Why do we see so little expression of outrage at the abuses of police power around the Republican conventioin? Is it because we've become addicted to hope, that we would rather cling to a sweet dream of the future than find the resolve to face a present that threatens to rob us of the dream?
Watch and weep
When I read accounts of the raids, when I watch the beatings, holding facilities like concentration camps, chain link cages meant to have been kept secret, no water, no toilet facilities, no phone or means of communication, I am reluctantly inclined to agree with Joe Bageant's most pessimistic take
I seldom met an American who grasps the full scope of our aberration as a nation (which requires standing back and simply watching observable and obvious symptoms).
I ask why? What has happened that we turn our heads--and our conversations to less immediate, less disturbing subjects--that we have allowed ourselves to become inured to these outrages, and I wonder if the name of our malady is "Hope."
Hope is not the opposite of despair; resolve is the opposite of despair: to do what must be done, to have the courage to act when there is no hope. Hope is a sweet poison, a comfort that we come to need, to require if we are to be roused to action. Look at the video of those cages, of the police in their flack jackets and drawn weapons breaking into houses in the middle of the night; listen to the attorney listing point by point how far these actions have carried us from a nation of laws, from the principles of the Constitution, and try to tell me about "hope." The word drives me, not to action, but to despair.
Here
And HERE
Hope promises a future we can believe in, a future we want to live in, but there is no future. The future is a dream, that sweet poison again. There is only now, and what we are called to do now, what we must be resolved to do now. If the word, 'hope' references any sort of reality, isn't that what it is? Resolve of the moment. Our willingness to go on knocking on doors, talking to our neighbors, working at the polls, serving our communities--and holding up for all to see those injustices, the outrageous abuses of power taking place outside the Republican convention--even when, especially when it seems we are powerless to change it. "Hope" is the delusion we need to get over. Like Camus' Dr. Rieux, we resolve to serve those in need, not because we have any hope of saving them, but because in doing so resides our only claim to a meaningful existence.
Then again, if hope is real, I think it might look like... THIS