Cobb

Truth in Iraq

Michael Yon's book on Iraq is out. It is already in its second printing and denial of it is key to the continuing effects of Bush Derangement Syndrome. I have continually had Yon on my radar for understanding what has transpired in Iraq and I am very pleased to see that the facts on the ground will be coming to light. Only this week we were debating the ability for American civilians to know and make judgments. Yon has been and continues to be one of the world's best sources. I present a compelling review from his publisher:

  I HAVE NEVER BEEN PROUDER TO PUBLISH A BOOK

 

Michael Yon changed my mind about the war in Iraq, by making me understand it for the first time.

 

From the very beginning I was against the war. I thought it would be a disaster, another Vietnam. And until I had the privilege of working on this book with Michael I was always for immediate pull-out: why should one more American die for a doomed effort?

 

Michael--who is as close to totally non-political as anyone I know--showed me two things. First, because I judged by Vietnam, the war of my youth, I had radically underestimated what American soldiers could do. I knew they could blow away any regular opponent on any battlefield. But wage a counterinsurgency against an enemy with broad support in the population? Win the "hearts and minds," to use the Vietnam era phrase that now can be used only ironically? That was asking too much, I thought.

 

I was 100 percent wrong. Today's American soldiers excel at counterinsurgency, because they excel at the most important thing: winning over the people by inspiring them with their own courage and compassion, discipline and determination. Reading this book is like watching the movie Apocalypse Now, but in an alternate universe in which the opposite always happens. Every time our soldiers get into an incredibly tense situation with some Iraqis who might be friends or might be enemies or murderers, some situation in which what's needed is amazing calm and courage to keep things from blowing up and ending in a blood bath, our guys pull it off!

 

Just wait until you read the Chapter "High Noon" (my favorite), the story of the American soldiers who have to arrest a corrupt but politically popular Iraqi police chief we had put in office in the first place because he had been a real hero in fighting the terrorists. He had to be removed by Americans to show the Iraqis we really did believe in the rule of law. The whole thing could have blown up into a one-town civil war with hundreds dead on both sides. Won't tell you how it ends, but you will be amazed and very proud.

 

The other thing Michael helped me understand is the difference between terrorists we just have to kill (often foreigners, or local criminals) and local insurgents we should have been working with all along. For almost five years I could not tell from watching the news--and certainly not from listening to the Administration--who the enemy was, what they wanted or why they were fighting. Not surprisingly it turns out that understanding the various people we were fighting--some of whom have since become great allies--was the key to winning the war, which we are now clearly doing.

 

I am convinced that everything I once thought about the war was wrong. The truth is we are doing a great thing in Iraq, most of the Iraqi people really do want to be a united democratic nation and already consider America their greatest friend and ally. It would be a crime to turn tail now and abandon them now.

 

I owe all that to Michael's book, which is why I believe publishing Moment of Truth in Iraq may be the best thing I have ever done for my country.    

As I said this morning. Yon said two weeks ago that the US military is now the most trusted institution in Iraq. Doing right by the Iraq people is what this next presidential election is all about for me. This is the signal. Bring the noise.

Obama-Edwards

The Edwards endorsement is just what the Obama campaign needed. Together with the MoveOn and Kennedy endorsements, it solidifies Obama's left flank. There will be no further surprises from the left of him and Ithink everybody should be quite clear on that.

An Obama/Edwards ticket is the poor man's populist ticket. I think it makes the most sense and gives Obama an opportunity to triangulate his own image towards the center and snarf Hillary's votes and some of her delegates. I think it would be a brilliant political move if Obama said so now or soon, and then continued on a rightward tack through to the Denver convention.

I was wrong, this Spring was not the beginning of the end for Obama. Especially if he makes this move, it is the end of the beginning. Things are really starting to get interesting.

It also must be said that Hillary is starting to look truly pathetic. Her campaign is 20 million in the hole and she's bragging about West Virginia? Sounds desperate.

The Energy Efficiency of Nuclear Power

As one of the legs of the stool holding up the theory of 'warsocialism' the author, Jay Hanson, claims:

No alternative – even nuclear [5] – has the potential to replace more than a tiny fraction of the power presently generated by fossil fuels.

It has taken me about an hour this morning to follow a debate on the credibility of the study cited by Hanson. I have been convinced by information found here and most significantly here, that the "Storm-Smith" hypothesis is not credible and over-estimates by many times the energy costs of nuclear power, even taking into consideration the energy used in the construction of the plant, the milling and mining of uranium ore, and the full decommissioning of the plant. In addition, nuclear power can be produced from thorium as well which is three to four times as plentiful as uranium.

From the second site: (emphasis mine)

It is worth noting that the widely quoted paper by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith (SLS), which gives a rather pessimistic assessment of the Energy Lifecycle of Nuclear Power, assumes a far larger energy cost to construct and decommission a Nuclear Power plant (240 Peta-Joules versus 8 Peta-Joules(PJ)). The difference is that Vattenfall actually measured their energy inputs whereas Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Smith employed various theoretical relationships between dollar costs and energy consumed. This paper also grossly over-estimates the energy cost of mining low-grade Ores and also that the efficiency of extraction of Uranium from reserves would fall dramatically at ore concentrations below 0.05%. Employing their calculations predicts that the energy cost of extracting the Olympic Dam mine's yearly production of 4600 tonnes of Uranium would require energy equivalent to almost 2 one-GigaWatt power plants running for a full year (2 GigaWat-years). You can follow this calculation here. This is larger than the entire electricity production of South Australia and an order of magnitude more than the measured energy inputs.

