For progressives the glass is always half empty

Reading Don Surber's Clavin explains all I came across a comment that triggered a powerful and very happy childhood memory.  Steve commented:

Carol, try re-reading Ratzenburger’s comments. He never said the stage fell apart. He said “when everything fell apart…”

“I was at Woodstock — I built the stage. And when everything fell apart,”

They did have to airlift fifty doctors (by helicopter) to care for the anti-industrialist tribes groveling in the mud. How ironic.

I recommend reading “Apollo and Dionysus” by Ayn Rand to understand the significance of Woodstock contrasted with the Apollo moon launch. Although these events took place just days apart in August 1969, they were light years apart ideologically. In a nutshell, it’s emotion vs. reason or Rousseau vs. Locke…

Today’s “liberal” or “progressive” was born in the primordial ooze at Woodstock. [Someone explain to me how tribalism is "progressive"?]

Today’s tea-partier, or NASCAR dad, would have been at the Moon launch. The Apollo moon launch represented the culmination of rational human intellect.

More than a million people went to Cape Canaveral. They left it as they found it. 300k went to Woodstock. They destroyed it and the surrounding farm like locusts.

For clarification, I am not the Carol that Steve is replying to.  Neither here nor there.  My memory is not of the Apollo launch but the moon landing   My parents threw one hell of a party that day.  We were so proud when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon.  I can feel the pride of that moment right now sitting on my porch almost forty-one years later. 

My parents raised me to be proud of America's accomplishments and that while there is always more to be done, and we are far from perfect, the United States of American is by far the best country on this planet.  I learned from parents that the glass is always more than half full.  But progressive always see the glass as half empty.  They sweep aside the country's accomplishments and concentrate on what they perceive as failures. 

Because progressives view America as a failure they strive to destroy rather than improve.  Health care is a perfect example.  Pretty much everyone agrees that there are problems with our health care system.  The way to solve a problem is to first decide what is working and what isn't.  Then you can build on what works and fix what doesn't.  Progressives want to destroy a system that 85 percent of us are happy with and start from scratch.  Conservatives want to concentrate on the problems while leaving the underlying structure that has worked so well in place.

I don't know how to address the pessimism that is so prevalent among progressives because I don't understand it.  My America is a country of tremendous accomplishment.  Sadly, progressives who have lived with the same advantages that I have had only see the negative.  I strongly suspect that if all that progressives wish for were to come to be, they would still see the glass as half empty.