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...years into the Great Recession, it's time to face the truth: optimism feels good, really good, but it turns out to be the methamphetamine of run-amok American capitalism. Meth induces a "Superman syndrome." Optimism fed into what Steve Eisman, a banking analyst who foresaw the crash, calls "hedge-fund disease," characterized by "megalomania, plus narcissism, plus solipsism" and the belief that "to think something is to make it happen." The meth-head loses his teeth and his mind; the madcap optimists of Wall Street lost something like $10 trillion worth of pension funds, life savings and retirement accounts...
Besides, the constant effort of maintaining optimism in the face of considerable counterevidence is just too damn much work. Optimism training, affirmations and related forms of self-hypnosis are a burden that we can finally, in good conscience, set down. They won't make you richer or healthier, and, as we should have learned by now, they can easily put you in harm's way. The threats that we face, individually and collectively, won't be solved by wishful thinking but by a clear-eyed commitment to taking action in the world...
...reclining in his chair in shirtsleeves, talking to his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The speech arrived a few minutes later, and after reviewing the draft one more time, Obama walked back to his chair, grabbed his coat, and then, at 11:15 a.m., made his way outside to face the world for the first time, as a 2009 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. With a grim visage that seemed more appropriate for a runner-up than the winner of such a prestigious prize, Obama did his best to deflect the honor. "Let me be clear," he said...
...nonnegotiable, whose solicitude for the wheelers and dealers who drove the financial system into a ditch leaves the rest of us wondering who has our back, has always shown great promise, said the right things, affirmed every time he opens his mouth that he understands the fears we face and the hopes we hold. But he presides over a capital whose day-to-day functioning has become part travesty, part tragedy; wasteful, blind, vain, petty, where even the best-intentioned reformers measure their progress with teaspoons. There comes a time when a President needs to take a real risk...
...each night. (Funnily enough, of the hundreds of politicians I've met over the years, humble is a description that comes to mind for very few. Now that I think about it: none.) But we do not really want them to be politically humble. Passivity and resignation in the face of challenge may, in some religious-belief systems, represent an admirable surrender to the will of the Almighty. But we do not elect leaders to be monks. We want them to do things. The world leader who actually is a monk, the Dalai Lama, never stops doing things...