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He explained, “In the spirit of American meliorism, the criticism is to make things better, not necessarily because I didn’t like it.”

What if the real way forward weren’t a great leap but grinding, tedious, unglamorously incremental change—what George Eliot called “meliorism”?

For some realists, “global meliorism” — the belief that U.S. foreign policy can and should try to make a better world — is a dirty word.

The world-view of Judaism, which regards the entire economy of life as the realization of the all-encompassing plan of an all-wise Creator, is accordingly an energizing optimism, or, more precisely, meliorism.

In the midst of a futile meliorism which deceives the more, the more it soothes, he stands out like some sinister skeleton at the feast, regarding the festivities with a flickering and impenetrable grin.