I am therefore convinced that Jay Hanson's pessimism on the potential for nuclear energy to provide is based on faulty research. That in fact nuclear energy can efficiently provide a far greater share of American electric generation. This is not a fundamental problem in physics as claimed, merely a political and economic one.

The Size of the Military Industrial Complex

Continuing to challenge various theories that provide cover for shallow criticism of the Cobbian Oeuvre, I will begin a series on the theory of 'war socialism' as I understand it.

The theory of warsocialism attempts to explain American politics in terms of a political slight of hand that defies normal human concerns by duping Americans into believing that war is the health of the nation. The results being a callous disregard for the actual welfare of humans by the US government and a perpetual need for violent conflict around the world. Essentially, it portrays the American economy as a sort of military shark that needs to war in order to survive. I seek to debunk this notion as paranoid and in service to a shallow anti-Americanism that defies the facts of the actual economy of America and the politics of Americans.

Item 1. The size of the military-industrial complex.
According to the information I have collected, the US spent in 2007 during its prosecution of the small war in Iraq, approximately 550 billion dollars on defense, about 17% of the federal budget. I will take this figure to represent the size of the Military Industrial Complex. Note that this overstates the actual size of the MIC because it represents not only all of the goods and services provided by defense contractors on an annual basis, but the personnel costs for the Armed Forces itself.

Comparing this generous figure to GDP of about 13.7Trillion, it works out to about than 4% of the country's energies on an annual basis. Considered another way, America is 96% not the military industrial complex, even being generous to what the size of it is.

Item 2. The size of other industries.
In particular I will focus on several industries larger than the MIC.
a. Construction: 1.196T
b. Information: 891B
c. Health Care & Social Assistance: 1.207T
d. Manufacturing: 3.916T
e. Finance & Insurance: 2.803T
f. Professional, Scientific & Technical Services: 886B
g. Retailing: 3.056T
h. Wholesale Trade: 4.634T

These figures, incidently, account for the employment of approximately 77 million Americans.

Conclusion: The military industrial complex is dwarfed by several ordinary industries individually and collectively. It is not anywhere near the largest sector of the American economy. The health of the American economy is not dependent on military spending.

 

Jamiel Shaw, Asking For It

The latest twist in the unending saga that is the fight over the legacy of Jamiel Shaw is that LA DAs have been putting pressure on his family to shutup about Special Order 40. Or else.

Or else what? Well, they will bring experts to testify that a reasonable person could suspect that Shaw was a gangbanger himself, therefore mitigating the circumstances under which he was gunned down. I'm waiting for a chorus of outrage but given the slight national coverage this matter has had in resonance with black channels of communication, it wouldn't surprise me if they get away with it. Apparently, young Shaw talked like a banger on his myspace site, and wore a red belt on the day of his murder. Well, that's convincing.

Over at OneCitizenSpeaking, is an excellent rundown of the relevant commentary. One of the parties is Alex Alonso an expert from Streetgangs.com a site I've used (not since the execution of Tookie) for some relevant facts on LA gangs.

This is getting interestingly hairy. The Shaw family needs at least one heavy hitter on their squad or else the various political interests bent on hanging their son in effigy will squash them. Sure an LA Times reporter has the innocent story, but it will get twisted for certain. It's as easy as dropping 'illegal' from immigrant. That's a brand of whitewash we're all familiar with, and disappointingly it comes as no surprise that for the sake of sanctuary they will piss on the name of Shaw and defend a murdering gangster.

Don't forget to check my Research Notebook.

Sambo's Restaurant

I've only been to a Sambo's Restaurant once in my life. It happened somewhere in Northern California.

It was an entirely weird experience in that the restaurant had all of its kind of kitschy marketing language as if it were something everybody knew. Like the McDougal's restaurant in Eddie Murphy's Coming to America.

The occasion was that we were up to visit my grandfather, Pa, who regularly played with his band at the Concord Jazz Festival. As a family, San Francisco was our vacation town. Just being there and staying in a hotel was a very cool thing for our young and populous family of seven. We always stayed at the Lombard Street Hotel, a moderately fabulous place whose great attraction was its external, glass elevator. We stayed on the third and top floor and looked out over the Bay from the balcony, a wondrous sight.

As you might imagine, we were too broke to get seven tickets to the Jazz Festival. But on our way home to LA, we drove down by Concord to have lunch with Pa and ended up at the Sambo's in the area.

