Cockeyed Optimism is Better Than Cynicism

Reading about the town meetings currently taking place across America, it's difficult to know what the high turnouts and active participation say about the state of democracy in America. The right wing of the Republican Party has embraced community organizing, the activity mocked by their candidates in the last elections. And they are good at it. Good ole fashioned talk-radio, supplemented by up-to-date social networking tactics have put many in Congress on the defensive. Union members are trying to respond, but apparently they aren't getting to the meeting halls early enough. With her characteristically nasty ridicule, Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times chides the Obama networks for failing to turn out folks to support the president. "The young grass-roots army that swept Obama into office," she writes, "has yet to mobilize now that the fight is about something complicated rather than a charismatic hope-monger. No, they can't?" Reliable Maureen -- always ready with cynical mockery.

The fact that people are mobilizing on behalf of issues of significant public import is a very good thing. When politics becomes just a spectator sport, the citizenship of each of us is diminished. But the cynicism with which this mobilization is taking place -- stoking fears of euthanasia panels and losing one's opportunity for basic health care -- will have even more profound corrosive effects on our public life. Creating fear among senior citizens about "big government, when they are already on a huge Federal program, is particularly noxious. Anger and fear are dangerous fuel with which to build a political firestorm. They burn away trust. These passions feed on themselves and undermine future possibilities of working together to overcome differences.

But am I just labeling this mobilizing "cynical" because I don't share the political views of those who worry that because of big government we will soon be "standing on line to buy toilet paper" (NYT, 8/11)? What makes Limbaugh's or Palin's call to right-wing shock troops, for example, any more cynical than the messages I get almost every morning via email from team Obama? Is cynicism merely in the eye of the beholder?

There are two tests we might use to make the distinction between cynical manipulation and organizing based on shared belief. The first is simple: does the person asking you to join the fray have her facts straight? Are there really euthanasia panels planned? Since the answer is clearly "no," the person using the lie to promote action is being cynical. Sometimes it's hard to tell, and there is plenty of room for debate in something as complicated as health care reform. But often it's not hard to tell. We must expose how lies are used to generate fear.

This leads to the second test. Is the person promoting action trying to make you angry and afraid, as opposed to hopeful and pragmatic? If the organizer is basing his inspiration on fear and anger, you can bet that the possibilities for cynical manipulation have jumped sky high. I know these are far from airtight tests. Cynicism, of course, exists on the left as well as the right; hope or courage can also be manipulated. But fear and anger are far more combustible.

I started thinking about an escape from cynicism this week when I saw an exuberant summer stock presentation of that great Rogers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. There is a wonderful moment when Nurse Nellie realizes that she can't just "wash that man right out of her hair," and says that she is indeed "in love with a wonderful guy." Nellie isn't afraid of being in "a conventional dither" or of being "a cliché comin true" because she's over the moon about her guy. But South Pacific isn't just as corny as Kansas in August. The show reminds us that "you have to be carefully taught" to hate. But it rejects hate and prejudice as the music soars. Unafraid of being a "cockeyed optimist," South Pacific dreams that prejudice can be overcome.

I know we can't sing our way through raucous town meetings in which fears have been stoked that we are becoming "another Soviet Union." But we can use some of the cockeyed optimism that still inspired hope for change in the wake of WW II. In Hammerstein's words, you don't have to be "stuck like a dope/With a thing called hope." If we can expose the lies of manipulation without stooping to cynical mockery, we might have a chance to build something in common in which we can really believe.

Comments

[creolechild]

If you are concerned about receiving "real" health care reform in this country, please take the time to watch a video on our current system. The video was created by Oregon physicians who are advocating for the single-payer option. The video is very informative and helped me to gain a better understanding of various aspect of health care, as we know now it.

https://www.madashelldoctorstour.com/Mad_as_Hell_Video.html

These Oregon physicians are in the process of organizing a caravan designed to inform the public about the benefits of the single-payer option. At last count they will be stopping in approximately 23 states, on their way to demonstrate in Washington. They need volunteers and our support. Please spread the word.

