Published: July 26, 2008 11:54 pm            

LUCINSKI: The problem with pessimism

When it comes to one’s outlook on life, there are basically two kinds of people: Optimists and pessimists.

To be sure, there are varying degrees of each. There are the cockeyed optimists who laugh in the face of danger and the dour pessimists for whom a truckload of Prozac is not enough. Buf most of the world’s population falls somewhere in between.

It’s always been difficult to understand the glass-half-empty folks. There are more of them coming out of the woodwork these days, what with $4 per gallon gasoline and a war in Iraq that only now seems to be winding down. And, for the short term, it’s not hard to see where that pessimism comes in.

But those who look at our current adversity and think that we’re headed toward some sort of Armageddon are those with either a short view or no view of history. America and Americans have faced much tougher times over the past 232 years and the nation has not only survived, but has come through it all even stronger.

The wars: Revolutionary, Civil, Spanish-American, World War I and II, Korean, Vietnam and now Iraq/Afghanistan. While the death of one serviceman or woman is too many, most of our previous military conflicts resulted in a far greater number of casualties than the one we’re involved in at the moment.

And some of them, Vietnam and the War Between the States come immediately to mind, generated even more debate and protest than Iraq. Guess what? We’re still here. We will be after this one as well.

The economic problems: Naysayers and Negative Nellies like to bring up the word “depression.” That is a far cry from where we are today. There have been a number of severe economic crashes in the United States, including one which lasted for some 20 years in the late 1800s.

The few of us left who remember the details of the Great Depression of the 1930s speak of not being able to afford food. These days, some of us can no longer afford gasoline for our second SUV. Big difference.

In more clinical economic terms, national unemployment at the peak of the Great Depression stood at 25 percent. Why, as bad as things seem to be in the Niagara Falls area, we’re nowhere near that level here. The U.S. unemployment rate is around 5.5 percent, about average for the past decade. There is great debate as to whether we’re even in a recession, a much milder form of economic decline, much less a depression.

To be sure, there are merchants of doom among us who would like no better than to convince all who will listen that the nation is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket and they will be the ones to save us from ourselves. Among the most prominent are the politicians.

To many of them, America’s standing in the world has never been worse. Our economic standing has never been lower and the future has never been more bleak. And we won’t even get into the phony crisis they call global warming. They, of course, have all of the answers when it comes to turning things around.

Never mind that there have been no major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. Never mind that we are weathering the storm of rising oil prices and the cost of a barrel of crude has actually dropped almost $25 in the past couple of weeks. Lower gasoline prices should follow. Never mind that Americans are using their ingenuity and intellect to deal with the problems at hand, from the surge in Iraq to the development of alternative energy sources at home.

That’s not to say that it’s not difficult. Not every potential solution works. There are failures and disappointments on the path to success. But there will be success.

The purveyors of pessimism fly in the face of history: They insist that America can not survive its low points. They even exaggerate those low points. But history shows us the opposite picture; that America knows how to come back and it knows how to become stronger than ever. Just watch us.

Dick Lucinski is the managing editor of the Niagara Gazette. His columns appear on Wednesday and Sunday.

        

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