A False Dilemma

At dinner, my friend, Andy, told me about the extent of the government's dominion over our mouths and our wrists.
He told me about a story he'd heard recently, one about a graffiti artist whose canvases-of-choice were billboards and who became wealthy by means of his glistening beacons of counterculture. With the money he amassed, he purchased his own blank billboard, which he planned to tag up legally. But the art he chose to create and display to the thousands of early-morning commuters supported homosexuality in one way or another, and was consequently deemed illegal.
My father asked, "What, you thought we had freedom of speech in this country?" He smirked with the restrained grin of someone who wants to laugh at their own joke, but refrains from doing so because of the social stigma.
If I actually pursued his provocative remark, I doubt he would be able to substantiate his perhaps facetious contention that we don't have freedom of speech. But there are other liberties upon which organizations or important persons infringe by their claims of strategic sacrifices and desired security. I don't feel that our freedom to assemble and protest is genuine, and I am inclined to believe that the people who attend leftist protests and watch their license plates being scribbled down by cops will agree. If the will of the people has such a capacity to militate, I wonder why these liberties are not forcibly retracted with vehement cries of moral desecration accompanied by nonchalant middle fingers.
And I think it's because many people don't know they don't have everything that is promised to them in the brittle papers of passed eras, or because they have bought into the deception that sacrificing such rights is judicious.
On Facebook today, the poll asks, "Is the glass half-full or half-empty?"
76% of the 1,000 who replied, most of whom are between 18 and 29, declare that it is half-full. I find it curious that so many optimists--or perhaps dumb people, unaware of their legal manacles--presented themselves, amidst a backdrop of opprobrious abrogations and regressive environmental and social policies.
Is America a land of optimists, or a land of people contented by their own ignorance?
Or, more likely, for those of us who are familiar with fallacious arguments, is it simply a land of false dilemmas, a place in which we ignore the fact that there very well may not be a cup at all, and instead only a petrified dedication to seeing something positive about a situation that is irrefutabley negative, and ought to be seen as such?
I suppose sometimes, we can't afford to be optimistic. Sometimes, optimism creates a faith in our own ingenuity that isn't warranted. It can devolve into a form of escapism, a subversive conviction that suicidal attempts won't lead to suicide because we're too happy to die.
Yes, sometimes optimism can be boiled down to idiocy.
But don't lose hope, because the pessimists are even dumber.