« Doctor, Lawyer, CEO, Politician, Priest, Teacher, Capitalist, Investment Banker | Main | Myself, My New Wife, and My Future Children »
Fancying Myself So Clever
After fancying myself so clever and after getting a pretty good handle on what everything is not, I want to embrace everything that is, as in the way it seems. I can work with that. There are stable metrics and if-then clauses that are simple and effective. The things that I was seeing require special light and squinted eyes. Like in pointillism—or better yet in painting by Dali—things are not as they seem, but it is much easier if they were, for sure. For everyone. I have an even better comparison. In my experience behind the curtain, what people see is like abstract expressionism. Most people look at it and say the obvious, “my n-year-old can do that†or “what kind of idiot spent how much on that?†Well, the truth is even better than fiction. That's actually what you're supposed to think. I remember when my buddy W used to work at the World Bank and even at the UN. He used to roll his eyes and curse the chaff that worked in the offices around him. Such beaurocrats, such dolts, he said. And when I worked at the treasury, I felt the same way. This paper-pushing, this red-tape—all of this stuff is essential to the conservative nature of government. Structures have to be created and adheared to. What few people know and what everyone wants to believe—and it is true!—is that there is a small cadre of hyper-vigilant, hyper-aware, hyper-intelligent, and hyper-loyal people throughout the system. Considering how expensive and how expansive the government is, there are so few people actually making the big decisions that you would shit yourself to know. And they really aren't the ones you would assume, either. Almost never. Okay, maybe Clinton was different, but in general, never.