In defense of optimism

I've been doing a lot of thinking over the past week - so much so that it is eating up time usually reserved for updating my personal Wikipedia page.

In less than a week we will select a new President.  Recent events in the financial world - events which many of us may not fully understand - have dominated the politicking both this month and last.  The national sentiment concerning the economy has drifted from moderate paranoia to full scale panic.  A weekend editorial in the New York Times did nothing to dispute the alarm, suggesting instead that the American way of life itself may be "unraveling."  

   

In spite of the tenor of the campaigns over the past month, though, there is more at stake in this election than the near-term health of the economy.  Our image amongst the international community is tarnished.  We live with the implied threat of violence at our doorstep.  And while our education system turns out fewer scientists and engineers each year, the issues of disappearing fossil fuels, climate change, and global connectivity mount with increasing urgency.   

Yet, there are underlying factors that make me optimistic about the years ahead.

I'm optimistic that the term "Real America" will be used to identify the notions of moral obligation and moral responsibility that America must reclaim to keep its place in the world - notions of preserving decency and dignity for all people, foreign diplomacy based on engagement, the ambition to energetically confront once-in-a-generation challenges - rather than to single out a particular ideological cross-section of the electorate.  Real America exists as the collective of all of our towns and villages, of all of our voices and dreams.  I'm optimistic that we will realize no single viewpoint in a debate is more authentic, and no one demographic is more equal. 

I'm optimistic that with a sense of renewed national purpose, we will also find a sense of renewed brotherhood.  This campaign has highlighted a divisive nature of society that impairs rather than repairs.  Questions about race and religion should never stoke fear in an open society, but we've seen the attempts over the past several months.  Finally, though, people are asking the right questions (ie, "What is wrong with being a Muslim in America?").  Forty years ago, Martin Luther King advocated that we become a society that is "people oriented" instead of "thing oriented."  I'm optimistic that we will realize there is no greater obstruction to progress than the fear of what we do not understand.

 

Finally, I'm optimistic that collective purpose and civility will begin to restore America to her role as a lighthouse, rather than as a fortress.  Despite the bitterness that our recent actions may have engendered internationally, I believe that people around the world are willing to forgive us in exchange for a more honorable America, an America that expresses the messages of ambition and unity discussed above.  I'm optimistic that these shifts will effect foreign policies resulting in admiration rather than admonition.  

Yes, with less than a week to go, I'm optimistic.  But the coin has another side.  

It is my feeling that if next Tuesday, Obama fails, we all fail.