Cynics.  We’ve all encountered them. They make pronouncements with great certainty and take pride in not appearing foolish. Those who disagree with them are instantly branded, in the eyes of the cynic, as naïve.

Hope, on the other hand, demands things that despair does not.

“Hopefulness is risky, since it is after all a form of trust, trust in the unknown and the possible, even in discontinuity.  To be hopeful is to take on a different persona, one that risks disappointment, betrayal . . .”

Rebecca Solnit: “False Hope and Easy Despair”

Three recent pieces that showed up in my newsfeed about very different topics—guns, greed, and tennis—all touch on this idea of cynicism vs. hope.

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BAD FAITH

Brian Klaas, professor of Global Politics at University College London, writes about the gun violence in America in a post entitled Guns at Annunciation.

“I was baptized at the church where kids were murdered. It’s a canary in the coal mine for a dystopian America, where people blame everything but the real cause: a country awash with unlimited guns.”

Klass’s key insight: “There are three key factors that are relevant to understanding elevated levels of targeted, mass violence in the United States: social dysfunction, elite incitement, and above all, easy access to unlimited guns.”

Klaas’s bottom line: “Every other rich country has solved this problem.”

Klaas walks readers through all the facts and answers all the cynical myths used by politicians and influencers in this debate. He ends with the following:

“I grew up in the United States—I shot guns at summer camp as a kid—and I now live in the United Kingdom. In the UK, there’s a key difference: I never think about guns. I never think about mass shootings. Never. It’s just not part of life. It’s not a problem that exists.

Every other rich country has solved this problem. The United States can solve it too. But it’s going to take a lot of effort, a lot of persuasion, and a lot of hard-fought election victories.”

Hope requires action.

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TAXES ARE THE PRICE WE PAY FOR CIVILIZATION

In poker and murder mysteries a “tell” is an unconscious action that is thought to betray an attempted deception. I’ve noticed a great deal of cynicism recently in actions that give away the grift that drives many of the moves made by those seeking to tear down our democracy.

Journalist and author Paul Waldman recently posted a good example in which he considers the actions of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase and one of the movers and shakers on Wall Street.

Waldman’s key insight: Even though Dimon is now disparaging the Democratic Party, corporations and business leaders made a lot of money under President Joe Biden and the Democrats (as they did under presidents Clinton and Obama before him).

But here’s the thing: They made gobs of money when that nasty socialist Joe Biden was in office . . . the S&P was at 3851 when Biden took office and 5996 when he left, for a 56% gain in four years. Not too shabby!

And what about Dimon’s personal fortunes and that of the company he leads? Under Biden’s cruel hand, the price of JPMorgan Chase shares doubled. They made $54 billion in profits in 2024, a record for the firm. Dimon took home $39 million in compensation that year. It must have been horrible to endure.

Waldman’s bottom line: There’s not a rational reason for the response of those in Dimon’s position. It is emotional.

“Why is it that people like Jamie Dimon crap all over Democrats, whose policies promote strong economic performance, but bend over backward to excuse even the most capricious and foolhardy policies of the mad king in the White House? The answer, I believe, is the most banal thing you could imagine:

They don’t like paying taxes.“

“Republicans cut taxes for the rich, and they like that. Democrats raise taxes on the rich, and they hate that.” Pure cynicism. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. phrased it, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.” Too many of the rich in America, as Waldman points out in this helpful essay, are not willing to pay for a civil society.

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THE HOPE OF ARTHUR ASHE

In starting his countdown of the ten greatest sports books ever, Joe Posnanski—my favorite sportswriter—celebrated John McPhee’s Levels of the Game. The book is an account of a single tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968. Posnanski’s short post is a wonderful read that explores McPhee’s exquisite writing, a repeat subject here on MTC.

Posnanski’s key insight: “Before I started (the book), I wanted to be one kind of writer. After I finished, I wanted to be a whole different kind of writer.”

McPhee opens Levels with the following paragraph:

“Arthur Ashe, his feet apart, his knees slightly bent, lifts a tennis ball in the air. The toss is high and forward. If the ball were allowed to drop, it would, in Ashe’s words, ‘make a parabola and drop to the grass three feet in front of the baseline.’ He has practiced tossing a tennis ball just so thousands of times. But he is going to hit this one.”

“So simple. So exact. So concise.” Joe also mentions an amazing section in the book about Clark Graebner’s temper and general rage on the court.

“Apparently he believes he can accurately assign blame outside himself for almost every shot he misses, every point he loses. He glowers at his wife. He mutters at other people in the crowd. Airplanes drive him crazy. Bad bounces are personal affronts. He glares at linesmen. He carps at linesmen. He intimidates ball boys. He throws his racquet from time to time, and now and then he takes hold of the fence around a court and shakes it violently, his lips curling. He seems to be caged.”

This paragraph, Joe suggests, is “utterly perfect. Every word in there, every one, you probably knew by the time you were in the sixth grade, if not earlier. And yet, the way McPhee arranges them, they turn into poetry.”

As Donald Jackson wrote in a review of the book when it was released:

“On the surface it is a joint profile of . . . Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, but underneath it is considerably more—namely, a highly original way of looking at human behavior . . . He proves his point with consummate skill and journalistic artistry. You are the way you play, he is saying. The court is life.”

Bottom line: Arthur Ashe didn’t succeed because of cynicism. He succeeded through hope, talent, and hard work in spite of the cynicism of others.

Cynicism vs. hope. You are the way you play.

More to come . . .

DJB

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NOTE: Instead of writing long personal pieces about the times we live in, I’m returning to the original idea of my “Weekly Reader” series to highlight a small handful of recent posts from my newsfeed where I feel the authors have important points to make. Most will include short links to posts I found interesting and want to share while others will dive deeper and will (hopefully) link together thematically.

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Photo of rainbow by Cindy Lever from Pixabay