Pessimist-realists are never respected!

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/vindication.html

After watching this jaw-dropping video it got me thinking about what’s happening today. We may deride George Osborne a bit for being out of time yet that doesn’t mean that any opposition political party shouldn’t say it as it is. I think it credits George Osborne with too much kudos to suggest that just because HE says something behaviour will be changed in a subsequent fashion!

What the video does show is how pessimist-realists are never accepted in their own country as people sometimes either cannot accept the hard realities of truth or simply don’t want to by filling their minds with a casual false hopefulness that is borne out of both a psychological or political stake in a particular political perspective (ie laisse-faire capitalism) or a blind faith in the institutions of their own country.

Yet after all this I wonder if these same `commentators` (they might as well commentate on the horses) are still in a job? Surely those that got it spectacularly wrong in any sane society would just be thrown out whether it’s politicians (Angela Eagle, Gordon Brown) or commentators (Ben Stein etc).

The question is society being too charitable to those who have failed so spectacularly?