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The Poverty Pit - home of the misguided optimist

It is said the signature of a true optimist is one who hopes for a different outcome in watching the same movie twice.  We laugh and laugh.  How can anyone, yes anyone continue with such beliefs?  Yet we do, particularly when the promise seems so real, or when the circumstances are ever so slightly different, or when we really think this time is the charm.

Most of us are not such optimists as to movies.  But we are so, if the plot, characters, or situation are ever so slightly different.  This is the time... or so we hope.

Case in point:  local or national elections.  We see the one party offering salvation, jobs, prosperity, retribution, redistribution, reconciliation, and otherwise personal betterment, the other offering much the same.  If you liked the first movie and the promises, and have learned to hate the alternative, you are an easy sale. You vote predictably.  Your vote is counted in the bank months before even the candidate is announced.  If the incumbent promises a big change, it seems not to matter that nothing happened previously from the last cycle. This time, now it will work...  So goes the optimist.

An example.  In a recent interview Paul Ryan, speaker of the house, described a poverty trap that encapsulates many Americans who cannot break their voting habits.  In fact, it is more a poverty pit from which they cannot escape. They hope and hope and hope.  This group of Americans, now wider than ever, seems to believe a stroke of the pen can make them substantial. They vote for that stroke. They crave normalcy.  However, they embrace dependency.

The flip side of this is oppositional.  When the one promises the big change and you buy it, then it doesn't happen you become disillusioned.  You switch.  You are in a vast minority; you are an independent. Only you are courted by the contenders.

It seems these days, both sides offer the same thing: salvation, jobs, prosperity, retribution, redistribution, reconciliation, and otherwise personal betterment.  Neither side delivers. Yet, we seem to sign on to the same promises the next time.  This time it will surely work. It's suppose to!

Or so we think? Hope? Believe? Trust? Crave?

After a long while, we go for the longshot, not caring a bit. Just hoping for the Election Lotto game to come through.
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