Betsy Wright Rhodes’ third article in her series “Mixing God and Government in America” appeared with the above title in Saturday’s Pilot. Rhodes is herself an optimist, but believes that we Americans are “optimistic to the point of inviting tragedy.”
Whether the topic is global warming, the war in Iraq or planning for the next hurricane, Americans are so unfailingly optimistic they are blind to the possibility things might go wrong.
I don’t know if that is the case. I wonder if it is not the fact that everyone is so busy, lacking the time or the inclination to look into things more deeply, that we just sometimes believe the stuff that is presented to us. For many, if a talking head on TV says it, it must be so. If the newspaper prints it, it must be so. And if someone we think has more knowledge about a topic than we do says it, it must be so.
Either lack of time or lack of inclination – or, likely, some combination of the two – make us susceptible to the the 30-second soundbites and the political rhetoric of the day. Our attention spans are so short that reading a long article or a book is nearly impossible.
Perhaps I just didn’t get the point that Rhodes was trying to make. I don’t think of Americans as being optimistic; if anything, they are pessimistic. Doom and gloom is the order of the day: the terrorists are coming, after all.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 