Hope is the Key

When I stop to think about it sometimes it seems like this country is in the grip of so many serious problems that it has to succumb to them. I mean, think about it. We're running out of our primary energy source and have made scant progress toward replacing it. In the meantime, this dynamic is changing the planet's climate in extremely pernicious ways. A crash program could solve the problem, but do we have the money for that?

That's hard to envision when we are losing our jobs to places with whom we can't begin to compete on wages, when we buy hundreds of billions more from abroad than we sell there, and when we owe so much to other nations and ourselves that it seems a far fetched notion that we will ever be able to pay it all off. Our entire financial structure apparently totters at the edge of the abyss thanks to following the siren songs of crackpot or self-serving theorists, and we're bogged down in two wars we already can't afford while nut jobs are clamoring to get us involved in more.

As the world becomes more technological and education is ever more vital to retain opportunity and prosperity, many among us seem to be gravitating to an incredibly self-destructive anti-intellectualism. The glorification of tough-but-stupid is a sure prescription for becoming a loser, whether individually or for society as a whole. How can you combat an attitude like that?

From crumbling infrastructure to crumbling families, from the rise of health care costs to the rise of addictions, from essential services that all demand but few seem willing to pay for to the burgeoning prisons, there are so many overwhelming issues in front of us. To tackle a couple of them would be a tall order, yet they are all serious and demand attention. Not to solve any one of them seemingly invites calamity.

I suppose that is where you need hope. Without that you cannot even summon the energy to begin. I fear we are near the point where people throw up their hands and retreat into their shells. The moves toward the balkanization of American society are the mileposts on the road to second or third-world status. They are marked by such phenomena as gated communities, the growth of private and home schools, toll roads, the flat tax movement, the anti tax movement, mercenary military forces, survivalists, left-behinders and libertarians. What they all share in common is a loss of faith in the commons itself, the fear that society is beyond redemption and the only response is to build walls and hide behind them.

That is where we stood in the depths of the Great Depression in 1933, of course. Then as now, there was a yearning to hope or believe, but a protective cynicism shielded us from our vulnerability. At that time reassurance was given in the form of a memorable phrase, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The attitude that sentence engendered and the hope it inspired, or maybe the conviction that just maybe here was someone who truly cared and would genuinely try, inspired a recovery that saved first the nation and then the world.

At some level we, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that time, crave that same glimmer, the idea that perhaps if only someone would stand above business as usual in the national interest we might dare to hope once more. And given hope and a way forward, we might be willing to sacrifice a little, we might be willing to act and to do our parts. That is why it is all the more important at this time to avoid the cynicism of division, of drawing lines, of trivial distraction in the service of inflated ambition. Therein lies the way downward and backward into the pit.

The times are demanding but the hunger is great. If we can allow ourselves to hope once more we will again achieve great things. This is our heritage and our record.