Monday, September 07, 2009

In the end, it is up to those who get it sooner to be patient and do the hard work...

I was surprised recently, when a colleague of mine, talking about one of our contractors, said that he looked honest and hard working and he was sure he would deliver in time. I had a meeting afterwards with the guy and immediately judged him a crook or at least someone who didn’t know what he was talking about; I was sure (and was proved correct)  that, as soon as he got the contract, he would scout around for cheap labor, botch the work and disappear after receiving an advance payment.

This got me wondering what I have, in addition to age and experience, that others don’t; I assure you, for example, that watching someone on TV who to you is clearly lying and dissimulating, together with friends who miss all the telltale signs and take the person’s words at face value is a disheartening, irritating experience. “Can’t you see he is lying?” you feel like bursting out saying; “don’t you understand he doesn’t mean that at all?”.

Of course, after many years, I – and those like me, a bit quicker on the draw, let’s say – have learnt to be patient; we know that eventually these people will reveal themselves for what they are (I remember with a smile Dean’s horrible “aaaaarghhhh” when he lost or Edwards’ “scandal”: I wouldn’t have trusted him with a second hand toothbrush from the moment I saw him). As painful as all this is (you always have to stop yourself from saying: “I told you so” and you keep wondering how grownups and/or professionals can talk seriously about this or that person), it is also funny. I remember last year someone asking me what I thought of Obama (for me it was unbelievable to watch all these people drinking in his “hopeychangey” thing; he is perhaps the most empty, hypocritical, fake, dissimulating man I have ever watched perform in public); naively, I replied: “I don’t see how he can even win his party’s primaries”. Knowing smiles of superiority welcomed my – in their eyes – ignorant opinion.

They were right, of course; they believed as gospel what the man and MSM were saying (to the point of forgetting his ineffectual career, dark past and criminal frequentations). I had again committed the sin of thinking that no one could miss the blatant incompetence, the emptiness of the words, the disgusting moral equivalence always at the forefront. Am I happy now that I can say “I told you so” as more and more people realize the truth? No, I am not; the stakes are too high and the damage could be irreversible. It is time for those who are only waking up now to make up for the time lost.

Ultimately, the America we love lives or dies because of the action or inaction of its citizens. Revel reminds us of the terrible responsibility of that citizenship, as we face a battle for survival, against ourselves.

Posted via email from captainmarlow's posterous

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