TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

     One of the four medieval temperaments, “sanguine” means optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.  (The others are choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic and these categories supposedly encompassed all people.)  I am sanguine by nature and I’ve found it especially helpful nowadays.  In recent weeks, Republicans have passed an outrageous anti-abortion law in Texas, which forbids any procedure after six weeks, when most women don’t even know they’re pregnant, has no exceptions for rape or incest, and empowers any citizen to arrest a woman or doctor and receive a $10,000 bounty.  A number of Republican state legislatures are severely limiting voting rights, in the hope of disenfranchising black and brown citizens – part of the “Make America Great Again” agenda, which only benefits whites.  And Republicans in Congress are currently refusing to raise the debt ceiling, as they did many times under the Trump presidency, which threatens that the U.S. government will go bankrupt – a major national calamity. 

     In the face of all this, most people are dismayed and discouraged.  I’m not.  I think that the Republicans have created a losing strategy.  Being anti-voting and anti-woman, as well as disagreeing to a standard parliamentary maneuver to fund the government (whose deficit they added considerably to with the Trump tax cuts, especially for rich people) seems to me a good way to lose elections.  I’m joined in this opinion by the eminent professor of history at Boston College, Heather Cox Richardson, who publishes a daily column called “Letter from an American.”   She argued on October 5 that Republicans under Mitch McConnell will force the Democrats to end the filibuster, a move that would tremendously help Biden’s agenda.

     Personally, I think the Republicans will lose big in 2022.  And I don’t think I’m being unduly unrealistic.  Whether that happens or not, it’s much pleasanter to live as an optimist than a pessimist.  In this, I think back to the seventeenth-century philosopher, Blaise Pascal.  In his so-called “wager,” he argued that it makes more sense to believe in God than not.  If you believe, and God exists, you win big.  If he doesn’t, you don’t lose much.  If you don’t believe in God, and he exists, you lose big.  If you don’t believe and God does not exist, nothing is lost or gained.

     A major objection to this argument, then and now, is that people are unable to will themselves into belief or disbelief.  But this premise does not hold.  Psychology argues convincingly that people can change their basic beliefs.  In this case, I think that living optimistically is not only a much more pleasant way to exist, but it also can aid political decisions.  Try it out!