I do not possess a particularly keen intellect, nor am I a well-educated man. Sure, I know enough to be dangerous at times and I have enough wit to turn a phrase now and again, but that's hardly unique or notable. I've met hundreds of people who live on bar stools and street corners who can outduel me there. And whatever wit and wisdom nature was kind enough to grant fades daily as each day washes in mundane worries.
Great creatures become old bones, then fossils, covered in mud by unremarkable tides.
I'm an ordinary man, overmatched by life. So, like many ordinary people, my instinct is to retreat. To an ever-shrinking circle of friends diluted steadily by fate and petty jealousies. Before it's gone, ordinary people want to live life a little, so we keep telling ourselves to be content to watch the egotists wrestle with trying to run it. We all become cynics, scoffing at the poor comedy of politics.