The fact that my parents must have thought the coast was clear made some impression. I mean how could any self respecting black family go to a Sambo's Restaurant? Yeah I know there was no little black sambo as the mascot, instead an Indian looking kid and his pet tiger. Still, there must have been some part of me that walked in with that attitude, like, you white people better not say anything rude to me. While I don't remember much about the place besides the incongruity of its whole appeal, I certainly remember the attitude. I know when you get that, there is nothing whitefolks can do. The more ingratiating and sweet they act, the more you resent it as condescension. The more snappy they get with you, the more you just know they must hate your guts. The more indifferent they are to you, the more invisible you feel. When you get this attitude, they can't win, they can't break even and they can't get out of the game. And so I see in retrospect that it wasn't what Sambo's made whitefolks do, it was what Sambo's made me feel. My problem, not Sambo's.

Of course I probably saw that then too even as a kid, because although I understand, I never really held a grudge against the place. They never did me wrong. But somehow I think I must have patted myself on the back for surviving lunch at Sambo's, with my grandfather, a New Orleans Jazz musician whose concerts I couldn't afford to attend.

Breakfast At Denny's

 

Are Smokers Happy?

A moral question. Are we obliged to do for people what they won't do for themselves? Only in our self-interest.

This is something of a dodge of an intersting question posed by a thoughtful reader:

Stephanie Saul’s NYT article, “Cigarette Bill Treats Menthol With Leniency,” (link below) is a sobering reminder of how U.S. interests groups use their political power for profit.

Here we have an example of (1) anti-African American interest groups or (2) interests groups indifferent to African Americans flaunting their political power at the expense of a few million middle-class and lower-class African Americans. Menthol disproportionately harms the 5 million African American cigarette addicts who mostly smoke Newports and Kools. Who cares about these African Americans? These African Americans don’t wield very much political or economic power. So, who, politically, has enough incentive to look out for them on the Hill?

If any interest groups do care, so what? Are any pro-African American interest groups powerful enough to stop this Menthol-based compromise/attack? I doubt it.

As an aside, any mention of clove cigarettes immediately brings to mind an old friend of mine. He was a real smart white dude, a pizza faced chubby guy with a devastating wit but absolutely no charm. He and I worked in a tech support lab. He was a huge fan of electronic keyboards and the music they made. Pet Shop Boys, Thompson Twins, New Order, The Orb. This guy was the prototypical goth, just before there was such a thing. He smoked clove cigarettes, constantly. This was 1989.

By any measure of anything I knew, there was no reason for me to believe this young man could be anything but a loser. He lived with his mother in a 'slurb (a suburb whose faded glory has faded just about the point for the necessity of burglar bars) drove a beater. I'm sure I was his only friend. He used to tell me about how people did him wrong. The thing was that he had an odd kind of self-confidence. The sort I imagine you get when you realize you have no other way to go but up. And furthermore, he spent a lot of money on his keyboards, and he had the kind of pride you have in the one perfect thing that you own. He didn't spend money on nice clothes, or a nice car or much of anything. He knew he couldn't play any role of cool. And yet there he was with his clove cigarettes.

I thought smoking clove cigarettes in and of itself was ridiculous. It was all about looking cool. And for him it totally worked, but only because I knew him. It was the only concession he made to fashion. I mean he actually looked like a twenty year old Pugsly Addams. But right now I could imagine him to be as cool as Kevin Smith. He had only his integrity, and he had to live it. Life gave him no other choice.

As it stands, I cannot for the life of me remember his name. But I remember his example. At some point, the powers that be declared something against clove cigarettes and they fell from popularity. No longer could you get them at the little shops in Westwood. And I wonder if he managed to find someplace to get them, or if he cared now that they were going out of style. But I know that when he could smoke them, he was happy. And if it was discovered that they cause cancer just as much as regular cigarettes, would he change. I can't imagine that he would. It was his pleasure. One of few.

We all know how much the sticks contribute to excess death. Well we the people pretend to know, we get the message of the experts. None of us really knows how many cigarettes it takes to increase your chances 1%. We don't know the math of inhaling or of second-hand smoke like we know how many drinks until our BAC is illegal. We simply trust the smart people who are liberal enough to care for our well-being in our merciful society, which is after all, a good idea for the self-interested American. Why bother to figure things out for yourself when every expert in a white coat or photographed in front of a shelf full of huge books is willing to tell you what you should or should not do? Cigarettes = bad. OK thanks for that, Professor.

Are smokers happy?

Are we caring for their souls or trying to make them happier? Are we trying to show off what we know? I say it's a bit more of the latter than the former when it comes to passing laws. Advice is one thing, prohibition is another. When the decision is taken to proscribe, the calculation is one for society. If we ban cigarettes or cap guns for boys, we are thinking in the aggregate. We make society better if we have fewer people die of cancer. We make society better if we arrest the kind of aggression in boys that might lead to violence. To hell with the individual. We demand sacrifice for the individual for the betterment of society. Passing laws of this sort is, plainly, social engineering.

And thus we have a conflict between the needs of the few and the cause of the many. But I'm talking about the needs of the few whose brilliant ideas and social calculations incubate such prohibitions.

To consider the fate of African Americans and menthol cigarettes is the province of a few who would do for African Americans in society what they clearly have no interest in doing for themselves. Maybe they're happy, maybe they're stupid. No matter what anyone says, the facts about cancer are what they are. It's unquestionably objectively rational that one shouldn't want to die of cancer. Why fight the experts?

