Are you a glass half-full person or has someone drilled a hole in the bottom of that glass?

I’d call myself a foolish optimist, certain everything will turn out right in the end. And when it doesn’t, I tell myself it surely will next time.

I went looking for quotes about optimism versus pessimism and found one from the American humourist and poet Don Marquis – “A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.” I like that as it has a certain Jack Dee-like grumpiness.

Then again, I’d be a lying optimist if I pretended to know anything about Don Marquis. His name was just the bran left after I sifted those quotes.

This is perhaps a circuitous way to discuss another skirmish in the standoff between Donald Trump and the BBC, but there is logic here. Five years or so ago, the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman published an excellent book called Human Kind. It was subtitled A Hopeful History.

I chose his book as my read for our book club in a bar, where we match different books to a theme, to avoid us all having to yatter on about the same book.

Rutger believes that basically people are good. Early on in his “quest for a new view of humankind”, he sets out potential obstacles to optimism.

To stand up for human goodness, he says, “means weathering a storm of ridicule. You’ll be called naïve. Obtuse. Any weakness in your reasoning will be mercilessly exposed. Basically, it’s easier to be a cynic”.

Rutger could have been forgiven for feeling a touch cynical himself this week. In October he gave the BBC’s annual Reith Lecture in front of 500 people who heard him describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history”.

When the lecture began airing this week on BBC Radio 4, Rutger discovered that the BBC had removed those words – despite his lecture having been approved by the very same BBC.

What happened there? Between the lecture and the broadcast, Trump threatened to sue the BBC for at least $1 billion over a separate editing controversy involving Panorama, that’s what.

Bregman quite reasonably called the removal of his words from the lecture “self-censorship driven by fear”, noting the irony that his lecture was about elites’ “paralysing cowardice” and “bending the knee to authoritarianism”.

He told the Guardian: “I’m really sad about it. The whole team behind the Reith Lectures was incredible.

“And it was such an honour to deliver them, especially because the first Reith Lectures in 1948 were delivered by my intellectual hero Bertrand Russell, who was a huge advocate of free speech.

“I still hope lots of people will listen to the lectures. Because it seems to me that the message, about the cowardice of today’s elites, is more relevant than ever.”

Although a self-confessed European liberal, Bregman is fair-minded in his lecture, confessing at one point his admiration for the far-right. Not for their beliefs – which stand in cynical counterpoint to his optimistic view of humankind – but rather in their persistence, their willingness to spend years or even decades moulding events in their favour.

He cited as an example the protracted battle to overturn the right to abortion in the US; again, he did not approve of this action but could appreciate the long-term effort involved. The left, he said, needed to be organised in a similarly efficient manner.

His lecture is well worth a listen; and Human Kind is well worth a read.

Still, it is hard sometimes to remain optimistic in a world run by a self-serving cabal of pessimists. Trump’s threat to sue the BBC may well not come about; and if it did, it could be found to be baseless.

Sadly, that is beside the point. Trump uses the law to wear down all opposition. And he employs bullying in the same way. The BBC board, running scared after his threat to sue, have done his bidding anyway by censoring criticism from an academic they invited to give a lecture.

Then again, I am optimistic that one day Rutger Bregman’s words about Trump will stand true.

Here is another quote from Human Kind:

“To stand up for human goodness is to take a stand against the powers that be. For the powerful, a hopeful view of human nature is downright threatening. Subversive. Seditious. It implies that we’re not selfish beasts that need to be reined in, restrained and regulated. It implies that we need a different kind of leadership…”

Amen to that.