When Hope Dies, Meaning is What’s Left

A new level of maturity has fallen over me like a gray veil.

I thought it was depression. But now I’ve come to understand that it’s a new realization of reality.

I’ve been deeply moved by a couple of observations in the last few days.

Last night we watched Train Dreams.

It’s a story of loss, but also of a delusional eternal hope of return. It is a beautiful story of our time because, of course, the hope never returns. But you go on living anyway.

Compare that to a story like Hunger Games.

Not only does the beautiful essence of hope not die, she triumphs.

In Train Dreams, Katnis Everdeen, is just a moment in time that is lost to the fires of random chaos, not even to the cruel hand of an unjust system. There is no sense. There is no justice. There is just life.

I’ve also been deeply moved by the resignation of Joe Kent.

He was the Director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center. He quit over the Iran War.

His wife, Shannon Kent, a highly trained Navy cryptologist, was killed in a 2019 suicide bombing in Manbij, Syria, while deployed alongside US special operations forces. 

Joe Kent is a former U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) officer who completed 11 combat deployments and later served as a CIA paramilitary officer. A highly decorated veteran with six Bronze Stars, his career spanned deployments in Iraq, Yemen, and North Africa before he became a political commentator and candidate for Washington state.

He wrote on Twitter:

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

This is his resignation letter:

He blames all our troubles on Israel. He’s not wrong, in this case. But he isn’t yet able to take this to its inevitable conclusion. Yes. We are insanely beholden to Israel. But every other president, up until now, has been able to say no. President Trump got played. He felt too good about his Venezuela deployment. Operation Midnight Hammer felt good. He felt omnipotent, and now he’s bogged down in Iran because Israel wanted it. Iran has nothing to do with the United States of America. We don’t even need their damn oil.

Israel is not the problem. America is the problem. In fact, the greatest problem in the entire world right now is the United States. We are the great evil. Not Iran. Not Israel. George Lucas was right. The Viet Cong were Luke Skywalker. Today, Luke Skywalker is found in the Mujahideen and Al-Qaeda. The United States has been Darth Vader the entire time.

How does it feel to be on the side of evil? And for what? Unaffordable housing and expensive food? What do we get for selling our souls to satan?

Joe Kent is very committed to far-right ideals. And his idealism is sincere. To make this stand that he did is incredibly brave. Incredibly idealistic. He is likely going to be faced with a lifetime of investigations, death threats, and probably prison. But he hasn’t taken his idealism far enough. Eventually, you come to the realization that it’s not Israel, it’s America. The left is ahead of the right on this fact. But we’ll all get there together eventually. Black people have been there the entire time. We are all slowly catching up to them.

I’ve been watching these young conservatives repeatedly be betrayed by their leader, Donald Trump. For them, he represented all their hopes and dreams. An outsider who wasn’t afraid to stand up to the system. But in the end, the system is too seductive, too powerful. He has fallen prey to the overwhelming glory and opulence offered on a golden tray by lifelong experts who know exactly how to manipulate these temporary figures who think too much of themselves. That messianic ego becomes their greatest weakness. They think they are god and then they are completely compromised from the inside. “You are God. Take down the great evil that is Iran. You can do anything. Look at all you have done so far. It will only take a few days.” You believe the hype. How could you not?

The iconic quote from the 2008 film The Dark Knight is: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Donald Trump is descending into maybe the greatest American Villain President of all time. He desperately wants to be the greatest of all time. He might get his wish. Just not the way he planned. (Did you see those quotes where he said he’s not heaven-bound? That maybe Air Force One is the highest level of heaven he’ll likely ever reach? He’s said it multiple times. He understands his evilness. (We all get to heaven, Donald. Don’t worry, buddy. You’re just a little screwed up right now. The world has you all twisted around. But that happens to us sometimes. The great cosmic pulse will wipe that all away. We are all pure at our core.))

He has betrayed MAGA. That is, in some ways, the saddest betrayal of all his betrayals. His people deserve a good leader. They got a broken man. That’s what we all get in the end: Broken men betraying our hopes and dreams. It hurts so bad.

And before you feel all smug that you were right and they were wrong, take a look in the mirror. Your leaders are no better. We have all been sold out to the highest bidder… For Democrats, it’s corporations. For Republicans, it’s oligarchs. Either way, there’s always 100’s of billions of dollars for random wars. Israel has free health care, and we don’t.

Hope is for the foolish.

No one is coming to save us. Have a revolution, if you want. We’ll be right back here sooner or later. The greedy game players always win. That’s because all we want is a little peace and happiness. And all they want is domination. We’re playing two different games. The lambs are always killed by the lions.

When you finally come to see it, it’s deeply depressing. But the fact of the matter is, you have always lived in this system. The only thing that has changed is your awareness. Your Doors of Perception have been wiped clean of the vaseline haze of hope and optimism.

AI told me to go reread Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” again. It’s a good message for this time in humanity.

We are all growing up. We are all coming to see that we are caught in a cage from which there is no escape.

BUT, when hope dies, meaning sits in the bottom of the barrel waiting for you. That’s the message Frankl wants to share with us. If anyone understood this it was him.

For me, meaning is found in you. You have been raped, beaten and betrayed by leaders who have done nothing other than lie and manipulate you from the beginning. They are the biggest, worst pimps in history. And you aren’t even their bottom bitch. You’re just lumber.

I’m not afraid of them. They have nothing I need. And so I fight them because I can. I fight them because of the agregious wrongs they have done to you.

Joe Kent is sacrificing his life for you. He is the hero you deserve. He inspires me to continue to be brave.

My meaning is to fight the system. Not so that I win. But so that they suffer just a little like they have made you suffer. They are fragile and extremely sensitive. They think I’m evil. Let them. There is nothing they can do to me.

You deserve better because you ask for so little. You are grateful and gracious. They are the greedy and gluttonous. I fight them because I can. And I know it terrifies them. They have always attempted to sideline and destroy people like me. Watch, they will do it to Joe Kent. They will do it to anyone who dares betray them. No matter how good a soldier Joe was, he crossed a line of no return. He will pay with a lifetime of suffering, if not death.

They are the evil. They are the darkness descended around us all. They deserve nothing and get everything.

The war isn’t left and right. The war is up and down.