Phantom Poker Game
Zoom Today, Noon PT / 3PM ET
Hello friends,
This coming week is my five year anniversary of starting this work. It has been the most grueling experience of my life, but also rewarding in unexpected ways. First and foremost, I’ve learned more in the last five years than the fifty before them, out sheer necessity. One of the subjects I’ve absorbed a lot of is psychology, a massive branch of human knowledge that helps explain human behavior. Politics, to the extent it exists in the form we used to think about it, has always been psychological warfare of a sort.
In a healthy society, politics is a bit like poker. There are rules, but within those rules deception and psychological games are acceptable. However, in an unhealthy society people just sit down at the table, pull a gun, take your money, and tell you they won fair and square.
We are, needless to say, in an unhealthy society at the moment. We’ve all been trying to play by a shared set of rules, right? You can’t look at the other players’ cards; you can’t take their money; a full house beats a straight. But an orange man with a gun sat down at the table and started making his own rules up — “No, no, my pair of 2s beats your flush.”
So we are currently playing a sort of phantom poker game. The dealer keeps shuffling the cards. The players ante up. The cards are laid out. But the guy with the gun wins every time.
This past week has been about whether and when the poker game will stop altogether. When does the man with the gun just shoot the dealer and take everyone’s money once and for all?
ICYMI:
Please join me for our community Zoom today at Noon PT / 3PM ET to discuss this past week’s events, the psychological and geopolitical terrain we’re facing, and anything else on your mind. It’s no pressure but open for any and all questions and comments. Hope to see you! Details below.