One of those folks who didn't want me to post their name wrote…
Your comment intrigued me. Don't you think there's a value in not giving up? My folks taught me there was no such thing as a lost cause. My father used to say, "A man who won't be defeated can't be defeated." If you believe in something enough, whether it's a political cause or a dream you have, shouldn't you pursue it with every breath you have left in you? If you give up on something, doesn't that mean you never really believed in it in the first place?
Not to me. Your mileage, as per that slogan they no longer use in commercials, may vary. But I have found that for me, it's healthier to be realistic about what you can and cannot accomplish and to cut your losses on the latter. The time and effort you spend pursuing an impossible goal is time and effort you don't put into a possible one.
When someone gives me that line about how a man who won't be defeated can't be defeated, I always think, "So what happens when two prizefighters get in the ring and they both have that attitude? Does each of them knock the other one out?" For that matter, if I decide tomorrow that I want to be the Heavyweight Champion of the World, could I possibly be determined enough to make any portion of that happen except maybe the part about "heavyweight?" I mean, dreams are great and noble causes are wonderful but you need to have at least one foot grounded in reality.
Politics, they say, is The Art of the Possible. Not everything is, at least in the foreseeable future. When we assess the merits of Barack Obama's presidency, a lot of us will have long lists of what we wished was accomplished and wasn't. Those lists will be not dissimilar to the lists his detractors and opponents will have of what they're proud they were able to block. I've given up, for example, on Single Payer Health Care.
I think it's time for folks who for the most part are on the other side of that question to give up on repealing Obamacare. But there are still crowds that can be rallied, votes and campaign contributions that can be harvested by those vowing to "repeal and replace" in much the same manner that Max Bialystock figured to profit by promising little old ladies that Springtime for Hitler would be a smash. So that campaign goes on…but not because it stands a real chance of reaching its objective.
But in non-political matters, The Art of the Possible is also important. I've run into people whose career objectives that are on a par with someone else's fantasy about winning the Mega-Millions Jackpot. That's theoretically possible but it's not prudent to stake one's entire future on that happening. It's setting yourself up for failure…and I think some people do it for a reason that they can't admit to themselves. In the next week or so, I'll try and write more about this.