The Hope Diet: Would the Tea Party fall for this?

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http://www.salon.com/2014/03/23/the_hope_diet_would_the_tea_party_fall_for_this/

It is a peculiar coincidence that the last two Democratic presidents, men unusually anxious to compromise and capitulate, have also chosen to market themselves as homegrown philosophers. More curious still, both have presented their hard-won insights in the great American tradition of positive thinking. Like so many aphorists-on-the-make before them, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama entered the marketplace of ideas selling tidy homilies on the very same concept: Hope.

Then again, perhaps there is something more to all this than coincidence. Maybe this high-minded creed and these two presidents’ fecklessness actually complement and explain one another. Maybe “hope” is the ideal philosophical doctrine for a party determined to dump its old constituents and chart a brave new course in a marketized world. As a slogan, “hope” is vague and ethereal—as opposed to former, more earthly Democratic concepts like “shared prosperity” and “equal rights for all”—but perhaps that is what makes it the consummate brand identity for a party that so often triangulates away the concerns of its rank and file.

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“Hope” is a noble word, one of the three so-called theological virtues mentioned in the Apostle Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. It has a very particular meaning for Christians, who use “hope” to describe their expectation of salvation. Once upon a time it meant something similar for Marxists, too, who counted on the swift arrival of a more earthly rapture. “The driving force of revolution is—hope,” says one character to another in André Malraux’s 1937 iconic novel of the Spanish Civil War, ”Man’s Hope.”

What Democrats mean by the word is not quite so world-transforming. To them it is more of a personal attribute. The way Bill Clinton talked about “hope” in 1992 it was a fairly simple deal: He had it, the other guy didn’t. America under George Bush Senior was suffering a sort of hope drought, and if he, Bill Clinton, were to become president, hope would be restored to the parched fields of the Republic. The election, he said in a campaign video, was basically a hope referendum; it “presents America with a very stark choice: a choice between hope and fear.” In a video called “The Man From Hope” (Clinton was born in Hope, Ark.), which was shown at the Democratic convention, the candidate recited a hope list: He hoped he could improve himself every day, he hoped the nation would achieve togetherness, and finally he confided his hope that every American would come to love the children of America. Perhaps recognizing how vacuous all this must have sounded, Clinton proceeded to the inevitable corollary of all Democratic hope-talk: that these run-of-the-mill wishes were in fact a little bit bold. “I still believe these things are possible,” he intoned. “I still believe in the promise of America. And I still believe in a place called Hope.”

[CJCRANE]

1. Hope is a journey

not a destination.

Some us feel it's worth perservering on that journey.