Ringside: Overcoming the Tragedy of Pessimism

If you have ever tried to reason with a San Francisco Bay Area progressive liberal, it’s easy to become a pessimist. These implacable fanatics are backed up by trillions of dollars in big tech wealth, along with the most powerful tools of mass hypnosis and Pavlovian conditioning the world has ever seen. If you question any of their pieties – climate, race, gender, Trump – they immediately dehumanize you. And there is nothing you can say to change their minds. No room for nuance. No tolerance for alternative perspectives. You are hated. You are garbage. Give up. Die.

If you want to change anything in California, you have to first recognize that you are up against a coalition of extreme environmentalists, opportunistic business interests, the “renewables” lobby, the Homeless Industrial Complex, the DEI Industrial Complex, public sector unions including the rabidly partisan and woke teachers union, and Hollywood, all backed up tech billionaires who wield stupefying wealth and influence.

At its roots, this is a coalition of lunatics, crooks, and amoral pragmatists. A prominent Democrat who was working on some genuine reforms once told me “we had the Republicans at hello.” A businessman who supports Democrats once shared with me a similar sentiment. “Why should I back Republicans,” he said, “we’ve already got them.” And yet the Republicans, especially the “MAGA Republicans,” are the threat. Go figure.

So why be an optimist?

To begin with, because the truth is more appealing than the progressive narrative, and the foundation of the progressive liberal narrative is pessimism.

What else might explain every rote proclamation that the world is coming to an end because of the climate crisis? What else explains why millions of children are coping with mental illness, suicidal thoughts, and hopelessness for the future? They’ve been convinced the earth is on the brink of burning up. What else accounts for educated adults utterly convinced that the planet may soon be uninhabitable? What else lends apocalyptic context to every report on hurricanes, floods, or winter storms?

What other word, apart from pessimism – dark, terrifying pessimism – better characterizes the incessant claim that white people are by definition racist, that we are an inherently racist nation, and that BIPOC individuals (for the blissfully uninitiated, that’s black, indigenous, and people of color) cannot possibly hope to succeed without government edicts and entitlements to compensate for the pervasive discrimination inflicted on them by privileged white people?

This is the narrative. But the truth rejects the narrative. The truth is optimistic. Burning fossil fuel is not going to immolate the biosphere. Forests are not disappearing. We can protect wildlife and wilderness, while also remaining realistic about what sort of a human footprint is necessary to power civilization. As for racism, only vestiges remain, because we have built the most inviting and inclusive culture in human history.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of pessimism is thinking you can’t get through to voters with a message of truth and optimism. California’s population of hardcore progressive liberals is dwindling. They are the ones who are fading away. We are one generation away from an electorate that will be approximately 60 percent Latino, 15 percent Asian, 5 percent Black, and only 20 percent White. Those figures are extrapolated from on K-12 public school enrollment today, and while these actual percentages will of course deviate from this prediction, it won’t be by very much. And the people driving progressive liberalism in California are overwhelmingly white.

One of the biggest weapons progressives use against anyone who might want to speak to voters who represent California’s future is that you have to find a spokesperson who looks like them. In practice this means white conservative activists are intimidated into sitting on the sidelines, instead of directly speaking to the emerging majority of Californians who are just as frustrated, just as receptive to new ideas, but happen to belong to a different ethnicity. Progressives tell us, if we are white, that we have no right to talk about politics to anyone who hasn’t shared our “lived experience.” All too often, conservatives believe this, and wait for someone to come along to speak for them who checks the right ethnic boxes.

This is nonsense. People, no matter what color they are, respond to passion and truth, and to think otherwise is yet another tragic consequence of pessimism. A crowd, any crowd, can be bored to tears by a speaker who looks just like them, if that speaker doesn’t have anything interesting to say. But put someone in front of that crowd who shares their grievances, has solutions, captures their attention and keeps it with a delivery that is authentic and forceful, and watch that crowd come to life. Find those leaders, and send them everywhere. If a consultant says they’re the wrong color, fire the consultant. Truth is colorblind, and people want the truth.

California is broken. People can’t afford homes or any other essentials including gasoline, electricity, water, food, tuition, or health care. And the reason California is broken is because the economy is dominated by leeches who profit from inefficiency and failure, and hide behind pessimistic narratives – climate doom, race and gender resentment.

The optimistic leader knows this broken rot is not fate, but a product of political choices that can be reversed. The optimist knows how California can be fixed, and that optimism appeals to the best in people. All people.

Optimism is the prerequisite for everything good—the motivation and freedom to innovate, the courage to coexist in peace, the character to work hard and accept meritocracy, the vitality to stay healthy and sober, the judgment to balance the needs of the environment with the needs of humanity, the faith to believe in a bright future, the charisma to attract others to a joyful movement, and the enduring conviction that we will overcome this ongoing and escalating tyranny.

Pessimism, on the other hand, catalyzes fear, panic, despair, and desperate fanaticism. Pessimism provides the fertile soil into which manipulative agendas are planted, sowing guilt, resentment, hatred, and the dark comfort of extremist solutions to manufactured problems. Pessimism and the products of pessimism are the body on which evil festers and grows. Pessimism is also the refuge of good people who have given up.

Optimism is a weapon, a talisman, capable of recruiting and realigning California’s voters. To change this broken state, it must be the foundation of an alternative political agenda, and it must be wielded with recognition of its power.

You don’t have to convince Bay Area progressives of anything. They’re lost. Speak to everyone else. No matter who they are or where they came from, they want the truth. They want hope. They want a California that isn’t broken. Reject pessimism, embrace optimism, and offer solutions.