Don't Look on the Bright Side: Pessimism, Not Magical Thinking, Is What Will Save Us | | AlterNet

Precisely what I've been saying for years. Pollyanna (that blindfolded little girl) is killing our country.

"Instinct paralyzes the populace with numb plumped lips, viola hips, deals the finishing touch with its sting.  No matter that rations dwindle in recession and there’s naught but figments left to bring to the picnic. The Players believe they will find the solution.  It’s a cinch, really, they say, Greek chorus style:  Where there’s a will . . . 

Oh, yes, cock your eyebrow; cock it like a gun. Now lower it, lower it. Admit it.  I am not the enemy.  It is not my fault that everything will not be alright.  It is not my fault you have nothing to bring but rhetoric." (from PICNIC  in Exquisite Corpse, Giraffes in Hiding)

Don't Look on the Bright Side: Pessimism, Not Magical Thinking, Is What Will Save Us | | AlterNet

By Marty Kaplan, Smirking Chimp
Posted on June 28, 2011, Printed on June 29, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151454/don%27t_look_on_the_bright_side%3A_pessimism%2C_not_magical_thinking%2C_is_what_will_save_us

It gets worse. If you pay attention to the news, the prospects for the future look grim. The new normal of high unemployment and stagnant wages will likely not turn out to be just a phase. The next generations may indeed do worse than the ones before them. Thanks to the Supreme Court, big money will keep tightening its stranglehold on elections and lawmaking. Financial reform and consumer protection will never survive the onslaught of lobbyists. Reckless bankers will go on making out like bandits, and the public will always be forced to rescue them. The Internet, along with cable and wireless, will be controlled by fewer and more-powerful companies. The world will keep staggering from one economic crisis to another. We will not have the leadership and citizenship we need to kick our dependence on oil. We will not even keep up with the Kardashians.

Add your own items to the list. Whatever global threats scare you -- climate change, the Middle East, loose nukes, pandemics -- and whatever domestic issues haunt you -- failing schools, crumbling infrastructure, rising poverty, obesity -- the odds are that the honesty, discipline, resources and burden-sharing required for a happy ending will not, like Elijah, show up at our door.

Sure, there's some good news around, and there are advances ahead. Gay marriage is legal in New York, and perhaps one day the resistance to it will seem as unfathomable as the opposition to women's suffrage. Technology is growing exponentially, and today's iGizmos will doubtlessly seem like steam engines tomorrow. We will some day actually be gone from Afghanistan. Justices Scalia and Thomas will eventually retire. French fries or salami will turn out to be good for us, at least for a while. Some Wall Street slimeballs will be nailed, some good guys will win elections and some little girl will be rescued from a well.

But it would pretty much take a miracle for our intractable problems to become tractable. Without one, political polarization is not about to give way to kumbaya. Cultural coarsening is not going to reverse course. The middle class will not be resurgent; the gap between rich and poor will not start closing; the plutocrats calling the shots will not cede their power. No warning on its way to us -- no new BP, no next shooting, no future default -- will bring us to our senses about the environment, assault weapons or derivatives for any longer than it takes for the next Casey Anthony or Anthony Weiner comes along. .................. (click on link to access the rest of the article)