This from a pretty bright fellow:
"The optimist is a better reformer than the pessimist; and the man who believes life to be excellent is the man who alters it most. It seems a paradox, yet the reason of it is very plain. The pessimist can be enraged at evil. But only the optimist can be surprised at it. From the reformer is required a simplicity of surprise. He must have the faculty of a violent and virgin astonishment. It is not enough that he should think injustice distressing; he must think injustice absurd, an anomaly in existence, a matter less for tears than for a shattering laughter. On the other hand, the pessimists at the end of the century could hardly curse even the blackest thing; for they could hardly see it against its black and eternal background. Nothing was bad, because everything was bad. Life in prison was infamous — like life anywhere else. The fires of persecution were vile — like the stars. We perpetually find this paradox of a contented discontent. Dr. Johnson takes too sad a view of humanity, but he is also too satisfied a Conservative. Rousseau takes too rosy a view of humanity, but he causes a revolution. Swift is angry, but a Tory. Shelley is happy, and a rebel. Dickens, the optimist, satirizes the Fleet, and the Fleet is gone. Gissing, the pessimist, satirizes Suburbia, and Suburbia remains."
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G.K. Chesterton, CHARLES DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY, at 6-7 (Note that "the Fleet" above was England's debtor's prison; Rousseau, a philosphic instigator of the French Revolution; Dr. Johnson is Samuel Johnson, a celebrated 18th Century English writer, George Gissing another English writer.). Makes sense. The optimist thinks he or she can accomplish something; the pessimist not only believes that he or she cannot accomplish something, but believes that nobody can. Pessimism can motivate you to think, but only optimism can motivate you to do.
Leave it to G.K. Chesterton to explain something so obvious and simple that I had missed it for fifty years. The true pessimist never offers an option, as no option will ever work or is good enough. A clever pessimist may offer something like, for example, the Public Option, which was never really an option. The disingenuous Republican pessimist might suggest that, yes, there's a problem with health care, and once we dismantle ObamaCare, we'll get right on it. What startles me is how illogical a pessimist can be.
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The pessimist can shine his or her dark light on ObamaCare but the same light never shines on his or her so-called reasonable alternative. That's if they have one. How would a pessimist really feel about the likelihood that Republicans get something passed that would adequately take the place of ObamaCare? How would a pessimist really feel, back in 2009, about the likelihood of enacting the Public Option in that House and Senate?
ObamaCare -- How many times did you hear from the top of the pincer movement: It will never pass? It will be repealed? It's unconstitutional? How many times from the bottom jaws of the pincer movement did you hear that it was an abomination and not single payer? Instead, President Obama covered millions with insurance or Medicaid. It was Republican Governors, the real pessimists, who refused to expand Medicaid and therefore sentenced thousands of their constituents to die. Doesn't that startle you? The sheer despicability?
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I would also add that pessimism is the worldview of a sleep-deprived two-year old. What is their favorite word? They use it because they fear change. They use it to get attention. They use it because it is a small word that provides explosive results. (The earnings-to-investment ratio of that word is unparalleled.) They use it because it is past their bedtime. They use it because they only know a binary response (Yes/No) and have not learned about negotiation. They use it because they fear something new (which is slightly different than fear of change). They never use it to produce a result other than the status quo.
That doesn't mean optimists never use the word "no." On the contrary, they would need use it almost as much as the pessimist; but their use would be along these lines: "No, I think that's wrong. Wouldn't it be better to do it this way...."
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What Chesterton said reminds me of what another interesting (though more pessimistic) author wrote: "[W]hat are called advanced ideas are really in great part but the latest fashion in definition--a more accurate expression, by words in logy and ism, of sensations which men and women have vaguely grasped for centuries." -- Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles We call it obstructionism today, but it was pessimism then. Its practioners are obstructionists and haters and conservatives and Tories today, and they were obstructionists and haters and conservatives and Tories back then. Still, we have somehow managed to keep making progress.
We learn from our mistakes and take up from there. I learned a valuable GOTV lesson about registration. When somebody told me they were not likely to vote--or they hedged in that way that made me feel they were unlikely to vote--it was most frequently a voter registration issue. These are folks who need to vote! A tough lesson for me, but one I plan to put to good use in the future. For, you see, I am an optimist. My eyes are filled with tears, but my lips with laughter and my heart with hope.
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