Don't surrender

Here are two good reads for the day.

Cary Tennis of Salon on identity and self-expression.

The "common-sense" assumption is that "underneath" we are all just regular joes. The true self may be extraordinary and fine. It is axiomatic that if each of us is unique, our true self will be something the world has never seen before. If we are completely ourselves, we may not be recognized. We hide the true self, fearing rejection by the crowd. So we "dumb down," you might say. We find a million ways to conceal.

One of the tricks I have learned is that by seeming to reveal all we can conceal much. The more we reveal, the more we can hide. What we really wish to conceal lies at the bottom of the heap of revelations. Often what we truly wish to hide is our own weakness, fear and vulnerability. That is how I felt at that meeting -- weak, fearful, vulnerable. Yet I found myself thinking my way through it and not acting. "What, indeed, is the exact effect of speaking to others about our condition?" Blah, blah, blah.

And Glenn W. Smith at Firedoglake talks us off the ledge and injects some hope of his own into the ruins of Obama's multi-layered mess.

While we struggle to overcome that fundamental error, we run the risk of demoralizing Americans. In the long run, we need one another more than we need Obama. I might even say that inspiration should be our first and most important strategy. Our demoralization is certainly a key strategy of our opponents, as it has been with all authoritarians. A great essay on the renewal of hope in the face demoralizing tyranny is Vaclav Havel’s, “The Power of the Powerless.”

I have many acquaintances who can no longer even read news about the health care reform because they find it depressing. This demands recognition and action. These anxious folk are not weak or apathetic. Their hopes need renewing. We rely on our individual resources, but also upon one another for inspiration. If we don’t take steps to relieve the anxiety and restore hope, we will set the movement back a decade. The 2010 elections will be lost, but that may turn out to be the least of our problems.

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Hope requires a tougher realism than either cynicism or surrender. Without an eyes-wide-open view of what is, the necessary steps for change are impossible to determine. Also, hope can easily devolve into a sentimental “everything’s gonna be alright” passivity or naivety. Popular melodrama sells a lot of this.

It takes much more character to hope in bleak times than it does to give up. That's invaluable advice.