Given the current political issues, it is obvious to apply this saying to our current elected leadership. However, in keeping with the objectives of this space to take seriously that which is overlooked and that which lurks under the surface, think instead about what constitutes power and thus what constitutes leadership, weather for benefit or ill.
If you want to know what holds real power over you, consider that which you are too fearful to challenge.
Given the amount of challenge currently faced by elected leadership, they are not who the first line is directed at. They are not permanent and suffer as much from chance and fortune through the system they inhered and thus the limitations they also inhered as anyone else. Rather, the first line is directed at what lead to the system in the first place.
The real false hope that has been held out is that if we follow our feelings wherever they lead, we will be happy.
The result has been the opposite. Many will recognize the "greed" that drives the financial system as an example of this. This sentiment is far more pervasive though. In accepting that following feelings leads to happiness, for any good person preventing other people from doing the same would make one feel uncomfortable and thus unhappy. Pain caused by a lack of comfort leads to avoiding what caused the pain. This combined with the very new and very western idea of cultural relativism has lead to it being an uncomfortable, and thus it is assumed, unhappy thing to challenge anything put forward to the purpose of this new common virtue of, not only everyone being equal, but everyone being entitled to the best of everything.
This is the essence of political correctness, a thing that tends to be seriously challenged only by people equally out of touch with reality, like members of the Westboro Baptist Church, and Tea Partiers.
This has become elevated to the level of doctrine and dogma and has delivered neither happiness, nor equality, nor gotten anyone closer to whatever they may feel entitled to. Rather it has allowed the collective sweeping of that which is too hard to seriously talk about under the rug at best, and at worst it has resulted in avoidance and thus ignorance of human suffering.
For example, a white man shoots a minority teenager and mass society demands blood. Even if this is a rightful response, it absolves no one for the blind eye turned to people who look like the victim killing other people who look like the victim on a regular basis. It absolves collective society even less for ignoring the conditions that lead to it being common for this to happen in the first place.
The correct response to that which has given false hope is to face reality and move on.
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