[Kargool]

Let me tell you a little story about the Big Picture.

There's a soldier and his sargeant on a hill in Vietnam. They're with their platoon. The sargeant gets an order from his superiors and says to the soldier. "Well, we have no choice. We have to take that hill over there."

"The big one? With the six machine gun nests?"

"Yeah."

"That's crazy!" The soldier says. "We'll all die."

"Probably." The sargeant says. "But we have to do it."

"That's stupid!" The soldier protests. "Why?"

"Because you don't understand the big picture. The generals out there, back at camp? They understand what the big picture is."

The soldier vowed that if he survived, he would find out what the big picture was. So they charge the hill and they kill a lot of vietnamese, and the Soldier gets promoted and the Sargeant gets reassigned, because they're the only two survivors. The soldier vows that one day, he'll become a general, and he'll get to understand what the big picture is.

So he stays in the army for 20 years, and he finally becomes a general, and he gets into the war room, where the other generals are hanging out and smoking cigars. And he says "So what's this big picture thing I've heard so much about?"

One of the other generals looks at him like he's nuts and says "Boy, we don't decide that. Those guys in Congress, they decide what the big picture is." The poor guy sighs. Now he has to run for congress.

So he runs, and he wins, because he's a war hero, and he gets into Congress, and he walks into his first committee meeting, and says "So what's all this about a big picture?"

His fellow committee members all laugh at him. "We don't decide that. It's the President. He decides that."

So off he goes, running for the white house. It takes a while, but he's charismatic, and a war hero, and he's not secretly playing with cigars or controlled by the oil lobby, so he gets elected.

Into the oval office he goes, and he says to his secretary "So what's this big picture thing I've heard so much about?"

His secretary stares and says "Oh, you don't make those decisions. Your cabinet makes those decisions."

So he makes a deal with his vice president that his vice president will appoint him to his cabinet, and he steps down after only a single term. He has to find out before he dies, after all.

So he goes to his first cabinet meeting, and the cabinet people are all chatting around, and he asks about the Big Picture, and they all look at him like he's nuts. And one of them says "Well, we don't actually know that. Those boys in the corporations, they know that."

So he arranges to leave the cabinet and get a job with a very large corporation as an executive vice president. After all, look at his resume.

And he goes into the first corporate board meeting, and they hang out there, while some strippers come in, they do some insider trading, some people take prostitutes into back rooms, and they all smoke cigars. "But the big picture!" He shouts. "What about the big picture?"

And the CEO of the company turns to look at him, and after all these years, it's his old sargeant, and he says, in shock and surprise, not even able to recognize his former soldier...

"Don't tell me you were on that !@#$ing hill too."