It's hope, finally, that makes us sell out

We get so downtrodden we'll do anything

for a chance at that happy dreamed-of outcome:

Find substance in the airiest speeches,

comfort in the slightest promises

It's the best weapon of mass distraction

Hope Is for Suckers

Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man. - Friedrich Nietzsche

We can't give up hope, I'm often told. Keep hope alive, the saying goes. If we lose hope, nothing will ever change...or so they believe. Well, I'm here to say: Fuck hope.

We live on a planet brimming with hope yet that same planet is under perpetual assault...and the hopers are losing.

The corporations raping our eco-systems don't hope they can steal more land, exploit it, poison it, and make boatloads of cash. They make a plan and make it happen...damn the torpedoes. (You might even call it "direct action.")

Monsanto doesn't put its faith in candlelight vigils or humans standing in the shape of a peace sign. They get busy putting their people into positions of power, writing legislation, and bullying and smashing anyone opposed to their insane agenda.

General Motors doesn't reserve its opinions for government sanctioned "free speech zones." The television, Internet, magazines, movies, songs, radio, etc. are all inundated with GM's taxpayer-subsidized propaganda...just as the planet is inundated with GM's output.

McDonald's doesn't waste time hoping things will go its way when its days are chock filled with brainwashing, killing, poisoning, destroying...and counting its profits. Hope never enters into the equation.

"Hope is a bad thing," sez Henry Miller. "It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap, I should say."

Author Derrick Jensen explains the impotency of hope as good as anyone:

"I'm not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don't hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them.

"On the other hand, I do hope that the next time I get on a plane, it doesn't crash. To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it. Many people say they hope the dominant culture stops destroying the world.

"By saying that, they've assumed that the destruction will continue, at least in the short term, and they've stepped away from their own ability to participate in stopping it."

If Jensen makes it sound an awful lot like religion, well, for most folks, the verb "hope" is virtually synonymous with "pray," while "hope" the noun is often interchangeable with "faith."

Hope is for suckers.

How about some good old-fashioned anger, rage, and passion? (Che sez: "If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.")

Let's forget hope and aim for vision, clarity, strategy, courage, and finally: some goddamned results. "Creativity comes from trust," sez Rita Mae Brown. "Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work" (as they say in South Florida: bingo).

At its worst, hope is a dangerous cop-out. At best, it's a frivolous idea. But even so, as Henry Miller sez: "Ideas have to be wedded to action."

Wedded, huh? Repeat after me: "I do."

Obama's "All You Need Is Hope" Bullshit

If there was a nickel for every 'progressive' I've pissed off with the expression of my views, I would not be rifling pay phones for change.

This suits me fine, as do dimes and half-dollars. I didn't start writing in hope that everyone would agree with me all the time; anybody that did agree with me all the time would have to be some kind of crank.

Back in 2003, when I first stuck my head above the turret, ninety-nine out of a hundred of my irate readers were right-wingers; now they're all liberals.

I guess this is because, what with Obamania and all that, folks on the 'Left' think their day has finally come.

On that, we agree. I just happen to think it's a different day. Maybe (certainly) I'm just a big party pooper, but in the name of Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all, knock off acting like 'hope' is something that has energy and can perform work. It doesn't and it can't.

It's just an emotion. We're talking about an abstract noun. Hope is just an affective meaning we apply to future events, of no more substance than amusement, irritation or kindness to strangers.

It's a feeling, an idea, nothing more. The first thing the 'Left' in this country has to do is abandon hope. Then maybe we can get something done.

Hope is futile. Action is what matters. Deeds, not words. Don't hope, but plan. And then act upon your plan. Make it into motion. Hope is just another word for 'wish.' Obama believers hope upon a cloud.

The problem is liberal/progressive types have been living without the slightest whiff of opportunity to make fuck-all happen in this country for so long that:

1) they're surviving entirely on wishful thinking.

2) they're forming a circular firing squad.

Look, people, I would love it if Obama or Clinton or Zippy the Pinhead for that matter won the presidency and announced they were going to remove human rights from corporate entities.

Ensure all Americans got free healthcare, pull our military out of Iraq within the fortnight.

Instead of spending 60% of our red ink on war, we would spend it on the invention of a substance that not only cured cancer and reversed global warming, but was chock full of the good kind of cholesterol.

I'd love that. But it's not going to happen, and if you're hoping one of these candidates is a stealth socialist, this would be a good time to start sniffing the glue again.

It's hope, finally, that makes us sell out. We get so downtrodden we'll do anything for a chance at that happy dreamed-of outcome: find substance in the airiest speeches, comfort in the slightest promises.

Hope springs eternal. That's what makes it such a useful tool of the elites in power. It's the best weapon of mass distraction.

For every promise they make, there's an "if":

If you get me elected, if circumstances are favorable, then it will be done. The "if" is just a wish in disguise, and it almost never comes true.

Will nothing bring the believers down? Fuck all this Obama's-gonna-save-us zeitgeist that has taken over the left.

He's not a leftist. He's not going to change anything. Yet because he SAYS "change", they fall for him like he's the second coming. It is so frustrating.

I swear these people believe that the minute he takes office, the war will end, we'll all get a six figure job and the world itself will take on that eden-like buena vista vision glow of perfection.

Newsflash folks, this country, let alone the world, will require change so deep to get to that place, no politician can enact...and he/she can't do it on his own.

It will require sacrifice on levels that most tree-hugging lefties aren't willing to do. Hell, this generation of laissez-faire lefties isn't even willing to protest something like America's endless warmongering.

As the owner of the mining operation in Clint Eastwood's "Pale Rider" observed:

"A preacher? That'll give 'em hope!"