Optimism vs Pessimism

"I'm not a pessimist! I'm a realist!" Yeah, right. No. I'm a pessimist. I am more likely to see defeat and failure than situations warrant. In doing image searches for this post, I'm thinking that pessimists are definitely a minority. Which makes sense, since the human race would have died-out long ago if everybody was like me.

Probably related, I also have a fair degree of self-hatred. (I'm also a narcissist, but those things don't necessarily cancel each other out. Especially since my self-hatred is not all encompassing.)

Why am I writing this?

Because I think that it might go some way to explaining the difference between myself and other bloggers/political progressives/activists. And this explanation is, I think, important for larger reasons.

First of all, if everyone listened to me, or thought like me, Jeremy Corbyn would have given up and retired long ago. There'd be no peace movement whatsoever. There'd be no people spreading the news about climate change. There'd be nothing.

All you people continuing to basically ineffectually bang your heads against walls would have given up and there'd be nothing. So kudos to you all.

But here's the thing: You're so ineffectual because you blindly believe it's just all going to work out somehow. "The Democratic/Liberal Party will ONE DAY stop listening to corporate interests and put the people first! They just will!" "The NDP will ONE DAY win power and everything will go swimmingly for us!" "If we keep 'spreading the word' about anthropocentric climate change, ONE DAY our leaders will abandon the fossil-fuels industry and we will totally re-align our economic systems, and it will all work out." "If we keep having bigger and bigger rallies, ONE DAY the power imbalances in our society will reverse themselves and utopia will have arrived."

Just as there really isn't objective justification for my pessimism, there is no justification for your own blind optimism. My negative attitude isn't grounded in the facts, and neither is your positive one. We're, each of us, deluded.

That means that instead of disregarding me, you should instead realize that there's cause for concern. That maybe, while I'm a defeatist, that there are things that exist, factors that need to be accounted for, upon which my pessimism is based and which you, in your optimism, are ignoring.

Finally, with regards to my self-hatred; I think it has given me the ability to abandon unproductive beliefs and opinions. I know that I've been a complete fucking idiot in the past and it makes me cringe. But here's what you won't often see me doing. Sticking to destroyed opinions and appalling politicians and policies. I am no partisan to anything except what I see as the truth.

It doesn't surprise me when your typical right-wing clod sticks by someone like Rob Ford or stephen harper. You know; people who admired Ford's "no-nonsense," "tough on crime" social views, but forgave him for routinely smoking crack with gangsters during his drunken stupors. Or who loved harper because he enthusiastically kept us in wars and they all "supported the troops" by insisting that we keep them wherever it was they were fighting and believed in whatever it was they were supposed to be doing. But when harper betrayed and abused "the troops" when they became injured, they just let it pass in silence.

But lefties and liberals, who I generally find to be, on average, more enlightened and intelligent people, do the same thing, all the intelligence or progressive credentials and supposed empathy can't make them accept that Hillary Clinton is a mass-murderer. Barack Obama is a cynical corporate shill. (And a mass-murderer.) Or that Justin Trudeau is a brazen hypocrite. When this is pointed out to you, you go silent and wait for the uncomfortable moment to pass. When the failure of your one-day protest rallies and marches is pointed out to you, you blather some inanity or look away until I'm gone.

Because you love yourselves more than I do. You believe in your opinions with greater strength because they're YOUR opinions and you are beautiful.

I was going to type more but my right pinky hurts.

Liberal & Loving Its Last Comment

I had three comments to process. Two from Opit. One from LALI. I clicked the box above all the comments to publish them all simultaneously last night. Went to reply this morning. Only Opit's comments were there.

LALI wrote something about the Alma (?) drawings and NDP policy towards Israel-Palestine.

I don't know what the Alma drawings are.

If Niki Ashton wins the leadership, NDP policy will change for the better. If Charlie Angus wins, it'll be the same mewling, stupid, pro-Zionist Imperialism "peace-process" bullshit that it is today.

We're Heading For a Crack-Up

The "Health Care" bill passed by the Repug troglodytes in Congress didn't really phase me. The public outcry against this abomination was so strong that i was certain that even a Repug-dominated Senate would realize its toxicity and come up with something less obviously vile and that in reconciliation, reality would produce something similar to the status-quo.

The status-quo was horrid by the way.

Obama ACA premium increases may have been more important than FBI chief Comey's election announcement late in the election that they were re-opening the Hillary private-server investigation.

But Repugs are insane and the Repug Senate has produced its own bill that is overall just as vile as the one passed by the Repugs in the House. H-u-u-g-e-l-y unpopular. It will strip millions of insurance and condemn tens of thousands to death. No question. Why would they do this?

Because, for one thing, they are drunk with power. They've got both houses of the legislature. They have the executive branch. They have the Supreme Court.  In the psychopathic game of US federal politics, they rule. But, they are forgetting that they too were rejected. When the election was in its last weeks and Trump was offending half the nation and staggering around like the ignoramus/doofus that he is, pundits everywhere were pointing out how lost and unpopular the Republicans were. Getting a renegade like Trump foisted on them as their candidate, ... polling so low everywhere. When Hillary won the election it was going to be a time for those cretins to do their best to imitate what they think the word "reflection" means.

But then Trump and gerrymandering and voter-suppression and the SCOTUS gave them power. And now they're in the driver's seat. And it's the Democrats who are supposed to be reflecting. (So far, they're doing anything but. The stinky Hillary is blaming everyone else for her world-historic failure. But here's the truth about that, based on the numbers: The white working class/deplorable vote, while noteworthy, wasn't the biggest factor in Trump's victory. Most of his votes came from the well-to-do.

And Trump lied big-time about what he'd actually do. And, again, his lies sounded far better than the dullard Hillary's neo-liberal delusions.

Why did they stay home? Because, unlike partisan zombies, they looked at the Democrats' wars, the Democrats' servility to Wall Street, the Democrats' professed love for corporate neo-liberal free trade deals, the corrupt Democratic primaries, and etc., etc., ... and decided to stay home with their opoid addictions, their lay-off and eviction notices, and to work on their suicide notes.

Here's some more evidence of the futility of expecting change from the Democratic Party; despite controlling both houses in the state legislature and occupying the Governor's chair, California Democrats have rejected a promised bill for single-payer health care by claiming it needs more "study." Betraying the voters for corporate interests yet again.

Bah. I don't feel like doing the work to finish this. Here's the rest, AZ-IZ.

It's what liberals do. They believe in capitalism. They believe in the system. 

Macron in France to create more fascists

Trudeau's privatization of infrastructure and his maintenance of the surveillance state

But Repug health care bill, will hurt so many, all but the most stupid Trump supporters will realize what happened.

The centre cannot hold? How's about the whole fucking thing cannot hold. 

Next Post

Thwap art: