The article below was self-pity, for which I apologize.  But I don’t go back and erase my mistakes.

I know a LOT, first-hand, about the reaction to letters or such is among the opinion professionals.  So I had a strategy in mind.  With their usual bashfulness BUGsers let me know that they have more important things to do, which is what you might call Cotton Mather-level bashfulness.

I crawled down into my foxhole and thought it over as your artillery whizzed over.

The time is likely to come when YOU have people who can do this kind of stuff, so it is worth your knowing what I have observed in terms of what I call professional opinionists.

Our idea is to get ideas into circulation.  Our estimate of the personal worth of such opinionists is beside the point.

I have worked with the Mantra for many, many years.   It is one of those things I have developed which is like a good computer virus.   Once you get it to someone’s attention, it shows up in his thought.   This does NOT mean he will be come like us.  We are free to think, he is not.

But someone who does thousands of opinion pieces needs material.   He needs a “take” on things.  In fact, that is the ONLY thing he makes his rather good living doing.   I have found things in the oddest places that could only have come from me, though you would have real trouble recognizing them in the form they show up.

So you might think I am trying to convert Pat.  No, the idea is simply to be sure he has read the Mantra itself, of which I am now sure. 

Here is the key point I am making:  The world looks different when you have to pump out hundreds of thousands of words a year on deadlines.  A lot of us enjoy a game of baseball from time to time, but the world of professional baseball is totally different.  A lot of us like giving our opinions, but doing it on schedule and for pay is different.  You put an idea in there and YOU will be ignored, but the idea is planted.

A little.

You can make a little into a lot.  You can do it later with YOUR followers.  Right now you have bigger fish to fry.