Claiming that the best laid plans, oft gang aglee says nothing about plans or planners, but speaks to something else. That no battle plan survives contact with the enemy speaks to what no plan can speak to.

If we could, if we would settle for the routine and the familiar, we could be in charge. But how often have any of us seen any of us actually settle for such modest, humble aspirations.? No, we want big, hairy, audacious goals. They make us feel bigger than ourselves, even though pursuing them generally puts the Gods in charge. Where the calculated odds are long, we don't usually shrink back but lean further forward. We stretch and want to. If the calculation claims a high potential for failure, we think ourselves somehow exempt, and would prefer to see ourselves that way.

In this very human way, we conscript the Gods and put them in charge.

Republican Senators innocently complain that the stimulus plan lacks specificity, they are right. When they say that it won't work, they are also right. It DOES lack specificity and it most certainly won't resolve the financial dilemma. It might do no more than trade the inertia of rest for the inertia of motion, which could produce a whole 'nuther set of uncomfortable choices, many unforeseeable from here. The stimulus puts the Gods squarely in charge. It's a dilemma worthy of them, and otherwise unresolvable by mere humans.

Our notions that we can foresee the future is not universally right, nor is it universally wrong. That we cannot see which it is with any reliability, more to the point. Plan? Sure. Execute according to plan? Perhaps. Succeed? Maybe. Fail? Well, depending upon how you measure success, probably.

Any effort can be judged successful. And any a failure, depending upon the perspective involved. Make your perspective explicit, and encourage others to make theirs' explicit, too. Together, you might triangulate with the Gods and succeed.

My ancestors, writing from the Oregon Trail, ended their letters with the simple phrase, "If I live," in certain acknowledgment that this decision was out of their hands. They went on to settle the West, or their part of it, certain only that The Gods Were Always In Charge.

It's no different now, though the apparent sophistication of our age enables endless projection of and planning for a future no more certain than it ever was. Sophistry, the ancients called it, muddling the mind. Retirement planning, we insist, ensuring a secure future. Even though the Gods Are Always In Charge.

And what does it say on the back of the buck? In God we trust. I wonder why. ... ...