[jeromey]

Roth's point is well taken, but the mobilization is not cynical, it is demagogic. Fifty-eight million people voted for John McCain. The surprise is how many of those now support the president, not how many are prepared to believe the distortions and fearmongering when they are already inclined to oppose any of his initiatives.

[rbryanh]

Is it cynical to go on pretending that our elected officials are in any way free agents, willing or able to represent their constituents? It's the wrong question - what it is is delusional.

No pundefecating is required to understand how Washington in general and the healthcare debate in particular actually works. All we need is a simple table of numbers, showing who bought whom. Some well designed graphs would probably help, but this engulfing tide of verbiage does nothing but drown the facts without ever supplying anything to drink.

America is a corporate property run for corporate profit and our government reflects that. There are only three questions worth asking here: where did the money come from, where is it going, and what, if anything, are citizens going to do about it? I suppose it's cynical to answer the last one with "demand more bread and circuses," but that is the answer experience suggests.

If Lord Northcliffe were alive today and living in America, he'd have to say "Journalism is accounting. All the rest is advertising." By the money, for the money, nothing but the money... If you aren't counting the money, you're worse than a cynic - you're stupid.

[ugly american]

There are two ways this can go. Either we all stay home from the Town halls or we go in force and do what we have to to keep the debate civil. There are certain rules of politeness that should be observed. The people who insist on shouting down everyone and not letting anyone say anything they don't want to hear need to be removed as quietly as possible. If the police need to be on hand then by all means let them be. If the same thing happened at a republican town hall, you can bet the first person to shout "We want single payer now!" would be out in handcuffs and probably tazered in the middle of the first shout.
The fact is that you risk sacrificing your own freedom of speech when you try to deny it to others.They may say we are depriving it to them, but they have shown themselves to have forgotten the "civil" in civil discourse.
I agree that they are a hairs-breth away from inciting violence and they have already advocated murder as a solution to political problems. Exactly when does someone say "stop, you are violating the laws and quite possibly treasonous?" Some thing in the Justice Code about advocating the violent overthrow of the government?

[rbryanh]

Whether the health care debate is conducted cynically, civilly, or with briefcase nukes will have no effect whatsoever on its outcome.

There is in fact no debate. The only negotiations that matter are the ones occurring between the corporations who own our alleged representatives. These meetings will not be televised and their minutes are not public.

Town meetings are bread and circuses; corporate product; just one more thing to buy. We go to these shows to people hired to impersonate elected officials play their roles. We play our roles as citizens for free, then go home and pay to watch ourselves on TV. Then we pay someone else to talk about it for us. The more outrageous the meetings, the more salable the product. There's no reality here; only reality TV. Our outrage and hope are products to be sold back to us, just like our health.

It's no accident the tone of public discourse is stuck somewhere between trashy soap opera, dystopian sci fi thriller, and violent sporting event. It's all as ritualized, formulaic, and ultimately meaningless as a religious service and if it eventually results in a shoot out culminating in someone blowing up the White House, all the better. We know from experience that exploding national monuments make good box office.

Meanwhile, a dozen or so people whose names we need not know will decide which corporations win this round and will inform their staff in Congress of their decision. And us? Well, what's on TV?

[a6intruder]

Cynics are ALWAYS happier than optimists. Optimists are constantly disappointed - cynics are often pleasantly surprised! It's that simple.

[mcmchugh99]

The Republicans have completely packed these meetings, and are repeating the same questions and talking points word-for-word in all of them. They are all using the same disruptive tactics.

This is a McCarthyite-style campaign of lies, distortions and slander, run by the Republican party and financed by various big business interests.

Their greatest fear is that Obama will win, that he will actually pass some of the changes he campaigned for. They will do anything, say anything they have to to block health care reform. I suspect they are going to go all the way before this is over.