The Beato Campaign and the SA

Hello again!

I didn't give up on NDH, fellow Tribesmen; Blogspot had this blog tagged as spam for a few weeks and locked it. I've been encouraged to update since, but I've realized I don't know enough 2011s well enough to try to read into their presidential ambitions. I have a good enough read on the reelected Senators (Douglass, Fallon, and Brown) but otherwise hope someone will share some insights before I do that post. For now, digression. Enjoy!


Beato and the SA
Part I
We all behold with envious Eyes,
Our Equal rais'd above our Size;
Who wou'd not at a crowded Show,
Stand high himself, keep others low?
I love my Friend as well as you,
But would not have him stop my View,

As the election for Williamsburg City Council heats up, it's worth taking a look at the relationship between the Matt Beato campaign and the Student Assembly. Just as John McCain has to walk a fine line in trumpeting his lengthy experience in Washington with his intentions to change the establishment, so does Beato have to find a way to market his extensive SA experience as an asset while distancing himself from some of its members and policies which townies would find objectionable.

So let's start this meditation with an incontrovertible fact: Almost everyone in the SA harbors an interest in serving in real government one day. This is just logical. Why be a part of mock government otherwise? To be sure, there's a spectrum - ranging from those who would love to be in real government but know they never will (such as myself) to those who are already on the threshold of real government (Matt Beato) - but it's difficult to find an SA member that doesn't fit in there somewhere, at least the elected officials.

I have many thoughts in this train and not a ton of time right now, so I'm going to leave you with some food for thought to mull over until the next post. A silent phenomenon has developed in which some SA members, even those close to Beato, have grown subtly but surely envious of him. Some of this envy borders on bitterness.

Each of the parts in the Beato and the SA series will have, as an epigraph, a few lines from Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, a satiric poem by Jonathan Swift that imagines his friends' reactions to his own death. Before pondering that event, though, Swift makes some biting commentary on the human tendency to resent friends outdoing us - commentary which fits the current situation perfectly. Here's the full text of it online if you want to read further and spoil the coming epigraphs. Props to Professor Brett Wilson for the course that I discovered this great work in.

Until next time!
-KY