I had an interesting revelation at work today: living denial could be fun.
I was talking with some coworkers at lunch. We all agreed that the company's research engineer has the best job in the company. He gets to play with whatever cool technology he wants, without regards to the practicality. He can spend all day spouting impressive features and test data for his work. Since he's a researcher, not a developer like the rest of us, he never has to show any real world results. His projects are never put into practice, so he never has to make any hard decisions that he'll later be called upon to defend. He never worries about being wrong or seeing his projects fail.
The rest of us will have to defend our decision later. We will be called upon to get real-world results. Some of the things we try to develop will fail, and there could be hell to pay for it. We're expected to deliver, and for the most part we do.
This sometimes produces friction between the researcher and the developers. He gets mad at us because our designs are never perfect. We get mad at him for not understanding that a "good enough" result right now is better than a perfect result that's never going to be realized.
Well, I want to be that research engineer. Wouldn't it be cool to live in his fantasy land and never having to worry about real-world consequences?
It struck me how eerily this parallels the politics here on APS.
The Republicans do the real work of making sure government, which will never be particularly appealing, is at least not as despicable as it otherwise would be without us. And along come the Libertarians and Paulistas and other similar types, constantly telling us how wrong we are and how much better they are. Nevermind that they have human flaws and shortcomings just like us. Nevermind that they won't ever be called upon to defend their real-world results, because they won't ever deliver any real-world results. Their record is squeaky clean and perfectly defensible, because they have no record to defend. They get to believe their *expletive deleted*it doesn't smell, and nobody will ever be able to prove them wrong.
I'm going over to the dark side. I now support Ron Paul.
My candidate has never instituted a policy that was wrong. Never. He never will, either. Bet me...
If he doesn't get elected, it won't be my fault, it'll be yours for not supporting him enough. If you don't support him because you think he can't win, well it's your fault he can't win, because you don't support him.
I'll let those dirty Republicans keep Hillary out of the oval office, while criticizing them at every turn. That should be fun.
No more voting for the lesser of two evils. I don't vote for any sort of evil (and I'll remind you all at every turn how superior I am for doing this). And if a greater evil results, I'll wash my hands of any responsibility. I'll blame it on the system, not on my method of participating in that system.
I don't have to worry about defending the country. First of all, other people will handle that regardless of how I behave. Second, I live in Indiana, which most jihadis can't even pronounce, much less find or attack. And we'll kill 'em all before they get to the beach, which we don't have around here. Third, a few Letters of Marque will provide all the defense we'll ever need. Hey, Letters of Marque have never proven inadequate in the past.
Democrats will erode our liberty faster and faster, and it won't be my job any longer to stop them.
Truly, it's the ultimate mental cop-out. It's self denial, but it'll be fun! It's sort of like joining the environmental movement on the left. You get all the benefits of feeling important, of being a good person, of making a difference. And all you have to do is suspend disbelief. Easy!
Oh yeah, I'll make fun of the rest of you suckers for not dropping out of the two-party system. I have seen through all that, because I'm smarter than all of you.