Don't lose hope. Be a fanatical optimist instead.

https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2020/02/05/trump-impeachment-acquittal-steve-almond?fbclid=IwAR1FtE0Y0KrDhNSGqHV64Ho7Ykn_HNWMO_DGLVrwqwOT9R9qwN5ePuadb5Y

Excerpt:

Here’s what I can see, more clearly now than ever: The only remaining source of accountability is the power of our own faith.

Faith may sound like an old-fashioned word, but the only way to battle nihilism, which is the belief in nothing, is with belief in something. This is what Adam Schiff meant when he declared, in his soaring and doomed final argument that he placed his faith “in the optimism of the founders.”

I would go a step further. In this climate of calculated cynicism — a cynicism designed to make us feel hopeless — we need to be fanatical in our optimism, in our belief that we can become the subjects of history again, not just the objects.

We need only look at the history of this country to see the proof of this fanatical optimism. Abolition. Suffrage. The labor movement. The New Deal. The War on Poverty. Civil Rights. In each case, the outcome seemed impossible. And yet millions of Americans rose up and took action to make our union more perfect.