Why indeed.

Danger Is My Business

I never was a big fan of comic books. I was more a Mad Magazine kid. Although there was a cowboy kid comic that I liked. Me? I dug wacky packages and CarToons. When it came to TV, Speed Racer, and even the Hot Wheels cartoon.

I think about superheroes though, and I enjoyed them most on TV and not in the comic books. My favorites were Cool McCool and Super President (with a hat tip to Super Chicken, Roger Ramjet and Spiderman). Cool McCool was unquestionably the coolest, and the people say "what?". Thank you YouTube. This guy was a role model for me as an 8 year old kid. Back when boys were encouraged to be boys.

The Size of the Soul

A rather interesting thought crossed my mind the other day, and it is consequential to my reading of Iain Banks' science fiction. The idea is that the soul is actually a variable part of the human, and that perhaps in me, a smaller part than I had considered. Consequently maintenance of it is proportional to the size of one's soul. A soul is like a mind. Some people abuse their minds, others expand their minds. Some have not much regard for the cultivation of their mind and yet are plenty smart for what they are called to do.

As a related aside, folks are considering the relative happiness of conservatives and liberals.  Here's a basic outline of what I think. Conservatives are happy because they are skeptical that mankind can be perfected, and therefore don't seek utopia. Conservatives are amazed that anything works but knows no prescription for success. In fact, religious conservatives place ultimate happiness beyond the bounds of human life. Which is to say they find fulfillment through duty. It is through duty that one sacrifices. Conservatives order themselves by fidelity to maintaining bans on proscribed behavior. A minimum set of 'thou shalt nots' directs duty, and duty is to maintain that minimum negative ruleset at all costs. To violate those are to invite evil.

It seems to me that the liberal seeks an ever asymptotic approach to ultimate truth, which they know at some point might come to a clearer understanding. And it is that hope to know the ultimate truth that will cause them to overturn any established order, and so they question any duty not on the same path. The liberal path is scientific and requires experimentation. It requires a willingness to toss out conventions, like duty to maintain prohibitive rulesets. The assumption of course is that the greater truth will liberate one from suffering, that mankind will always find a way to convert greater understanding into greater happiness, that most of mankind's suffering comes from ignorance, and a presumption that those not on the asymptotic path are relatively ignorant and thus cannot be happy enough. A tempting assumption that has dangerous implications.

One who seeks an ultimate truth in the world must inevitably re-order the world to accomodate that truth, and defines suffering as the distance from the possibility of perfection.  They cannot accept that those without possession of the truth and the means to approach it are not self-deluded.

But how can anyone who lived without knowing what we know possibly have been happy? I think there is a conceit that life of the mind delivers happiness divorced from the act of discovery. I think people misjudge the size of the soul and of the mind and presume that one can satisfy one or the other by living completely in them. But the mind and the soul are hungry and become jaded and self-serving. Happiness is found in balance. Balance requires discipline. To live entirely in the mind, or the soul, or the body are conceits.

The size of the soul, the spirit is under human control. I can decide to feel or to feel deeply. To merely empathize or to empathize deeply. To be patient with the sufferings of my fellow man or to make alleviation of that suffering my life's calling. Or I could shrink my soul, and to not feel, to reject empathy and to ignore suffering. I could instead decide to live the life of the mind, or the life of the body. In all of our choices, we require compensation. To be a great mind, we must sacrifice the other two, and if through some assistance we manage that, we might find balance. For one's own needs, one requires only so much mind, so much soul, so much body. As we are endowed and seek to improve on our endowments, we can exchange our surpluses to rewards from society. The athlete or soldier is rewarded for their physical feats. The great thinker thinks for others than himself. The woman possessed of extraordinary empathy is sought for her healing insights.

That humans are endowed with different amounts of brain, soul and body power is self-evident. But I observe that once upon a path to expand and perfect one's natural endowments there is a certain inevitable dissatisfaction. Surely a farmer who understands enough math to get a good price at market would not suffer himself to understand advanced calculus. Surely the mother who has given birth would not trouble herself to love another's child equally. But the mathematician is unsatisfied with farmer's arithmetic. A priest is unsatisfied with a parent's selfish love. A courtesan is unsatisfied with mere kissing.

I have only a passing understanding of the differences between the philosophers, but I can recognize there must be some distinction in their approach to the best way to live. One might say that life is best lived in pursuit of a robust disposition, one that is not particularly excellent but recovers best from life's inevitable slings and arrows. Another might say that life is best lived in pursuit of an ultimate achievement, one that evades all things which would compromise attainment of an excellence or perfection.

For what it is worth, I think the former to be a conservative disposition and the latter to be a liberal one with the presumption that once empowered, the achiever of excellence can share that knowledge and thereby improve the lot of every man. The farmer can be schooled, finally in advanced calculus, the mother can learn to love all children, and the farmer can too become a great soul as the mother a calculating mind. Surely all religious leaders would have their flocks expand the size of their soul in their lives and fill it with more godlike attributes.

