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Hard disagree on your last paragraph. Cynicism serves them far better than starry eyed optimism.
Naive optimists have something to lose. Cynics don't register on political calculus.
If you believe the US is a uniparty, that's fine by them. Whether you are correct or not doesn't matter. You don't matter. You weren't voting or donating or volunteering anyway.
I'm definitely not encouraging apathy, far from it. People need to know what they're fighting though. I don't get the sense that we'll agree very much on what should be done, but that's okay, I don't feel the need to bicker about it.
Sidenote, I think you mean "pessimist" instead of "cynic". Cynical people believe everyone is purely driven by self-interest regardless of other virtues or values. Cynical people believe the rest of us are lying when we say we do things for principles and ideals vs. just self-interest. Not the same as feeling pessimistic about things, though used interchangeably all the time. Politicians do tend to be extremely cynical, whether optimistic or pessimistic.
No criticism to you, just pointing that out.
Fair, calling you a cynic is bad faith. I don't think pessimism is unwarranted. We have a lot of reasons to be pessimistic.
I just think that when things happen, it's usually optimists getting them done. We need the optimists.
I very much want to see things done by optimists as well, as long as we mean something like "imagining a better society that doesn't excuse or hide atrocities, no matter where or against whom" and things like that when we say optimism.
I'm less interested if we mean something closer to "well this is what we have today and really those DNC folks aren't that bad, probably, so attacking them is actually counterproductive" - that doesn't sound like optimism to me. That sounds like defeat, some flavor of outright self-deception, or uneasy don't-look-right-at-it complicity, or collaboration.
But to be clear by this point I imagine we feel more similarly than differently, I'm really just staking out my own distinctions here, not saying "and that's why everyone should say I'm right and very smart". Lol.
Cheers friend.
I think you are right that we mostly agree. Thank you for engaging.
Stop being naive != be apathetic