"Besides, my usefulness here is destroyed because all of my friends think me a man of unsound mind"
About this Quote
The line lands like a resignation note written in the ink of reputation. Campbell isn’t claiming he’s incompetent; he’s arguing that competence is moot once the social license to exercise it has been revoked. “Usefulness” is the cold, managerial word here, a politician’s tell. It reframes public life as transactional: you’re valuable only as long as other people believe you’re stable enough to be trusted with influence.
The dagger is in “Besides.” It signals that the real battle has already been lost offstage; this is the secondary explanation offered after some primary conflict. It also smuggles in fatigue, the sense of a speaker moving from defense to triage. Then comes the quiet cruelty of “all of my friends.” Opponents calling you crazy is politics. Friends doing it is exile. Campbell points to a specific kind of political death: not defeat at the ballot box, but the evaporation of credibility inside the intimate networks where power actually circulates.
“Think me” keeps the sentence legally safe and psychologically sharp. He doesn’t concede unsoundness; he indicts perception. That move gestures at a familiar dynamic in political life: labels of instability are rarely clinical and often strategic, a shorthand used to discipline dissent, punish unpredictability, or distance oneself from scandal. At the same time, it’s not a triumphant martyr pose. The sentence admits a grim truth politicians hate to say out loud: governance runs on confidence, and confidence is social before it’s institutional. Once your own circle doubts your mind, your role becomes theater.
The dagger is in “Besides.” It signals that the real battle has already been lost offstage; this is the secondary explanation offered after some primary conflict. It also smuggles in fatigue, the sense of a speaker moving from defense to triage. Then comes the quiet cruelty of “all of my friends.” Opponents calling you crazy is politics. Friends doing it is exile. Campbell points to a specific kind of political death: not defeat at the ballot box, but the evaporation of credibility inside the intimate networks where power actually circulates.
“Think me” keeps the sentence legally safe and psychologically sharp. He doesn’t concede unsoundness; he indicts perception. That move gestures at a familiar dynamic in political life: labels of instability are rarely clinical and often strategic, a shorthand used to discipline dissent, punish unpredictability, or distance oneself from scandal. At the same time, it’s not a triumphant martyr pose. The sentence admits a grim truth politicians hate to say out loud: governance runs on confidence, and confidence is social before it’s institutional. Once your own circle doubts your mind, your role becomes theater.
Quote Details
| Topic | Broken Friendship |
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