Gordon Post #4

What we want to happened and what is happening are two very different things sometimes.  We all wish that life would turn one way or another especially when we feel that its our time for some sun.  Walking along in this dangerous alternate reality we can easily lose sight of the present, and then without warning we can be abruptly brought back into it.  This hurts double because the reason we believed so much in this hunch of how things were going to go is because we wanted to escape the logical, negative future that we expect because its happened so many times before.  So we want to say, every time something unexpected happens, that "this time will be different."  We hope that something somewhere is pulling for us. We want to believe in miracles.

Willie Talos was in this state when he was first in the democratic primary's.  As a self-taught lawyer from dirt poor Mason City he thought that his time had finally come.  He thought that the shiny, black cars from the city with the big politicians meant that he had made it.  That he Willie Talos would be the one that would bring his state to the promise land, and give the people everything they needed.  That he would be loved.  And as he writes speeches about income tax, and infrastructure and all the things that the state needs, and what he thinks the people want to hear, he never stops to look in the mirror.  He is blind to the fact that he is being used.  This is evident to everyone else who is familiar with the situation that he is just a "dummy who might split the MacMurfee vote. (P.93)" The dawn finally breaks in the form of Sadie Burke who had considered Willie a fool for not noticing earlier and when it is finally revealed cooks him for it.  "Oh you decoy, you wooden-headed decoy, you let em! you let em, because you thought you were the little white lamb of god! (P.113)" Its moments like these where people really change, ice water crashes down on your head and chills you to the bone and you sit there in your PJ's  shaking your head and saying "it happened again, damn it." Some call it quits and decide that putting themselves out there never accomplishes anything and they pull up all the lines and sail out to their own little island where there is no disappointment because there is nothing for them to fail at.  Other will not accept this passive approach, and when they realize that they will not be given what they want they decide to take it.  

Willie as it turns out is one of those people.  He goes out and channels his rage and gathers the support of the people because like him they have been duped also, and both will not stand for it anymore (but in the case of the people they need someone to tell them that). "He drove the pants off his pretty good second-hand car over the washboard and through the hub-deep dust and got mired in the black gumbo when the rain came and sat in his car waiting for the span of mules to come and pull him out. he stood on school-house steps and on the tops of goods boxes , and on the seat of a farm wagon and on the porches of cross-road stores and talked. (P. 132)"  This is when Willie first becomes The Boss.  He is no longer Cousin Willie, he has seen the political light so to speak, and he now knows that he only way to fight fire is with bigger fire.  Super human energy and confidence are two of Willies most important tools and both come directly from his reaction to this inconvenient truth.