It’s a familiar story: decent person pursues his dreams but somehow gets lost along the way, achieving success and recognition but becoming, ironically and usually late in the second act, unrecognizable to himself. (Q.v. Batman, Wayne’s World.) The postindustrial, now postfinancial American economy has a way of rewarding people, not products, but the old laws of supply and demand still apply. To paraphrase Voltaire, if Sarah Palin did not exist, it would have been necessary to invent her. This Friday, Combat! blog presents links to people who gave us a little of what they were and, finding us willing, produced more and more of it until it became the totality of their being. It’s the chip in the windshield that becomes a crack, the bump off a housekey that becomes a three-day bender, the simultaneous belch and sneeze that causes you to vomit on your computer.* 
It’s the self out of control, which just might be relevant to our impending holiday weekend. Sit back, crack a beer, tell yourself it’s the only one you’re going to drink today, and join us for an unusually coherent link roundup—whatever we may become.
