It is important to recognize and politics positive thinking is often the slaves’ virtue - something that people do to con themselves about the burden and change being placed upon them.

Bovard’s remark (as phrased here) reads as a warning about how “positive thinking” can be politically weaponized. Instead of empowering people, enforced optimism can function as a coping ritual for those with little power—encouraging them to reinterpret exploitation, austerity, or coercive “reforms” as opportunities, thereby dulling resistance. Calling it a “slaves’ virtue” frames cheerfulness and compliance as adaptive behaviors under domination: the burden is real, but the rhetoric of positivity pressures individuals to internalize blame and to accept imposed change as inevitable or even beneficial. The thrust is anti-propagandistic: skepticism and clear-eyed recognition are presented as prerequisites for genuine agency.