I'm a hopeaholic. There's nothing George Bush can do about it

[emad]

I'm a hopeaholic. There's nothing George Bush can do about it

We have imposed our disastrous president on the world - but America's finest quality is already turning the tide at home

Gloria Steinem
Tuesday September 13, 2005
The Guardian


It's hard to travel or send words out of the US now. How can any American expect to be welcomed in the rest of the world when we have imposed the narcissistic and disastrous George Bush on it? I could explain that almost none of his policies has majority support here. Even among those who voted for him, a poll showed that 60% to 80% thought they were voting for the opposite of his actual positions: they supported the comprehensive test ban treaty (he didn't); they supported the Kyoto treaty on global warming (he didn't); they supported the international criminal court (he threatened to sanction any nation that did); and so on. This tells you a lot about the level of information in mass media that prefer celebrities, yelling matches and advertising to investigating what is and isn't accurate.


But never fear, Americans are being punished. Having re-elected Bush as a wartime president, we have to watch him alienating more allies and inspiring more people to join the war against us every day.
Still, I have hope. I have hope because majority opinion has turned against the invasion of Iraq in far less time that it took to wake up to Vietnam. I have hope because Bush's selling-off of the US government, one function at a time, has stumbled on the privatisation of social security. I have hope because Americans are finally connecting, via the internet, with what the rest of the world thinks. I have hope because the only long-term solution to rightwing extremism was visible in the last election; I've seen people willing to vote before, but for the first time I saw people fighting to vote. Only an end to our status as one of the lowest-voting democracies in the world can keep a focused and financed minority from cutting through the majority like a hot knife through butter.

Hard times have made me realise that hope might be the most American of qualities, the reason why many immigrants come here and our best export by far. When I've lived in other countries, it's what I've been most homesick for. After all, unless we make a place in our imaginations for what could be, there's not much point in believing in anything. You might say I'm a hopeaholic.

I owe this not only to being born here, but to working as a feminist organiser. Terminal hopefulness is an occupational hazard. None the less, I've come to feel that hope is natural, a necessity of human evolution - and hopelessness has to be carefully taught by those who benefit from the status quo. Here's why.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1568586,00.html

[babylonsister]

1. I am, too. Thanks, emad. nt

[abluelady]

2. Thanks. I keep trying to be!

[emad]

3. Gloria rocks.

xxx