Keeping Hope Alive
Things look pretty bleak these days. But giving in to despair isn't the answer, either personally or politically.
After a hiatus for the holidays and for my own mental health, I had begun writing this post articulating some reasons to be hopeful as we started a new year. Those reasons still stand. But before I had finished, the Mar-a-Lago Menace had ordered an attack on Venezuela and, very shortly thereafter, we’ve witnessed the horrific murder of a peaceful protester by an ICE agent.
At first, I thought it best to let the dust settle before posting anything that had even a whiff of optimism. But the more I think about it, we could all use a dose of optimism right now. The current dust might settle, but in this administration, there will always be more dust. So here’s the post I originally intended — with a few updates for timeliness.
In 1988, when Jesse Jackson delivered his speech to the Democratic National Convention, the nation had survived eight years of the Reagan presidency:
The Iran-Contra scandal had rocked the nation and, aside from a random metaphorical slap on the hand here and there, there had been no consequences.
The AIDS epidemic was in full bloom, and the Reagan administration’s response for several years was nothing more than making cruel jokes at press briefings, with Reagan himself only acknowledging the epidemic publicly years later, after thousands had died of the disease.
At Reagan’s direction, the U.S. military invaded the island of Grenada, a sovereign nation, with no authorization from Congress. Margaret Thatcher may have publicly applauded the invasion of Grenada after the fact, but didn’t appreciate the fact that Reagan had invaded a former colony and Commonwealth nation without consulting her.
HUD (the Department of Housing and Urban Development) was scandal plagued for Reagan’s entire presidency; the most heinous of those HUD scandals was a complex mortgage co-insurance scheme that left taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars worth of private debt.
So when Jackson repeated “Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive!” as his closing line to that speech, it was in the face of some pretty objectionable stuff. In fact, those words would have seemed pretty empty if there hadn’t been objectionable stuff going on.
Jackson’s optimism in the fact of darkness wasn’t denial of that darkness; rather it was defiance of that darkness, a determination to keep the arc of history bending toward justice.
Without knowing it, Jesse Jackson was modeling behavior and attitude for us almost four decades later, in a time when so many have lost their optimism.
While politically and socially we’re in the throes of the darkest times of most of our lifetimes, I’m making a conscious effort not to be sucked down into the vortex of gloom and inaction. I’ve been attempting to compile a list of things that keep some positive thoughts in the mix:
This isn’t permanent. The situation the nation is in cannot last forever. It is unsustainable. Eventually, dictators always fall. Will the world be changed as a result of Trump’s reign? Of course. We’re not going to return to the Obama years any more than the MAGA folks were ever going to force the country to return to whatever idealized whitewashed (accent on “white”) version of the United States they have been attempting to impose on us. It will be a new version of the United States, and that gives us all the more reason to stay sane and focused on the opportunity to make this a more perfect union.
Donald Trump is failing and flailing. His health is failing, his mental acuity is failing, and his administration is failing. He’s regularly falling asleep in public. He has gone missing for days at a stretch. His hands are bruised from multiple infusions of … something. His gait is unsteady. Everything his inner circle is doing to try to control his public image cannot disguise his deterioration. He has been posting dozens and sometimes hundreds of posts on his social media site at all hours of the day and night. He is not governing so much as he is irrationally barking out orders, creating new and more extreme distractions, and changing course from one hour to the next.
Trump’s poll numbers continue to plummet. Across the board, his approval ratings — the “numbers” he is so obsessed with — are the worst they have been during his entire time in political life. Additionally, they continue to decline. His ability to bamboozle his way out of unpopularity seems to be waning, with fewer and fewer people falling for his cons.
There is no viable successor to Trump. Oh, there will be another person attempting to fill his shoes. But there’s truly no one in the Republican pipeline — not J.D. Vance, not Marco Rubio, not Hegseth or Bondi or any of the other miscreants in his inner circle — who can command the media the way Trump has done. I use the word “command” advisedly, because he’s really just groomed our mainstream media to bend to his will to avoid reprisals. We may end up with a Vance presidency, but he hasn’t an ounce of charisma or originality or decency. Should he ascend, it will be short-lived.
Democrats have a deep bench. The longer the Trump regime goes on and the more extreme it becomes, the more Democratic alternatives seem to be rising to the surface — folks who are able to embody the sentiments of the majority of Americans, folks who will stay focused on the actual needs of the American people.
The Epstein files are not going away. There is critical mass among the electorate to provide actual transparency, not pre-digested redacted faux transparency. Politicians of all political stripes have demanded accountability because they know their own political futures are at risk if this issue is not fully addressed. Voters seem to be savvy enough to see through the drip-drip-drip approach that Trump and Bondi have pretended to release the files — an approach that only creates more suspicion and more guilty behavior.
The midterm elections look promising for Democrats. A number of Republicans have announced their departure due, in part at least, to the handwriting on the wall that they will likely no longer be in power. Off-year elections and special elections have swung strongly in favor of Democrats. Even in deep red districts that have been retained by a Republican, margins have been dramatically narrowed. Ideally, Democrats might take back both the House and the Senate. But even if only one of the chambers of Congress is restored to Democratic control, there is an opportunity to staunch the bleeding.
If you’re looking for inspiration for how to stay optimistic in the face of terrible times, look no further than the people of Ukraine. I can’t help but thinking of them huddled in train tunnels during attacks, only to emerge more defiant, more determined than ever to live their normal lives in spite of the atrocities being foisted upon them.
Stay strong. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
If you have additions to this list, please leave them in the comments.