Liberalism would have us all live like kings in our time, and would educate us to do so. And the imposition of institutions of education upon us is a boost to what we would naturally come to know from our own households and experiences. Liberalism would have us expand our minds, our bodies, our souls, and have us sacrifice so that more people might experience life in greater abundance. But I don't think liberalism affords us much guidance in disciplining our balance in this regard, nor in finding appropriate ways to distribute all of the surplus edifications of our minds, bodies and souls. And thus the modern problem is what to do with all that humanity has learned.

I think in the end, it is a matter of sustainability. And in that regard, unless and until we become a post-scarcity, space-faring species, that conservatives have the upper hand. Because liberals must always fight convenient or inconvenient memory loss. When the old man dies with the recipe for rayon and we have to go back to wool and cotton is that necessarily suffering? Whenever knowledge is destroyed the size of our minds must accordingly shrink, and accordingly fewer social structures are required to inculcate things for the general public. Is that dystopia? Only relatively. It depends upon how close we are to that absolute truth. 

The world will always have a need for great men, but their greatness will always be determined by how well they manage the balance of the size of their mental, spiritual and physical development, in what they need for themselves and what they share with the people.

I have been thinking this way about the size of my soul in recognition of the fact that it is not nearly as large as that of my mother's. And I am humbled and impressed by the way in which it works for her. And I am constantly reminded of the alienation created between humans of different capacities and talents and how we need society to reward us according to our imbalancing talents and overproductions.  And I am pleased to see how all of it can work. But related to the amount of happiness or suffering we can stand, I think it's a little greedy, ambitious and certainly troublesome to believe that we can all have great minds, souls and bodies.

Samsung

I distinctly recall the US debut of the Samsung company. It took place at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. The wife and I were deep into the business of the games along with thousands of others in that great city. Samsung was making a big splash, sponsoring everything possible, giving away t-shirts, hosting a huge worlds-fair like display and such. I remember people having trouble saying the name, wondering if they could possibly compete with the likes of Panasonic, Pioneer, Sanyo and Sony.

Today Samsung is the official HDTV of the NFL and they make refrigerators, printers, set top boxes, cameras, fiber optics, air conditioners and of course, mobile phones. I made a bet back then that Samsung would be a winner, but even I'm surprised at how far they've come.

Samsung has been a trading partner with the US since the mid 70s but in consumer electronics they've grown the most. Still I was surprised to find that the trading company is a big partner with FUBU. You learn something every day.

That's My President

I love it.

US President George W. Bush on Monday warned Iran and Syria that the international community would not allow Lebanon to fall under foreign domination through their proxies again.

"I strongly condemn Hezbollah's recent efforts, and those of their foreign sponsors in Tehran and Damascus, to use violence and intimidation to bend the government and people of Lebanon to their will," Bush said in a statement.

"The international community will not allow the Iranian and Syrian regimes, via their proxies, to return Lebanon to foreign domination and control," he said.

Bush reaffirmed Washington's support for the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora amid deadly sectarian violence raising fears of a new civil war.

For Oil How?

A. The war in Iraq was for Americans to get control of Iraqi Oil.

B. The war in Iraq was for the Iraqi people to get control of Iraqi Oil to sell exclusively to Americans.

C. The war in Iraq was for the Iraqi people to get control of Iraqi Oil to sell to world markets.

D. The war in Iraq was to keep Saddam Hussein for threatening American access to Middle East Oil.

E. The war in Iraq was to keep Saddam Hussein for threatening world access to Middle East Oil.

Cobb on King

"Thank God Almighty I'm free at last."
-MLK

As intimidating as it is to take on such a subject as the legacy of the good Rev Dr, we ought to have at it.

The first thing that I think about when I think about MLK is a scene in which I am standing on his shoulders, surveying the promised land, which is a green valley and a great glittering city. We are on a hill which represents the Civil Rights Movement. I look to the valley and to the mountains beyond, only barely visible. I never look behind. He says he has been to the mountaintop, and I am there with him ready to run down into the valley - but I've seen the mountains beyond the valley and they are constantly on my mind.

The second image is that of black and white children playing patty cake somewhere at the foot of Stone Mountain.

--

As long as I've been on the web, I have despaired of the King family allowing MLKs papers be published and available for free. It strikes me as a sorrowful legacy, one that's simply broke, one of tragic miscalculation. The reason is money, and nobody has met the family's price. So for a message putatively for the world, it has gone unheard for the lack of the proper payday. So we've been left with a less than clear way to assess his intentions.

I've never been able to think about any wrong King might have done in principle until I understood the Black Power criticism which was that King mistook non-violence for a principle, when in fact it is nothing more than a tactic. King's solution was thus a Negro solution which couched all possibilities for dissent in the context of a citizen's dissent, and not of a human's dissent. Human dissent includes the threat of violence, the dissent of a citizen can be only that of political protest and petition. And thus King could only be a leader of those Americans who were satisfied that the level of injustice heaped upon the Negro could be reconciled within the political confines of American democracy.

