Good point.

In my own mind, the practical aplication is this: I come up with a solution that makes sense to me. If a politician comes along who offers a solution that is the same as mine, or even terribly close, I vote for ‘em. If their idea seems better than mine, I vote for ‘em. If their idea doesn’t make as much sense as mine, I don’t vote for ‘em. So the payoff is that it’s a kind of very elaborite bullsh!t detector, and I vote accordingly, and if we lived in a country where my vote mattered, we’d be sitting pretty. Alas, it’s still just America…

But trust me, I’m not going down a whole. I have a firm grasp on my utter political impotence.

And that what’s separates a plan from an idea. That’s what I also think you missed about much of what I’m doing. Most of my work has to do with implementation. You’ve declared a destination, a destination we all want, without a route. I want to find the route. I’m not trying to soup up the car or break the land speed record.

So, when I head you say “we need to get back too…” my question is “how?” I’m a cartographer drawing a map, not an engineer digging a tunnel through a mountain.

It’s a cliche, but many of us men (and some women) do tend to be “problem solvers.” We don’t like to sit around and kvetch, we listen and we try to fix. I get that, and I share the same trait.

This is also why I get so exasperated by this. I look at everything like a system and if I’m told there are problems I try to devise a solution to fix the system. It is my nature. I cannot help it. I solve puzzles.

With the explosion of 24/7 news we are confronted with problems all day, everyday and I found myself being consumed by politics. The truth be known, I actually don’t care much about politics, but in our lives we are continuously bombarded with messages telling us politics are important and the world is on fire.

So, I dove into politics and really started paying attention. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was trying to fix the system. I was trying to create a better “plan.” After about two years, and literally wondering if I wasn’t about to go insane I finally snapped out of it and realized what my brain was doing. It was like the computer in “War Games.” It’s an unsolvable situation but I could not stop trying to solve it. It has so many variables, and every day there are five new, important news stories with information to research and digest… I was completely sucked into political news and almost consumed by it.

When I realized what was going on, and what my puzzle solving brain was trying to do I took a very deep breath, turned off the TV, stepped away from the computer and completely unplugged. After a few days of decompressing I realized I’m not the only one dragged into the spiral. This is why I occassionally go bonkers on this topic. A few months ago I unfairly ripped into David for similar reasons. I overstepped, but it hits close to home. I’d love to have those two years of my life back and I get nervous when I see others being sucked into the same wormhole.

Perspective is the answer. Who are we, really, and what impact can we have? My best hope is to get involved locally, very locally. That’s where I can have the most influence. And, I can also try to get those who represent my city, county and state to do their jobs and protect me from federal employees not doing theirs. But, really, even if I came up with the unique, single best solution for health care what would become of it? Have you ever heard of Philo Farnsworth? He died lonely and insane. Having a brilliant idea isn’t what the world needs. The world is over-flowing with brilliant ideas.

Implementation is the trick. General Petraeus can implement. Bill Gates can implement.

I apologize if I over-reacted, but this is a really touchy subject for me. Not health care, this whole, trying to solve politics-thingy. It truly is the sausage machinery Mark Twain defined and I’m not sure anyone can go into it without coming out a fool on the other side. That’s a blackhole I don’t want to get sucked into again.