Optimism is the opium of the people

A friend sent me the following snarky question:

What is your “self” judged ratio of writing about negative versus positive things? I mean on the latter, when you were truly celebrating something amazingly wonderful and happy happening in our life. I am sure that you have lot of blogs of this kind and I just did not see them. Send me some links. I would like to see your bright side too.

Sarcasm non-withstanding, this is a legitimate question. Sort of. I did contemplate the tone of my blog in the past. Most often I try to explain the possibly not so obvious, but occasionally I mock stupidity and bitch about our political reality. This is what the blog is about. If it was about cooking, skiing or Frank Zappa, maybe more of my ‘bright side’ would be visible. I am the most optimistic person I know. My wife considers it pathological.  I love nature, traveling and the outdoors, I am passionate about history, music, literature and the arts, I am fascinated by science and technology and I could go on, but then again, this is NOT what this blog is about. It is about politics and politics is ugly. I don’t know how could anybody see its ‘bright side’, but quite a few people obviously do. Leftist politics is full of happy moments. Virtue signaling, self congratulation and the collective euphoria celebrating their good intentions are all bright moments for them. They work like opium creating an artificial high through the denial of reality and reason. The drug of unreason may be deadly in the end, but make you feel great while you are on it. I prefer the red pill of reality. My friend would happily celebrate sex-change operations knowing fully well that the suicide rate of post op transsexuals is 20 times the rate in the general population, knowing fully well that it is a curable mental condition and knowing fully well that his support creates more misery than happiness. This encouragement is part of his bright side. It’s a glorious achievement to force 99.996% of the population into gender inclusive bathrooms. It is a righteous victory of the forces of progress against the bigoted reactionaries with their preconceptions of right and wrong. The leftists in Europe (with Angela Merkel’s lead) are actively encouraging the breaking of the law, knowing fully well that this encouragement will result in the gruesome death of hundreds of ‘migrants’ in the Mediterranean and some serious cultural friction in the host countries. Leftists still celebrate Marx and the world his ideas created. The millions of victims of communism don’t seem to influence their positive feelings toward it. No amount of harm, misery and suffering could ever stop a leftist from feeling good about himself, from fighting for and celebrating causes that are proven to cause harm. I cannot think of a single leftist cause that is not designed to cause harm, that I can feel good about. What the question asked from me means is: “Why can’t you be like us?” “Why can’t you find something to celebrate? “ I have many reasons. The first I already gave: this is not that kind of a blog. This is a blog of reason and morality, not of propaganda and happy delusions. I see no reason to write unless my writing is addressing some sort of concern. A question, a problem, a phenomenon. I consider saying something truthful and meaningful fundamentally positive. I consider most of my writing positive. Negativity in this sense must be in the mind of the reader. You have to ask: is the disapproval of lunacy, the assertion of reality, negative? Let’s suppose for a second, that my friend’s question was expressing genuine interest and he was looking for the libertarian equivalents of the leftist happy moments. I have very few of those but I can imagine many. I am ready to celebrate happy moments in politics, but I am not sure that those who expect me to show my bright side, would celebrate with me. I was ecstatic to see the British voting for freedom in their referendum. It may prove to be the most significant political turning point in this century so far. Yet the first few people I had the opportunity to discuss it with, were horrified of my happiness about it. Some European youngsters I talked to called it a move toward fascism. They saw my positive attitude toward it as a very negative thing. I am a big fan of nuclear energy, fourth generation reactors in general and LFTRs in particular. The revival of the idea that ugly politics mothballed in the fifties is a wonderful news, yet when I mentioned it a few days ago in a conversation, my hostess reacted with a tortured grimace on her face. She had zero knowledge of nuclear energy and even less about Thorium, yet she knew with an absolute certainty that I am evil incarnate advocating it. My positive attitude and happy moment was not too happy for her. (I have to take this opportunity to recommend again this lecture of Kirk Sorensen. It is impossible not to get infected by his boundless enthusiasm.) Like many libertarians, I would love to see real money in my lifetime. I am yet to hear a coherent argument against it, but I know from experience that just about any leftist find the idea abhorrent. I would love to have the opportunity to celebrate the demise of central banks, the privatisation of social security, the freedom of education and health care. The problem is that no matter how positive the ideas are, no matter how reasonable they are or how I feel about them, I doubt that the friends looking for more positivity would find them as positive as I do. Communism was (and is) fundamentally positive. Nobody was allowed to be negative. Nobody was allowed to be critical. It was a most depressing existence. The more positive the official messages became, the more depressing they were. At this point I was only asked to show positivism. I wonder how long it will take before it will be demanded. The life of the hero in Kundera’s book had his life destroyed over a joke. Much the way the lives of some comedians are getting destroyed in Canada and Germany today. The answer to my friend should be easy in the end. I do not aim to be positive in the terms he expects. I have no use of the mindless virtue signaling Kumbaya positivity of the leftists, the kind he seems to be expecting from me. I am positive in my own way. My message is positive. The message of freedom always is. Meaning is my celebration; truth is my brightness.