Barbara Ehrenreich is right; it is possible to brainwash one's self into optimism so far as to constitute a kind of socially-approved insanity. Indeed, the way workaholism was the defining pathology of the Eighties, irrational exhuberance is the nuttitude du jour in the Aughties.

Viz:

Yesterday I was striding past the jail on my way from A to B (I live so close to the jail and courthouse that the jail is virtually always on the way from my A to my B, regardless of which A's and B's we're talking about) and I saw a – let us be honest here – a crack whore, on her knees, scrabbling with fingernails on concrete looking for one last sparkling shard of rock fallen to the filthy sidewalk…and the thought that crossed my mind, preempting all others was, "God, her hair looks fabulous!"