Hope.

No other word or concept means so much and is so abused.

Defined, it is the embodiment of dreams: ¹

:  to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.

:  to believe, desire, or trust

:  to feel that something desired may happen

Nothing is more optimistic, so cherished and so important, particularly now in such uncertain times.  As the economy crumbles, as the world shifts, and as so many dreams die, all we have left is faith, hope and love².   While  faith and love are essential in their own right³, there is something about hope that sets it apart too.

And hope has become one of the two biggest buzz words in recent memory, sharing said honor with change.

Indeed, in modern politics, hope and change are inseparable, and that intrinsic connection has lead to the huge disappointment waiting for so many.  I will get to that shortly.

I have had a recent run in with hope.  Recently I answered a Craigslist ad that was filled with hope and optimism.  The ad promised something for nothing, essentially, a give away of free equipment due to the honoring of someone’s last wishes.

The dead someone had a collection, a marvelous one as advertised, of musical equipment,  It advertised to give it all away to speedy respondents, IAW the owner’s last wishes.

Now, let me break in to admit that I am the Internet’s biggest skeptic.  I immediately raised caution flags.  There are too many problems with ads like this, the least of which is that many have been used to rip people off.

In fact, one of my musical associates posted this in response to a discussion about the ad:

I answered the ad and my wife responded…

He was kidding, but it raised a good point, as I would have been hardly surprised to find out this was not an estate sale but a divorce sale.

At the same time, the ad was relatively safe,  No money asked, no revealing of personal info, except an email address, of which I have several anonymous ones that would not suffer from an increase in spam.

So, I answered, and received pick up instructions.  They again had no danger to them, simply be in a place,  a public one, and pick up that which you expressed interest in.

Fully expecting to be offered a chance to buy Amway or a timeshare opportunity, I went.

I however went as a true skeptic.  I showed up at the building, but did not go to the meeting site, I went to a public seating area and waited…and watched.

And saw the disappointment.  After watching a few people show up, a couple of them several times, it was apparent this was a hoax. 

Not a scam, mind you, but a hoax.  A scam tries to rip you off, but a hoax just makes you feel dumb.

I invested nothing in this, including any realistic belief it was true, so I lost very little.

And yet…as I waited, there was that lingering nagging hope that it was indeed true, and that a truck load of musical goodness would show up.

Hope is like that.

Hope is not just a belief in what could happen.  It is also the continued belief in what could happen even in the face of what we realistically expect to happen or what we see actually happening.  This is the same belief that convinces people to send huge sums of money to scammers.  It is the same thing that brings a gambling addict back to the casino even after losing huge sums.  The next roll could be the winner.

Hope is all about could.

That is the real audacity of hope.  The fact that it is such an easily exploited feeling just by leveraging the could  of a situation.

Hope exploits dreams, trust, desires and needs because said hope could  be realized.

This is why I have a problem with Obama and his exploitation of hope.

 Obama latched on to the hope and needs and desires of anyone and everyone he could.  He leveraged the dreams and disappointments of all who could  improve his odds of achieving political power.

He offered a beautiful dream, mind you, by coupling it with change.  He offered the  hope of a fresh administration, one not bound by politics as usual, despite his history of playing to politics as usual. 

He offered a new vision and new ideas, but his cabinets choices, filled with either Chicago insiders, or former Clinton lackeys prove otherwise.

His policies when examined offer little change from those of Bush, Clinton or Carter. 

In the final analysis his promises offer nothing except the promise of change.  In other words, Hope.

In the end he will be judged by his actions, not his promises, as all politicians are.  Very few regardless of party affiliation are truly held accountable for the accuracy and score card of promises kept, and only time will tell whether he passes or fails that test.

Early indications are not optimistic.

But, what makes me sad is seeing how so many people bought his promises of hope.

I recently got an email from a teacher who faces layoff.  Another person on the same email list, rather than offer optimism, instead blamed the previous administration’s “no Child Left Behind” policies.  He claims, of course, that his criticism is not partisan, but in reality his comments clearly show two things.

1, he is disenchanted with the Republicans, and 2, he voted for Obama and did so because he bought the belief in hope.  And he was not the only one.  Another echoed his sentiments almost completely.

Now, in any discussion group there will be those who take a side I disagree with, so this is not my way of taking ideological umbrage.

What bothers me is that these people, and many others, show no realism or common sense in the application of their hope.

And suddenly it struck me that right there was the answer, at least in terms of politics.

The danger is not in having hope.

It is who or what you have hope in, and in having said hope in the face of clear evidence it is false, because we allow hope to override common sense, and reason.

In this application, I personally do not find that ANY politician, regardless of policies or party have inspired me to any great degree of hope.

About the time that most politicians ascribe to the motivation to run for office, and they go through the dirty and ugly process of obtaining support and making promises, they have almost automatically rendered themselves unfit for office because the reality of politics is quid pro quo⁴ .  Somewhere along the way statesmanship and service lose out to political expediency and necessity.

So the bottom line is that hope is a good, but if you take your hope and put your hope (and by extension your trust) in people, you will be disappointed.

But…the real tragedy is not that so many of us are victims of this abuse of hope.

It is that we are still the victims of such abuses, even when time after time we find our hope and trust betrayed.

The real danger of hope is that we continue to hope in face of disappointment and common sense, and the real audacity of hope is that we are so easy to exploit because of it.

 And mind you, this is coming from a man who knowing full well it was likely a hoax, sat waiting and hoping a free giveaway was real.

The real audacity of hope lives within me too, despite my skepticism.

LSU

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1. source for selected definitions:  Dictionary.com [back]
2. 1 Cor 13:13 [back]
3. the greatest being love [back]
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo [back]