It is wrestling with the implications of this final matter that occupies my thoughts about King today and it is, I think ultimately where I must be satisfied with him. King therefore represents to me the bright line between radicalism and reform. King may have been called a radical, but against the background of human history, he was not. King used all of his skills to highlight a contradiction between the promise and the presence of democratic justice in society. King used power in such a way as so it would disaggregate after his demise - he did not use it in any conventional way to force change. He was a one man minority whip who gained a democratic majority. He was the ultimate citizen-Senator outside of the formal Congress.

Like Thomas Paine or Patrick Henry, he was able to electrify the people and gain an extraordinary consensus of action and purpose. It is why, like them, he is a great patriot and perhaps the greatest of all patriots.

--
The image of King on the mountaintop is of *my* King, a black king making promises to a black people. It is in that regard that I find he can be questioned. As the great American patriot, his electrification of the government and of the people found expression in the passage of laws guaranteeing equal defense of civil rights for all - not quite a Constitutional amendment, but certainly the most significant legislation of the era. In that act he is *everyone's* King and in that regard cannot be questioned. Why he must do double duty has everything to do with black expectations of their own trajectory towards freedom and blackfolks' very definitions of freedom.

The American Middle Class is free, as free as the Founders intended, as free as anyone would defend their rights to be free. Free enough to determine their fate. Free enough to self-destruct tragically. I am free. And so I don't expect anything more of MLK. Others do not believe they are free, and so they have greater use for him than I. It is the very controversy of my claim that I think generates friction.

King has no legacy save the effect he had on American government and on American attitudes. He did not aggregate power and so there is no well of power remaining. He did not collect money, nor build buildings. He didn't amass an army or grab land. He didn't build a church or run for office. He lived to be a catalyst in a reaction that would end without a need for re-ignition.  I am confident that this was a conscious omission, one generated out of his Christian sensibilities. He would build no earthly kingdom. He would pass no such power to his heirs. It is in that breach that we find people scratching their heads wondering what King might do or what King might say. People who are dissatisfied with the freedom his reaction delivered. People who wish to recreate the old formula. The time is long past, and if there is any truth in what King said but left undone, then it is to that message and not to King that the future belongs.

Every man is born free and every man must fight to stay free. The amount of freedom depends upon the amount of the fight, because enslavers are everywhere, even in ourselves. King's fight reminded us all of that and he fought for us so that we might remember nothing is conceded without a struggle and that some freedoms are worth dying for. But King would not say which freedoms were worth killing for, and that left him the leader of men who would talk, walk and sit in jails. Of men who would endure cruelty for the sake of a moral argument. But such are not the fullness of man's desire to be free, but man's desire to be avoid combat. Thus King is the author of our comfortable freedom, and so long as we can enjoy it in comfort, we need only thank MLK.

Your Day

Another Classic

The Cobbian Oeuvre, Slammed

Nulan lobs a large and complex bomb: I attempt to deal with it seriously

I believe that I am simply undaunted by the prospect of criticizing blackfolks or the ideas that seem to motivate them. I am convinced that it is useful criticism and I do endeavor to say things that are not said elsewhere.

f'zample?

That goes straight to the question of blackness, and I have had no success whatsoever in enaging that aspect of what makes blackfolks properly black. The 'who owns blackness' question is moot, unanswerable. I'd like to engage it but I cannot. I would engage it from the perspective of the change from Negro to black and suggest that the original prospects were useful but that they cast off too much of the 'old time religion'. Instead and now I am attempting to rectify mistakes of black nationalism, primarily ridding it of marxist economics and racialist thinking. And in that regard I would suggest that my own orientation as an old dude is proper and that Huey and Karenga went wrong. Which is to say nationalism is good, how does a black nationalist become an American nationalist? Economic development is good, how does a Ujamaa mature into black capitalism, moreover how 'black' does economics have to be?

All of that is limited to what I think is the ambit of the Civil Rights and Black Power agenda, which is to establish and maintain a strong and vibrant black middle class. I think we have that. So now my question becomes, what was the primary thing that created that black middle class and sustains it? Was it the values of Black Consciousness? Or was it the rising tide of the American economy combined with black mobility in it? I don't know for sure. So I'm not sure how to prioritize my critiques of the Defense of Marriage vis a vis black OOW birth and economic causality. But I do agree that Moynihan was right, and my own perspective is that a strong black family is absolutely necessary - that it can't be done without it.

and why no corollary criticism of whitefolks inclusive of some of disingenuous posers who perpetrate right here in your salon? As things presently stand, Bill O'Reilly is beating you on fairness and balance levels and everybody and they mama know that Bill O'Reilly is a lying sack'o'shit working a very definite and highly racialized political agenda.(Juan, Dr. Marc Lamont, Rev. Al and all his little crumbsnatching negro correspondents notwithstanding.)

I have no idea what Bill O'Reilly does. None. I haven't watched 30 minutes of the man in my entire life, and probably less than 4 hours of Fox News, ever. I have watched Glenn Beck a couple of times but not enough to remember much. My corollary criticism of whitefolks is implied in everything liberal and left and most things progressive. But I don't think of 'white' politics as anything different from racist politics. At the same time, I come from a perspective of black strength. Sure I'm going to call a white racist idea out, but I am particularly expecting blacks to overcome.

