I want to feel hopeful

I want to feel hopeful.

On Saturday, I watched masked crowds across the country weep, cheer and sing joyfully, peacefully, celebrating the probable victory in the U.S. presidential election of a man who has been married for over four decades to a woman who has supported him in his public service at the same time that she has maintained her own professional life. A man who openly loves his family (appears to be loved by them) and is a man of faith.

Why so much emotion? Some said they burst into tears, a kind of release from months, if not years, of tension, holding in angst, anger, sadness, terror. They gasped, took in deep breaths, suddenly able to breathe air cleansed of the unease and doubt that strangled them. My mother cried because she had felt like democracy was in danger and the apparent majority vote appeared to favor maintaining the democracy we have loved for so long. It seems that hope was rekindled.

I want to feel hopeful.

But, a good many citizens also favored keeping someone in power who sees himself there indefinitely, or, as his account Tweeted in June 2019, "4EVA", and has stated thus in speeches (in jest?) and on Twitter multiple times since 2018.That is not how our democracy has functioned up till now. Alas, change is the way of life...and Plato would say that the sociopolitical system implied by that "4EVA," is indeed the natural next step...

I listened as a grandfatherly man gave a "traditional" well-written, well-rehearsed speech that sought to build bridges to reach all citizens of our beautiful country, to offer healing and hope to a nation in the throes of social division and turmoil, presenting a voice both civil and diplomatic to the country and the world. For a few moments, all the ways of being my peers and I were taught as we grew up were meaningful once again.

I hesitated to react to a moment that might be incredibly brief; that may be the proverbial quiet before the storm. Indeed, a storm whose winds began to blow immediately, as I saw vitriolic reactions posted on social media. Former classmates, former students and neighbors made obvious their preference for the acrimonious voice of division that is more truthful and inspiring to them than any other.

I want to feel hopeful.

But over the last four years, I have returned time and again to a quote from Hannah Arendt"s The Origins of Totalitarianism:

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exists."

"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

"Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.

"The point is that [historically, totalitarian leaders] held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability."

I want to feel hopeful.

And so, as I have done often in my life, I look to my son. He is a good, considerate man, a hardworking man, a well-mannered man, with a kind heart, a generous spirit and an incisive mind. He tries to put himself in other's positions in order to understand behaviors and beliefs. Like me, he has strong friendships with people of kaleidoscopic religious, ethnic, economic and political persuasions. Each of them feel it is the person, not the boxes they check off, that matter. He reads avidly and writes extensively to clarify his thoughts for himself. Never a frequent presence, he has eliminated even the occasional scroll on social media, seeing in it the ill Aldous Huxley foresaw.

It is said that hope is seeing light despite being surrounded by darkness.

I look to my son, and I feel hopeful.