This post brought to mind a thought I had a few weeks ago when, looking into the window of the Victoria's Secret at Union Square in San Francisco, I saw that the new tactic for selling lingerie is to put big signs in the window that say "HOPE!"
Isn't hope a rather effete concept? I mean, hope contains an element of helpless passivity; as contrasted with, say, ambition, or will, or determination, hope is what you do when you are out of all other options, and can do nothing other than wait for someone else to come along and solve your problems for you. Hope is not an expectation or even a wish; hope is an optimistic faith in something outside of your power. One strives for success, but one hopes for rescue. Hope was the last of the evils left in Pandora's jar; when Bart Simpson is backed up to the giant blender and cannot figure out an escape, he says he hopes that "something will come along to save" him. It seems to me that this is precisely the connotation that the Obama campaign had in mind, and why "hope" is so disappointing as a national slogan.
