Hope rhymes with “dope”

Yes, I actually wrote a diary called “Fuck Obama”.  I did it for a reason.

But here are reasons I didn’t do it.

I didn’t do it because I get off on hating people.  I didn’t do it because I want other people to hate Obama.  Hating is not the point.  Not at all.  

I did it because the only way change will come in this country is if people quit “hoping”.

Obama has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that our two-party system, Coke vs Pepsi, Bud vs Miller Lite, Dems vs Repubs, is nothing but two sides of the same mirror-glassed expensive and impenetrable building.  Inside the building it’s all the same people, operating from the same pile of money.  

What did Obama offer us?  Nothing, really.  But “Hope”.  Hope is dangerous.  Why?  

I found an article a while back that blew my mind.  It’s called Beyond Hope and it’s written by a guy named Derrick Jensen.  

Here is a sample:

The more I understand hope, the more I realize that all along it deserved to be in the box with the plagues, sorrow, and mischief; that it serves the needs of those in power as surely as belief in a distant heaven; that hope is really nothing more than a secular way of keeping us in line.

Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because of the lovely Buddhist saying “Hope and fear chase each other’s tails,” not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.

More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope. You wouldn’t believe-or maybe you would-how many magazine editors have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here’s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

So what did Obama give us?  Powerlessness.  That’s right.  For us to accept his “hope” means we give up all our power.

And how many of us did exactly that once he was elected?  Almost everybody.

What’s what my anger is about.  That’s why I write this stuff.  

You really have to read the whole article.  It’s brilliant.  I’d quote it all here if I could.

Here’s another sample:

When we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we’re in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free-truly free-to honestly start working to resolve it. I would say that when hope dies, action begins.

Want to stay powerless?  Keep hoping.

Want to accomplish something?  Want change?   Then kill your hope.  Quit hoping Obama will change anything.  Quit hoping that the Democratic Party will finally grow a spine.  Quit hoping the media will suddenly start reporting the truth.  

Get to work.  And simply DO.