Hope on a Tightrope

I am in love with Cornel West. And his new book, Hope on a Tightrope. Read this book. Or just visit my blog, and I'll give you my favorite bits, chapter by chapter (there are 12).

Here's today's installment, from Chapter One, State of Emergency:

"Culture, in part, provides people with the tools and resources to steel themselves against adversity and convinces them not to kill themselves or others. This is the reason why I am preoccupied with a sense of the tragicomic. At the moment in which we must look defeat, disillusionment, and discouragement in the face and work through it--a sense of the tragicomic keeps alive some sense of possibility. Some sense of hope. Some sense of agency. Some sense of resistance."

"Yet hope is no guarantee. Real hope is grounded in a particularly messy struggle and it can be betrayed by naive projections of a better future that ignore the necessity of doing the real work. So what we are talking about is hope on a tightrope."

I could never have said it better myself, Cornel. Although I've wanted to say it. Because I've worried a bit about what We-the-People will do after the election of Obama. Will we just take tokes from the Obama Hookah of Hope? Or will we step up to the plate and do our fair share of the work, each according to his/her means and abilities...