What do you get when you cross a game show host with a politician? Easy! “The Deal of Misfortune.”
JPB
The Sacrifice of Stability for the Spin of Greed
"Without our traditions our lives would be as shaky as a ... fiddler on the roof!" - Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
Harry S. Truman declared no interest in pursuing the visionary path of his quick fix, budget busting Fair Deal predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. His path was that of a dry goods store owner proud of honesty to customers while committed to run his business as a Missouri tightwad, balancing the checkbook weekly.
“I want to keep my feet on the ground. I don’t want any experiments; the American people have been through a lot of experiments and they want a rest from experiments.”
Attributed to Harry Truman. Cited from Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey (p. 82)
Guardians of the U.S. Galaxy
In the Keirsey Temperament Inventory, the SJs, shown below at the top of the four personality types, make up the Guardian temperament. The SJs types are characterized by their focus on concrete reality and their cooperative nature, emphasizing duty, responsibility, and social structure.
The SJs, as creatures of habit, reverence the past. They relish the familiarity of daily routine, like the feel of a well-worn cashmere sweater and Hush Puppy shoes. The comfort of the known, traveled daily path reassures the SJ that life is working out and that they have a place in life: to maintain it.
The SJ already knows her coffee in the pink, stainless to-go mug will take two packets of Stevia in the Raw, a dash of cinnamon, and a splash of lactose-free Irish Mint creamer. Her fulfillment rests in the assurance that her children and family have all they need for the day and that she played her part in it. Among the “passion fruits” of politicians stand the “simply vanilla” SJs who keep our schools teaching, our post offices delivering, and our healthcare systems healing.
When I met C.W. Brister, Professor of Christian Ministry at SWBTS seminary, he seemed a slow-speaking, milquetoast type of individual.
“I’m just vanilla… but everyone knows that vanilla is the world’s favorite flavor,” he said, introducing himself to the class.
When I tried to sit off to the side of Dr. Brister in the chairs at the front, he asked me to move where he could maintain eye contact. As the weeks passed, he unfolded the secrets of equipping a pastor for daily ministry. There was no hype and no exaggeration; rather, he gave us the theological cure to take to the spiritually sick in our future churches.
Then, one day as I approached the chapel, I overheard a voice on the speakers that sounded like one sending fire down from the mount. It was a fiery voice beckoning the seminarians to pursue the radical trail of their calling. As I opened the door and peeked in, to my surprise, the firebrand glowing in the pulpit was “Mr. Vanilla!”
And it is the SJ who will take seriously the tracing and the updating of the family tree, keeping track of births and deaths, weddings and baptisms, knowing that all such family observances become more important with each passing years. – David Keirsey, Please Understand Me II (p.92)
The Deal of Misfortune
Fictional Story Inspired by Actual Events
Guardian of The Mundane
Sam was a man of ritual, a guardian of the mundane. Every morning for fifteen years, he armored himself for his Federal job in the same uniform: a white, long-sleeved Oxford shirt—extra starch, collars pinned sharp—and a tie of crimson and cobalt blue. His closet was a gallery of precision: ten shirts, ten ties, four pairs of black shoes (gloss shine), and four black belts (no signs of wear), and one black Casio Illuminator watch, with a multi-timer function, and one Waterman cobalt blue marble fountain pen. He dined at 6:00 PM sharp, the flickering glow of the World News and the rustle of the Journal the only companions to his clockwork life.
12:45
Sam’s gift was his devotion to sameness. He understood a truth the politicians ignored: that the soul of the nation rested on the quiet expectation that tomorrow would look exactly like today. He was the guardian of the familiar—the treaties, the food chains, the steady heartbeat of a Midwest factory floor. At 12:45 PM. daily his mother texted him, and on weekends she called him as that was the only time he would pickup. At times she wished he would call her to say, “How are you?” and “I just called to say I love you.” But she knew her son, not as the one they first called “nonverbal” and later labeled “savant,” but simply as “Samuel.” She didn’t know what Sam did for his job but knew it was important, considering multiple the government bronze and gold service coins awarded him and cased in proud display in the living room entryway of his condo.
The Needle
As a national security analyst, Sam hunted the “needle.” He was the only man with the glacial patience to spend fifty hours a week staring into the haystack, waiting for the single glimmer of steel that could unravel the fabric of American security.
The U.S. rewarded his vigilance with a promotion to Senior Analyst. For thirty days, Sam inhabited the role like a well-worn glove. The weight of the international scope didn’t daunt him; it fueled him. Everything was in its right place. Until the silence was shattered.
A Ph.D. in Five Bullet Points
When the DOGE inspectors marched into his office, they didn’t see a guardian; they saw a line item. They interrupted him as he was descending into the digital depths of a morphing global hotspot—a flickering shadow moving through a porous foreign airport. They demanded a summary. They wanted the complexity of a Ph.D.-level security web reduced to five bullet points by the following evening.
A man of order, Sam complied. He bled his analysis into five bullet points, though he could not help but attach twenty-five pages of exhaustive endnotes to ensure the truth remained intact. He clicked “send,” expecting to return to the hunt. Instead, he received a digital guillotine.
Waste, Fraud, and Abuse … and other lies
“In an attempt to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, your position is terminated immediately.”
The words blurred. Why? When? How? The man who lived by the detail was suddenly cast into a void where no details existed. There were no instructions on how to leave, no process for the end of a life’s work.
Sam packed his cardboard box with the same artifacts he had carried in as a hopeful graduate fifteen years prior. His chest tightened; sweat slicked his brow as the world tilted. In a final, trembling act of surrender, Sam reached up and undid the crimson and cobalt tie. He folded it with agonizing care atop his belongings. For the first time in fifteen years, he unbuttoned his collar and let the cold air of the hallway hit his throat. He walked out of his second home with tears carving paths through the starch-dust on his face.
Falling Skies
Six months later, the sky fell.
A radical cell, armed with stolen Hellfire missiles, turned one of the world’s busiest civilian hubs into a graveyard. The politicians stood before cameras, beating their chests in hollow grief, blinded by the very “efficiency” they had championed. They never saw the shadow. They had fired the only man who was watching it.
To this day, the administration remains blissfully ignorant of the ghost in the cubicle. They never knew that the wall between the American people and the fire was a man in a starched white shirt who valued sameness—and that they were the ones who broke it.
I’m just vanilla … But everyone knows that vanilla is the world’s favorite flavor. – C.W. Brister, Professor of Christian Ministry, SWBTS
For The Simply Vanilla,
JPB