THE PROBLEM WITH OPTIMISM

Several days of chewing and gnashing and gnawing on the results of last week’s midterm election -- seen by some as some sort of conclusive repudiation, by the voting public, of the Bush Crime Family and its foul agenda -- have left an undecipherable but clearly unpleasant taste in my mouth. Now, straightforward convention insists that the outcome of Tuesday’s dog and pony show is indisputably positive, that the beginning of the end of the Neo-Con terror rampage is at hand, that the poisonous stink off-gassing from the maggot-riddled corpse of Republican corruption has finally been blown away by a mighty blast of angry electoral wind. In short, the long-sought glimmer of light at the end of the murky tunnel of despair, a bleak tube that stretches back at least to November 2000, has unexpectedly switched itself on, as if by magic. We can all start breathing easy, happy days are here again, all is right with the world ...

Excuse me, but I’m having a hard time swallowing any of this sloppy-grin claptrap.

The problem with optimism is that it almost always leaves your existential gonads wide open to an eventual karmic stomping, in a manner of speaking. This is certainly the case as far as modern American politics is concerned, what with its exploitative, parasitical relationship with the population at large. Even under the most ideal circumstances, the organized crime syndicate otherwise known as the US political machine -- including the legions of amoral technocrats, corporate chain-yankers, and media enablers that keep it functioning, regardless of official political party affiliation -- has to be eyeballed with the utmost suspicion. In fact, an effective argument could be made that the distrust and disbelief in politicians and the institutions they serve have to be more pronounced when the so-called “good guys” suddenly find themselves in charge. Congressional Republicans have long been exposed as the hypocritical lying murdering scum that they are; the Democrats, at least as far as being in a leadership position is concerned, are a wild-card at best -- there’s no telling if they’ll be able, or even willing, to do what we all know must be done to ratchet this tired old country back from the brink and salvage something of its true democratic character. We know, without a shred of ambiguity or doubt, just what the Republican Neo-Con vision of America looks like, in all its foul and stenchified detail ... Question is, is the present crop of Democratic “leaders” up to the task? Many voices on the left-liberal end of the political spectrum seem to think so. I’m not convinced.

But then, I’ll probably never be convinced that any political party or political professional truly has the interests of ordinary, anonymous schmucks such as myself in the forefront of their agendas. Don’t get me wrong -- I felt as much of a sensation of very visceral schadenfreude, as any thinking person would, at the spectacle of so many Republican swine being tossed out on their worthless asses, from the Congress and state houses and governor’s offices; that’s a good thing, in and of itself. But the supreme satisfaction we all felt last Tuesday will prove to be nothing but hot air in the long run, if Bush and his cronies and puppet-masters aren’t eventually brought to justice. We’d better light one hell of a fire under the Democrats’ tender flanks to ensure that comes about, otherwise all we’ve bought for ourselves is merely a brief two-year respite, a short detour, a minor hiccup, on the rocky road toward corporate fascism.

There is room for hope, I suppose. But I’m not holding my breath.

Sigh.