persuasive than the crude, unbridled type of historicism that characterizes left-liberal thinking.

(Snip)

 

 

 

*Although some of us ask what this goal will look like, and how close are we.

[pollyannaish]

I am, by nature, a fairly optimistic person but this election was hard. Not because Romney lost or even that Obama won, but because it symbolizes some significant changes in our electoral process.

 

First, campaigns are no longer focused on bringing us together to win elections. They are focused on microtargeting their own voters to win in crucial counties. That means that vast portions of the country no longer really matter in the campaign. You don't try to appeal to Americans. You don't try to Appeal to Republicans or Democrats. You don't even try to appeal to Ohioans. You try to appeal to Cuyahoga County. That is a problem that really depresses me because we are losing any semblance of a common culture.

 

Second, these things are starting way, way too early. As @Casino67 mentioned earlier today, perhaps by the time we actually have an election people are just so fed up with the whole thing they don't care anymore. Is there any reason these guys work for three months and then start running for the next election? ACK. It becomes wearing and expensive and it just sucks the life out of most of us. At some point you tune out to survive and that's depressing because you almost have to wave the white flag and go home.

 

Finally, we've become so petty thanks to the MSM that anything and everything is taken out of context for the right and covered up for the left. It's an uphill battle to win against both the opponent and the common culture. I'm exhausted by it, and this election really made me realize that we are going to have to do a completely different kind of work to change it. We are on our own thirty yard line and they have the ball. It's not going to be easy, and I'm tired already.