I can't tell if this advice is intended for technical matters or a general sense. In real life, a person is going to have a lot of real identities (that can be

I can't tell if this advice is intended for technical matters or a general sense. In real life, a person is going to have a lot of real identities (that can be actively ignored by that person, but not so easily dispensed with.) The same person might be a father, an accountant, a divorcee, an alcoholic, a cancer-survivor, a member of an ethnic group, a 45-year-old, etc, etc, and all of these will inevitably effect that person's mental state and behavior. A relative of mine voted for BHO because she thought he would be "good for teachers". Lots of people think this way. A friend of mine loved a previous governor because he was "good for divorced fathers". Public policy is a huge subject, but people will throw away every consideration for a specific connection. People who don't play this game (or play it badly [1]) become the victims, rather than the benefactors, of a massive bureaucracy. The advice is, in fact, really bad advice (if intended generally). It amounts to: Don't stick up for yourself. [1] The two examples I mentioned were playing it very badly, for instance.