Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

30 May 2005, 9:35 a.m.

Much Of The Essay I Couldn't Excerpt For Reasons Of Profanity

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

The Poor Man encapsulates modern US political thought (the second half of the essay).

If people say they are going to do something, and then they do it, and then they say they're going to do something else, and they do that, too, and on and on, you should assume they're going to do what they say they're going to do. Even if they aren't looking at you when they say it.