The ego begins

One thing to keep in mind is that Donald J. Trump is not the typical Republican. There's nothing particularly "conservative" about him, especially when it comes to being recognized as the smartest guy in the room. Anyone who remembers this

should understand that easily. So this article by Politico should already be tickling some Democrats.

“We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” Trump said. “We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure — which will become, by the way, second to none — and we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”

You're looking at every county commissioner and city mayor whose jurisdiction contains one or more of the above.

Trump wants to be known as the 21 century's Justinian II; the guy who saved/restored the Roman Empire (kinda... for a few years.) You can't have that if The Beast is dodging potholes every time the president goes out to review the peasants. This is part of why people like Paul Ryan and mainstream Republicans were leery of getting on board with Trump in the first place. He doesn't play ball in the typical DC fashion and will be loathe to abandon any project that makes him look the magnanimous overlord to plighted Americans. He doesn't answer to the donor class and he doesn't really care about "conservative principles." The problem for all of us is that he doesn't really care about anything that doesn't burnish the image of Trump. But navigating those waters while watching Ryan and Co. wrestle with the more hardcore budgetarians in the House will be endlessly entertaining.

And the crowner of that piece is, of course, the quote from the Heritage Foundation's Dan Holler:

“It would be a mistake to prioritize Big Government endeavors over important issues like repealing Obamacare, reforming our regulatory system and expanding domestic energy production,” Holler said. “Along with confirming a conservative justice to the Supreme Court, these are the type of legislative efforts that will help anxious families and folks struggling all across the country.”

'Cuz, y'know, every former pipefitter stuck working at Home Depot that I know is direly concerned about how a conservative justice on the Court or the profits of Chevron will help his anxious family. I mean, seriously, how could you be thinking about anything else while working for $10 an hour? Priorities, yo.

Subconscious expression

I play a little WoW. It's no secret that science fiction and fantasy have been interests of mine since I can remember knowing about them. I was fascinated by things like Star Trek and the Lord of the Rings (which I read at age 7.) However, despite being a huge Blizzard fan and having spent days on end in front of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo (as I used to express to people in the Green party: I'm a peace activist who spends a considerable amount of time playing wargames.), I resisted World of Warcraft and MMOs in general for a long time. I just felt like I had too many other things going on and didn't really have the time to become absorbed in it.

However, a couple years ago, I had some time on my hands and figured I would download the demo and try it out. After playing off and on for a few days, I decided I'd give it a try for a few months, and I've pretty much persisted in that pattern: every couple days I'll get on and play for a couple hours. It's a cool distraction and there are a few other friends of mine who play about as much. In possible subconscious tribute to my environmental politics, my main is a shaman; a class that attempts to commune with the natural spirits of the world and act with them to preserve parts of it and change others. He's part of a race called tauren, whose culture is expressly modeled on that of Native Americans, which is a longstanding interest and probably another subconscious engagement (believe me, if there were a culture modeled on feudal Japan, I would have been all over it.)

My initial role with my shaman was one of offense. There are few things as enjoyable as strapping on a couple of fist weapons (cesti of fantastical proportions and design far beyond anything possibly imagined by the Romans) and whaling away on whatever enemy creatures happen to be within reach. However, there's an alternate talent spec on my shaman that is based solely on healing. I can't do much with it on my own, but I can join a group in 5-, 10-, or 25-person instances and keep them alive so that we accomplish larger goals than I could perform by myself. I'm sure you've heard this theme before...

So, I've fallen into the habit of healing more than anything else when I play. There are four more healing specs among the 9 other classes in the game and I have characters that perform each of those specs. As with a lot of games that I play, I've become interested in the methodology behind the systems and how they accomplish the same goal with different tools. I still find it somewhat odd because, at root, I'm not a healer type, as it were. My personality lends itself to problem-solving (often, uh, direct problem-solving) moreso than sympathy or nurturing; both of which are often associated with the idea of healing. Furthermore, I'm more prone to playing the leadership role in a lot of my activities, which in the game would equate to tanking, not healing.

But I've begun to wonder if the healing approach is instead a substitute for the pursuit of group activity. While groups in the game can't function without a tank, they are equally unable to function without a healer (delving deeper, one realizes that without competent DPS (Damage Per Second) people, it's often difficult to succeed, as well.) However, the healer strikes me as the one that sustains the group as a whole. While the tank is needed to progress, there are many situations in which the group as a whole will be hindered (i.e. getting killed) even if the tank is doing his/her job properly. What gets them past those hindrances is usually the healer. Am I acting out my desire for achieving goals as part of a group/family/society?

There's no denying that I've been part of any number of ventures (personal, professional, political) in which progress has been halted by the lack of enthusiasm of those around me. I can remember any number of times when I was still ready to struggle ahead and everyone else seemed to find better things to do and left me holding the bag or, at the very least, stranded with the remainder whom were either indolent or motivated for narrow reasons, if not both. I've tried to start any number of projects that essentially depended on the participation of others which never came to fruition because my enthusiasm was always greater than everyone else's. So now I find myself enthralled by a game role which requires the presence of others.

The game can be played alone. Despite its appellation as a massively multi-player game, there are many who, in fact, prefer to solo it. One can quest and progress alone as a tank or DPS. It's far more difficult to do so as a healer. So, if one heals, one groups.