My message on anti-racist politics is purposefully not directed at either race, but I do hold blackfolks to a higher standard. And what I see is a pro-black politics that tends to be more self-interested than it is willing to build a proper multi-racial coalition. I see that this is a problem for me, because in fact I tend to be dismissive of such efforts anyway. That is because I get to a point at which I think blackfolks and whitefolks ought to get along without political urging. So you're likely to hear me push back at blackfolks who have identified extraordinary sensitivity and zero-tolerance anti-racism. Like TCoates implies that Hitchens is doing against 'black women' by ranking on Michelle Obama. So my kneejerk is how many whitefolks in political coalition can you get on that zero-tolerance platform - and then the answer is 'all of Obama's white supporters' and I dismiss that. Why? Because Michael Moore says whitefolks have no right to judge blackfolks. So it all sounds like political correctness to me, none of which has a significant effect on the economic position of the average black American. I'm interested in seeing institutional racism broke down and beat up, and I hear terms about the respect accorded Rutgers basketball players.

I'm not defending Smrgol nor taking any time to appease or correct him either. He's only been here two or three months. I do think he's said some tangential stuff that didn't pass the sniff test, but I'm not trying to make an example out of him. Yet. To be frank, I think Sparkle gives me a little bit too much love. I'm always attempting to be Socratic and instructional, welcoming of conflicting ideas and drawing people out to anthropological value. I've only had to bust on Chance and Fisher but both are welcome back.

The levels to which you strain in order to appease and furnish aid and succor to disengenuous Black haters is neither "old school", original, or constructive. Right here on this thread, you allowed 1400+ words of pure-dee-pure irrelevant horseshit without uttering a peep. Now you know the stink is hella deep when thegrayconservative and A. Charles alike have to call folks out on their nonsense!!!

I appreciate the work they do. I hope neither of them get tired of Cobb. I don't see haters, I see dissonance and a profound difference of priorities. I'm not trying to mediate that I'm trying to facilitate in the midst of being provocative. There have been lots of occasions where folks have gotten into a fight where I have no dog. Fzample you essentially chased off DailyBowelPrep when you two got into it about brain chemistry. I thought it was a breathtaking discussion, but I pretty much stayed out of it. I can't exactly say what the bone of contention between you and Smrgol is, honestly. But I don't see it as zero-sum. You're both welcome. I'm not objectively evaluating a lot of the comments that aren't directed at the thesis of the blogpost. I just don't have time.

On the whole however, the comments at Cobb are dynamite, and I mean that in a very good way. We don't have any trolls, people don't cuss each other out and people with completely different experiences and priorities still engage. That's all good, and I really don't care who has the last word when I don't want to have it. I'm perfectly content with a bit more horseshit than you.

In summary, blackfolks and the ideas they hold are never far from my mind. I battle in the world of ideas as an old school conservative towards the ends of disabusing racial loyalty over superior values, and identify the pitfalls and wishful thinking of progressive, liberal and left politics.

MLK posited a human essentialist Christian ethos and constructive political and economic engagement toward that end, and got shot for his efforts. ~ one month ago, you had the audacity to reject that in favor of precisely what "superior values"? Please tell me what these superior values are, because for the life of me, I'm at a complete and total loss to identify ANY of them. If they exist, that's a major hole in my bucket.

This is the most important criticism you lay at my feet and I want to look at it seriously. I will take it as a separate issue. I feel that there is a very big difference between Black Power and King's Dream. I'm not positive that they can be reconciled. Essentially, I think King's Dream was limited by its populist appeal. I think Black Power was premature, impatient and rude. I would like to believe that King's Christianity would work in ways that American politics does not and cannot, but I am left with B16 for now. I have not engaged as much or as well as I should, the implications of a transformational Christianity and its role in American affairs. I'm not sure why I have been distracted from that task. I'm glad you bring it up. The time is right to consider Liberation Theology, the separation of church and state and the proper ethics for America. I think notions of 'social justice' are very sloppy in contemporary thought. I think King's emphasis on racial integration was absolutely right and the Christian implications of that are clear.

You say that I'm anti-black but I don't ever feel that given all I have had to say in this blog that I would be unwelcome anywhere blackfolks are.

No, I say your "rhetoric" is conspicuously anti-Black and I have encouraged you for the longest time now (as have many others - not a few of which have simply thrown in the towel) to check yourself.

I need to be checked. Believe me. I'm a legend in my own mind.

What's the American Express motto, "everywhere you want to be"? I for one am genuinely curious about precisely where you want to be Cobb? Despite all your hypothetical pinings for elite Black aggregation, do you genuinely lift a finger toward that concrete interpersonal end outside of episodic and externally constructed media interludes? Instead of being the change you claim to want to see, it seems like you're in constant audition mode for Larry Elder's or Juan William's media gig. That steez is closer to "being everywhere somebody else wants you to be", right?

I'd like to be rich enough to have people over to my house and have significant dinner parties. I would essentially expand Cobb to be a real place, and whenever heads are in California, you'd know to drop by. I want to be rich enough to become a community macher, and I think in retirement I'll write books or do radio. I need to continue the conversation so that I don't show up one day aged 60 sounding foolish.

