Then again what " best use" is there in a book either, so of course Plato's Republic is really not that good of a book other than his apt descriptions of the type of state's, which really are only types of men. Of course his description of democracy is interesting since it mentions that the whole will try to live off of the few, seems like what we are embarking on with Mr. Obama's reliance on 2% of the tax paying elite to fund everything and everyone: it can't hold in reality and taxes WILL go up for all like in Clintons time. I'd rather that we have 1 TV or computer than 5 or 2 cars rather than the more usual 3 or smaller cars and then have more affordable health insurance, car insurance, free time, cheaper commodities(water, food, shelter, DSL, basic needed products), though, your things own you as they say.  But who am I to say how others should live? Who is anyone to mandate that? For me, and for artists as a whole, frugality is probably the norm and even a comfort.

But the federal government is only possible by the states, not the other way around as Obama seems to endorse and government jobs didn't build the USA to what it is. The initiative of some random guy who saved up and started his own business for whatever reason and hired others and survived only because of the innovation and usefulness of his ideas and products NOT the lovely type we get working in the post office or at the DMV with great benefits and guaranteed employment forever based on subsidies in the form of taxes on the real creators of value. The recent $50 million dollar money for the arts is really only for the museums and institutions and I would want no part of it, the life of an artist has always been one of the hardest and least appreciated as well as being preyed on by maniac dealers and those artists that are not intelligent enough to deal with them should not be paid by others to live in a fairytale land of free money. The artist needs to read his/her Machiavelli and Sun Tzu as well as being perfectly comfortable walking away from the worst of them in the art world.

And things that are so "obvious" to many are precisely the opposite in reality. Take this idea by many that Obama's election somehow progresses this neurotic fixation we have on race relations in America. I don't see this at all being true, almost 100% of blacks voted for Obama, not because of his policies, but because of his skin color as well as all minorities generally doing the same even though his social policies like on abortion and gays are proven to be a turn off to hispanics and blacks, see the recently passed gay marriage ban in California for that one. I call this the same old process just like the mayor of Detrioit, Marion Barry, Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Charlie Rangel all keep thier jobs simply because of thier color, these are all roundly corrupt politicians just like many of thier fairer skinned ones. This ethos, even comforting reliance on eternal victimhood actually does not help people who spout it, it just contributes to thier easy manipulation by politicians and others. And the personality cult that has arisen around Mr. Obama is dangerous; I've never seen a more coordinated realtionship between the supposedley independent press and a president and that is worrying. And the ingrown self-hatred shows itself when you praise someone just for thier skin color. Progress for minorities only comes when they can independently asses political ideas and vote accordingly, say when blacks vote for a white candidate over a black one or a hispanic candidate in California loses to a non-hispanic, otherwise you just get mediocre to awful people running things into the ground as is the case in California and is becoming the case in the USA as a whole rapidly. If you are a certain race where that race is the majority you really have nothing to worry about and can use political office as a cash register, there is no need to actually get anything done outside of patronage. If you define insanity as doing the same thing but expecting different results than California is an insane state of insane people.