Thus we come back to one of our essential dichotomies: anyone who knows me realizes that I'm not overly fond of people and can lose my patience or become bored with most in a very short time. And, yet, the majority of what I enjoy involves other people to an often extraordinary degree: politics, games, even aikido. The latter is nominally a defensive art and perfecting the form requires uke (the person being thrown) to absorb the energy of shi'ite in a manner both protective of himself and in an understanding of the form. In other words, it's really difficult to practice the form alone; even (perhaps especially) the jo katas. You need someone else to exchange energy with.

Logically, one can't fail to see that there are any number of goals that will only be accomplished with the strength of many. Logically, there will have to be some spirit of cooperation amongst the people in order to make progress. Logically, people are going to have to be willing to tolerate either others' company or be reduced to factionalism before the goal is even approached. This is where logic clashes with reality and Ambrose Bierce's example of the post holes comes to mind.

So, here I am, seemingly naturally inclined to solitude, yet driven to participate with others in most of the things that I still enjoy (many of which are, admittedly, fading fast these days.) Am I a socialist at heart or just projecting onto an inclination for human contact, despite recoiling from the majority of it?

Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me (not of the same blood an seed, but partaking with me in mind, that is in a portion of divinity), I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To work against one another therefore is to oppose Nature, and to be vexed with one another or to turn away from him is to tend to antagonism. - Marcus Aurelius, Mediations, II.

 Still working on it.

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

That's F. Scott Fitzgerald, from his short story, "The Rich Boy" (1926.) The man was a fiction writer when said people still had to take a grasp of what was going on around them and transmit that through a fictional story to be considered a great writer. Now you just have to spew the content of Jane's Defense Weekly with some half-assed dialogue and you can be Tom Clancy. And get off my lawn. (No, really, there are some truly excellent modern writers. I'll get to that later.)

The concept that Fitzgerald was trying to get across was that of the nurture side of the classic nature vs. nurture debate. The conditions in which one was raised tend to shape the worldview of the individual. There are still instinctive reactions (e.g. nature is still part of it), but the broader actions of life like, say, policy design will tend to follow what you've become accustomed to, whether as a child or later... unless you're dumb as a post and claim that global warming can't be a reality since god promised that he wouldn't hurt us again after Noah's boat landed, like Representative John Shimkus does. Congress really is high comedy sometimes.

So, if you were an idealistic young lawyer who had spent a good part of your life working with impoverished communities or on various civil rights issues, but along the way had done time at Harvard Law... and then been elected to state office... and then national office... the whole way along hobnobbing with money and lobbyists and apparatchiks... wait. Am I reminding you of someone?

Oh, yeahhhh. That guy. "Change you can deceive wit-" sorry- "believe in." It never fails to amuse and then irritate me when people declare that this or that candidate is THE guy (it's almost always a guy...) that will be the "difference maker." The one to "change the way Washington works." The one who's really "in touch with the people." That kind of crap has been spread around since Rome, but then it was who was really in touch with the mob (read: rabble) to keep them from rioting and toppling the state. The way to be in touch with them was to buy them off with the bread dole and public games. Now you just have to convince people that their pet agenda is the one thing on your mind long enough to get past the first Tuesday in November.

So, community organizer to Wall Street's best friend? How does it happen? It happens because of the nurture effect. If you hang around long enough with people who tell you the Chicago gang's economic ideas are the only reliable answer to life, the universe, and everything (42!), pretty soon you'll be thinking like they do. When you start to think that way, it becomes very easy to imagine that your station in life is reliant upon thinking that way. Presto! You could have seen this coming as soon as he hired Geithner and Summers to be his economic team (By the way, one of my dearest wishes in life is to drop Larry Summers into the middle of an intersection somewhere in Russia or Latvia or one of the other nations he traumatized with his economic "shock therapy" and see how long it takes for the population to get medieval on his ass.)

Your savior president doesn't care about you. To paraphrase the eminent philosopher D. Duck: "He's rich! He's wealthy! He's comfortably well off!" That means you're one thing and one thing only: you're a number ("You're the weak... and I am the tyranny of evil men.") He needs a certain amount of numbers to stay in office, so as long as you do your duty every 4 years and abandon all critical thought, walk into a booth and pull a lever/connect an arrow/touch a screen and elect him or someone like him, you've fulfilled your role, as far as they're concerned. He's not there to serve you or help you. He's there to serve the people that pay for all the advertising that you soak up, swallow, and believe for a few months before having your image shattered once again. If you drop out and don't participate at all, that's even better. They don't even have to pay to sucker you in. They can go on draining the money out of your paycheck and denying you opportunity without even having to pay lip service to your concerns. And you'll let them, because your iPod is much more interesting, right?

They have control. They know that they have control. And you're letting them have control every time you believe that anyone with a D or R following their name will somehow act differently and act in your interests. How much do you have in common with a millionaire? With the results of the latest election, 100 of 100 US Senators are millionaires (prior to that, the lone exception was Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.) These are the people you expect to represent you? It doesn't matter that someone used to be a community organizer. Once they're rich and in office, it's over (funny how those two go hand in hand by default, isn't it?) And if you think I'm talking about "class warfare", you're right, because there's been a class war going on in this country since its inception and the non-wealthy have a two century losing streak. Wake up to it.