What is Optimism?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Optimism is:

"a doctrine that this world is the best possible world;"
"an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome."

I ask rhetorically, how does one look around, and see *reason* for optimism in our contemporaneous world? 46% of Republicans think President Obama is a Muslim, for goodness sakes. I can imagine that they're also the same people who believe that the Iraqis hid the WMDs so that they could not be found, and that Al Qaeda was operating in Iraq in cooperation with Saddam Hussein. But you know what? They have their own counter parts in the Middle East, who think than Israel and the US were co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks.

I'd like to know how, the US is actually better off without Glass-Steagall. I'd like to know how we're better off with people like Michelle Malkin making arguments (not back in 1941, but in 2004) that members of my extended family deserved to be interned during World War II.

But most of all, I'd like to know how America is better off, under Republicans who have so far guided us based on fear and anger. Liberals mocked Bush as an idiot monkey; Conservatives retort with Obama as... a Socialist, tyrannical, evil, despotic Communist, dressed as a Joker but underneath, is actually Hitler. You get the diff?

So why do I bring this up?

Because Mr. Frank S. Robinson left a critical comment on a post earlier this year, that also plugged his book, "The Case for Rational Optimism", which, while I strongly disagree with the broad concept of optimism in the foreboding darkness of fear and anger, I am willing to let others provide their own take on the world.

Quite frankly Mr. Robinson, a single entry in your blog that simply advertises your book is not much of a blog. But, I will hold out optimism that you will eventually get around to it, and provide broader insight into your observations of everyday optimism.