The interpersonal thing is difficult for me. Firstly because I simply don't fuss with people face to face. My nature is to be a host. Secondly because the people whose company I enjoy are sparse. But thirdly and perhaps most importantly I am extraordinarily frustrated with what I call 'social work'. My parents were both social workers, by profession. I simply don't have the patience for it. I am so much better having this conversation we are having, then doing any presumptive community service. I am very critical of community service organizations and the politics that support them precisely because I have been intimately involved with the headache of funding and managing such entities, and I strongly resent the hypocrisy of the Talented Tenth position. This is my burden and my failure, which I would be happy to present at length. But I look at a man like Albert Murray as who I want to be. And I cannot imagine him showing his value through community service.  I think I am perhaps a bit resentful of the dismissal by a people who take Tupac seriously. My interest is in writing essays, polemics and treatises. It's a chatting class game. Moreover I am strongly attracted to the writing of Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis, a couple of drunk Brits who are extraordinarily insightful and acerbic. Charles Wright was like that.

 

Bill Cosby is welcome among Blackfolks he's strongly and publicly criticized, (having witnessed it in person here in KC - and knowing the organic networking and coalition building he's done over the past few years here on the ground largely through the historic Kansas City Call newspaper) Cobb's critique - on the other hand - were it known, would be most unwelcome, and that's not simply an unfair catch-22 criticism positing your celebrity against Cosby's. It's a comparison of your and his respective identification with Black folks, organic and day-to-day networking and interpersonal communion with Black folks, old school and otherwise - and see - it's THERE that I believe you have allowed a major hole to form in your bucket resulting in a degree of ideological and rhetorical alienation that is frankly kind of jarring and entirely at odds with your cultural and personal background.

Because I write about politics, there is an expectation that I'm supposed to move the crowd because that's what 'black leaders' are expected to do. I cannot be that. It's interestingly why I like the example of Stephen Biko. He spoke to the crowd in a South African stadium while moving through them with a microphone. He never got to the podium. The man on the podium always gets shot. I want to write. I hate crowds. That is a hole in the bucket I will never fill. I want to be a writer. I want to have a salon. I am a consultant, a host, a raconteur, hell a barfly. I can handle a swanky reception or sit on a dais, but no more than two hours. I need my privacy.

You give every appearance of having put more effort into aggregating with folks whose politics are far less post-racial than they are anti-Black - and - you're not making evident comparable efforts to evolve or convince those folks of the errors of their ways. Personally, I'm very, very tired of calling you out for this, and I'm still more tired of abiding the emanations of folk who have categorically demonstrated themselves incapable of communicating in good faith across racial lines. That is, folks who believe they own the first mover prerogative on defining and controlling racial discourse. Folks who equate pro-Black rhetoric with the anti-Black structural and institutional context giving rise to Black partisan ideation and struggle.

I see a fundamental necessity for an overt black patriotism which owes to the history of black politics. I see it just as necessary as others see the need for Republicans to disown the Southern Strategy. In my mind, I am transfixed by the image of the white man on the courthouse steps trying to stab the black man with the American flag, and in the next second the black man snatches the flag away and shames the white man by holding it higher without fear and with righteous pride. So I have very little patience for the black oppositional, and I am perhaps overly concerned with it.

I don't believe in the post-racial. I believe in the competition of compelling values. So I seek for Americans to be so invested in a proper American nationalism that their racial interests are subordinated. I expect Americans to wrestle with the temptations of racial thinking and discipline themselves to 'play nice' as A.Charles says. I want people to look at the table in front of them and to realize that they *are* diners, and not strangers to the American table as Malcolm felt he was.

But I think that black cultural production has failed to give African Americans a decent context to express their patriotism and their ability to get along with their neighbors. I think that black oppositional politics has poisoned public discourse enough to make life more dissonant and confusing than it should ever have become. I find these to be enemies of American unity. I think white racism is unchanged, but diminished. But I don't see it in country music or anything in particular.

I began many years ago seeking to establish a zero-disrespect standard in politics. So I used to look for the racist insults. I found them surely enough when Meg Whitman used photo-ops with Sharpton to prove black bonafides in defiance of the local Urban League. I found them in the calculations of political strategists. I've never had a kind word for Karl Rove. But I have also determined that polities are led not by spin doctors but by their own percieved self-interest, and those who desire to call the Democrats 'black' and the Republicans 'white' lack the courage to cross the aisle and work things out. I wrote that practically day one on this blog.

Black partisanship is not the same as Black nationalism. Black partisanship is incontrovertibly human essentialist and enjoys first mover prerogatives as compared and contrasted with any other factor in the American popular culture. That's what's old school. It puzzles me how anybody could ever get that twisted? The Black partisan policy and praxis is embodied in the last 4-5 years of MLK's ministry. How large and eggregious a misrepresentation is it to equate that with the Black nationalism you constantly hold up as the object of your political scorn?

Your view of black communion my be incompatible with my temperament as an analytical and polemical essayist. I may have to give up the claim on the Old School, because it simply may not support me. But I am certainly ready willing and able to make some very specific claims on MLK. That's next.

The Mammoth Car

This takes me straight back to boyhood. Wow.