Character trait: an intolerance for lazy intellect. During tabletop debates it became customary for him to point out his opponent’s contradictions. He tried to show them that they did not really care about what they were talking about but cared for opening their mouths. “Politics is the art of justifying hypocrisy,” he said. He suggested that politics was rhetorical, performative, but not actionable, i.e., it hardly ever extended beyond advocacy—there must always be a problem to solve and solutions are obstacles to that fact.
There are two categorical persons in politics, but one binary that is ubiquitous is that between the honest and dishonest. The latter does not have to deliberately lie and often can be authentic in his beliefs, but when he is characterized by popularity he becomes concerned with maintaining that popularity. That maintenance depends on whether or not he feeds his family. And it presupposes his contradiction, his dialectic, his juxtaposition to those he clearly identifies as his enemy. He will convince you that they are an enemy because they have made him their enemy: it is no difference between left and right when each side says “they literally want you dead.” Perhaps there is truth to that; after all, it only takes two warring sides to believe that for there to be a war. It is also important to note that these persons are the inverse for each side: there is one enemy, and it is all of us.
In other words, maybe there isn’t a binary at all. It is relative.
Thus far the theme has been that we are outsiders sitting on the embankment of a quietly desperate sea—quiet because our ears are deaf from the clamor of every characters woes and everything that we do not yet know but are told to be angry about. The sea is perceptibly shaken, but we are either ripples for someone else’s cause (rest assured for the “greater good”) or voiceless for our own. The latter is simultaneously novel and solitary, and the question is always how to convert solitude into recognition.
Another heavy lift, Jacob. Well done. For my part, I shall convert solitude into dendritic power by remaining mirthful today, and giving all I meet a Texas grin and words of kindness. What else can a guy do.