I weep for what my nation has become.

At the risk of being coarse, my take is “screw hope.” Let me tell you about my view of “hope.” Hope is for the guy in New Orleans who ignores

the warnings from the governor, the weather service and the police and stays in his trash-filled apartment to “ride out” the hurricane. He ends up on the roof, doing nothing to help himself, and “hopes” someone will save him. When it takes too long, he’s “let down.”
Hope is for the guy who “can’t find a job,” and lays around on someone’s couch, “hoping” a job will materialize out of nowhere. In the meantime, he smokes a little crack to pass the time while he “hopes.”

Hope is for the woman who has five kids by four guys. She “hopes” one of the men will come back, pay to support her and her kids. Maybe he’ll even like all of the kids, not just the one boy who looks like him. Maybe he’ll quit drinking and dealing drugs. In the meantime, she collects her food stamps and waits.

Hope is for the guy with the dead-end job who fights with his wife about him not wanting to go back to college to get his degree so he can get a better job. Instead, he hopes the union will protect his job and in the meantime, pins his hopes on hitting it big at the black jack table at the Casino Queen.

Screw “hope.”

We used to be a country of hard-working optimists. We didn’t have hope, we had confidence. We had confidence that we lived in a country that gave us no gift other than the greatest gift of all—the opportunity to succeed. We knew that if we worked hard, played by the rules and made an effort, we would succeed and no one would penalize us. We were all like the Vietnamese Boat People, who came here with nothing but a work ethic and succeeded. Wildly.

Not any more.

Now we cling to “hope.” Hope that the government will take care of our problems. Hope the that government will see that we can do nothing and that we need help. Hope that the government will take money away from “the rich” and give it to us, because we’ve been victims for so long. We’re powerless…and all we have is hope. Reagan’s optimism and confidence in ourselves as individuals and as a country are gone, replaced by “hope” that someone will make things better for us.

I’m not condemning Obama. There will always be Obamas out there, traversing the political landscape, trying to sell the masses the idea that they can make things better, that they have the solution, that success can be easy, that you can be happy and feel successful without hard work. It’s just like taking a pill that makes all that extra weight go away.

Every daughter who marries the unemployed guy, or the band dude, has a dad who had hoped he’d raised her well and that she would see through the smooth-talking guys with the sweet lines, only to be crushed and disappointed when she falls for the pie in the sky promises. I feel that way about Obama and my country. I don’t blame Obama. I’m disappointed that my country bought the line, and moreover, that we bought the line simply because we’ve lost that inner confidence and optimism, and most important, our collective work ethic.

Screw hope? Screw us.