Since I was in high school, the most earnest thing my father said to me was: "If you don't embrace society, society won't embrace you." Therefore, before I found the label of "idealism", I also asked myself seriously. Yes, am I an anti-socialist? Thinking about it left and right, I always feel that the term "anti-social element" is too powerful. At best, I am a "society often wrong" element. In my world, "right and wrong" is always more important than "more and less".
In the movie, when Jefferson Smith, played by James Stewart, sat on the steps in front of the Lincoln Memorial and told the hostess that the words carved on the stone were only used to deceive fools like him, I saw the shadows of all idealists. When a real world, what many people call the "adult world" is first revealed before the eyes of an idealist, choices emerge. From this moment on, you will find that the ideal has changed from a longing and an oath to a burden. Throw it away, reluctant; keep it, but can't walk. The guides assigned to you don't really believe the direction of their fingers. There is a gap between belief and behavior that does not need to be stated. Instilling faith is the task of a bronzing textbook; teaching the secret of behavior is the responsibility of the whole world. The so-called principle is that when you defend it with your mouth, everyone will praise you as a good comrade; when you really do it, most people will think you are a big fool.
The old senator from the same state told Jefferson Smith in the closed office that I was the same as you 30 years ago, holding the same ideals and facing the same choices. And his choice is to compromise. Because if you can't stay in the Senate, all your ideals and ambitions will become empty talk. This is the paradox of reality. Ideals require you to persist, but to achieve them requires you to learn to compromise. In the rules of the political game, compromise is even a virtue. Both the federal system and the establishment of seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives are all built on the basis of mutual compromise. Before this compromise, Americans proudly called the word "great." Traditionally, only the weak regarded compromise as weak, and the strong became great because of compromise. Because of this, every dictator unanimously chooses to use an iron fist to cover up his inner fears, and shouts to cover up the wandering eyes. But on the other side of the coin, compromise is always in danger of being abused. Evolve from means to normal, so that it goes against the original intention. After retreating and retreating, you will soon find that principles no longer exist, and ideals have long since become a fig leaf for real interests. Therefore, thirty years later, re-election has become everything in the eyes of the old senator, and the principle is nothing but the naivety of a hillbilly.
When James Stewart sat down on the steps with her head down, the hostess ran over and said to him: "All the good that ever came into this world came from fools with faith like that." So James Stewart fart again Resurrected. This is the difference between idealists and others: they are inherently resistant to words such as "justice" or "goodness". In the same sentence, idealists will not hesitate as long as they see "good", while other people either avoid "fool" or are caught between the two hesitating and holding back. In the face of no turning back, every idealist is all fragile.
So unlike the ending of this movie, I always stubbornly believe that all movies with idealists as the protagonist should end in tragedy. At the beginning of the movie, James Stewart chanted his father’s motto on the train to Washington: "Only a career that is doomed to fail is a career worth fighting for." This reminded me of another story that has the same effect: Disgusted by radical nationalists, Borges once ran to ask to join the Conservative Party four or five days before the domestic elections in Argentina. He was surprised to tell him that the Conservative Party had no chance of winning. Borges replied: "Gentlemen are only interested in careers that have been defeated." In fact, this world has never been a hotbed of idealism. Every idealist who intends to step out of the greenhouse and face reality should be prepared to be defeated, not with some kind of fantasy collected from countless movies, sincere but false. I thought life could be like a movie, I thought I could be the protagonist. Because I always believe that a choice that understands the consequences can be regarded as a real choice.
Watching James Stewart standing alone in Congress yelling "either I'm dead right or I'm crazy!" to 89 other senators, I don't think there will be a more apt description. "It's a mess" and "crazy" seem to be the only two endings for idealists. But the problem is always that at first no one knew which one it would be.
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