THE TIMIDITY OF HOPE

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THE TIMIDITY OF HOPE

SAM SMITH - Here's one reason Barack Obama talks so much about the
audacity of hope: his policies are so meek.

For example, he is clearly afraid to get anywhere near single payer
healthcare so he comes up with a plan where the federal government would
subsidize the auto companies' healthcare in return for more fuel
efficient cars.

Aside from the fact that this is in opposition to far wiser efforts to
disassociate healthcare from the work place, aside from the fact it is a
corporatist policy that makes government even more a hostage of
industry, aside from the subsidy to General Motors and its ilk, Obama
not only is afraid of challenging the health insurance industry, he
wants government to help further fill its trough. Although less bizarre
than Hillary Clinton's 1990s health plan, there is no justification for
it other than pure political convenience.

If this is the best he can come up with, there's good reason he's taken
the easy way out and applied the marketing principles of Tony Robbins
and Marianne Williamson to a political campaign. Having gone through
eight years of EST with Bill Clinton and almost that much of AA with
George Bush, we should be burned out on psycho-therapeutics as opposed
to physical reality but sadly many are taken in by Obama's covert
message that if you trust in hope you don't have to worry about the
details like pensions and healthcare.

There are several problems with this.

One is that no one has presented the slightest evidence of why Obama's
hope and faith is better than that of any of the other candidates.

The second problem is that hope is not audacious at all. Audacious would
be doing something now, audacious would be taking a personal political
risk because the country needs it, audacious would be saying something
unconventional because the conventional is killing us. Audacity is not
turning one's back on present needs and praying that the future will
straighten it all out.

One of the best kept secrets in America today is the extent to which
hope and faith are being used as seedy substitutes for action and
reason. Too often, hope is a form of postponement and faith a substitute
for action or facing the truth.

As they say in the 'hood, hope don't pay the cable.

And as Tijn Touber has noted, "If you hang on to hope, you'll always
have to wait" and "waiting makes you passive."

Thus, someone like Obama functions as a political sedative. His message
is that we don't have to worry so much about what's happening because we
can let the future handle it.

This is not audacious; it's either a con or cowardice.

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