Reading this, I couldn’t help but think about something Tolstoy wrote in Confession, where he states,
“Very strange indeed, but now I understand it. The real reason behind what we were doing was that we wanted to obtain as much money and praise as possible. Writing books and newspapers was the only thing we knew how to do in order to attain this end. And so that is what we did. But in order for us to engage in something so useless and at the same time maintain the conviction that we were very important people, we needed a rationale that would justify what we were doing. And so we came up with the following: everything that exists is rational. Further, everything that exists is evolving. And it is evolving by means of an enlightenment. The enlightenment in turn undergoes change through the distribution of books and periodicals. We are paid and respected for writing books and periodicals, and therefore we are the most useful and the best of people. This reasoning would have worked very well, had we all been in agreement; but since for every opinion expressed by one person there was always someone else whose opinion was diametrically opposed to it, we should have been led to reconsider. But we never noticed this. We received money, and people of our circle praised us; thus every one of us believed himself to be right.” (Ch. 2, Confession)
When I think about the hybrid two-headed Demlican monster that is our two party system, I see nothing but people aiming to keep themselves relevant and rich at the cost of everyone else who do not seek relevance and riches, but more humbly wish to put food on the table, be healthy, be educated, work, and not have to go to war.
