There Will Be A Test Later

First off, April Fools' Day today. Watch yourself.

Today we're going to do a little mental exercise. I need you to answer each question in the order it is given. Please do not skip ahead; in fact, try not to even read questions beyond the one you're currently working on. Reading ahead might skew your answers and to a degree invalidate what we're doing here. To discourage reading ahead, I'm going to add some white space between each part of the exercise.

For this exercise, we're dealing with political opinions. We'll establish an imaginary scoring system to measure one politician against another, from 0 to 10. This measures how often a given politician does something you agree with-- the percentage of the time they do so, divided by 10. (Since it's a hypothetical, we won't bother with decimals. Whole numbers are enough.) A politician that does something you agree with every time will score a 10. One that never does something you agree with scores 0. 30% of the time is a 3, etc., you get the idea.

Got all that? Dandy. Let's get started.

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1. Imagine, if you will, two hypothetical politicians. The first is from your party. During his campaign, he ran on a platform that would, if followed, score a 9 against your views. However, once elected, as his term played out, this politician faltered. He lost a battle or two, events in the news drew him off or counter to his focus, something you held dear turned out to be a peripheral part of the agenda not seriously pursued. His accomplishments end up measuring something more akin to a 5. That's a pretty steep drop down from what you'd imagined. You're disappointed. You think this first politician could have done better. Much better.

The second politician is from the opposition party. You hated this politician's guts from the moment you saw him. He ran on a platform that scores a flat 0. Can't stand him. He, however, won, and turns out to be doing just what he said he'd do. He's enacting his agenda, but it's an agenda you despise. You are filled with rage every time he opens his mouth, but he's effective nonetheless.

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2. Of these two politicians, which are you harder on: the one who is noble but disappointing, or the one who is outrageous but successful? Which one do you denounce more often, more forcefully?

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3. Take back whatever answer you just said.

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4. Now, I'd like you to replace the hypothetical politicians with real-life politicians you've seen in your lifetime that come as close as you can manage to these two archetypes. If you can come up with ones that ran directly against one another, a noble-but-disappointing person vs. an outrageous-but-successful person, all the better.

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5. Think back and imagine how hard you ultimately were on the politicians you've come up with, in comparison to each other; how often and forcefully you denounced each of them.

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6. In the event you were able to come up with a disappointment vs. outrage race, think back as to how you voted. Who did you vote for? (If you didn't vote due to the poor quality of the candidates, that counts as disappointment.)

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7. Which force, disappointment or outrage, ultimately had the greater effect on you, as shown by how you reacted to actual, non-hypothetical candidates?

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8. Think back to your answer to part 2. Does your answer match the one you gave in part 7?

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9. If not, why not?