Cobb

A Skeptical Triumph Over Global Warming Fraud

I don't know exactly how long I've been skeptical of the great hoax that Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW) has proven to be, but a thoughtful researcher might check the archives of Cobb to make the point. They have always been open. Here's a classic quote from me:

My mind is made up on global warming. If it takes 100 years to move the planetary temperature up one degree, it will take 100 more years, or at least 50 to change it back. In the meantime, nothing that serious is happening. We need to focus on what people do. The Planet is fine.

I know that the ice cube analogy doesn't include land, but 17 feet of sea rising is not going to happen. Again, the fate of the Earth is not a political priority. Hurricanes don't kill six million Jews.

As it happens, I've been searching Slate's archives to find more editorial cartoons from Tony Auth who penned one with the subtitle "Obama's Believe It Or Not". The picture showed troops in Afganistan on an escalator directed by Obama. On the side of the escalator was the word 'Escalation', but at the top of the escalator was the sign 'Exit'. I think that oxymoron and the subtitle encapsulates the Obama presidency quite well - as well as the press infatuation with the idiot socialite party crashers to a state dinner at which strategic alliances with India should have been the subject of coverage.

In that search, I found a couple things to be true. After having watched about 50 cartoons, the first thing that can be said is that they are a perfect form of infotainment and are rarely reliable about anything except the simplest of public opinions. They never fail to make obvious and two dimensional, a multidimensional issue, and in that they can be a useful shorthand for the popular, conventional, unexpert and mass opinion. When applied to the matter of AGW that becomes overwhelmingly clear.

Before I show the killer example of this, I want to bring to your attention the importance of the ability for the President to articulate the policy and direction of his Administration in a similarly two dimensional way. It should be clear and continuous so that a person following that Administration gradually gets a 3d picture. In every snapshot of Obama's articulations, we get blur. We did not have that sort of evasion with GWBush. And so with that, consider the following editorial cartoon by Stuart Carlson:

It should be obvious by now that the theory of AGW is based on a fraud. The Telegraph has a very useful article by Christopher Booker that gives a clear sketch of the history and the culprits and the implications of the deception.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

As I started this essay, I thought about entitling it 'The Natural Advantage of Conservatism' but I tire of politics, and I didn't want to imply with any relish that this revelation is a big win for my political side. Politically speaking, it's going to take just as long to unwind the 'thinking' and money invested in all this green hogwash as it did ginning the whole kaboodle up in the first place. (But I am selling my chromium futures).

I simply want to be correct. And that is why I am curious and skeptical and analytical. I don't have any need to play gotcha, even though it is entertaining to have one's skepticism rewarded. But I am looking at the language of this article in the Telegraph which names the names of the culprits behind the hugely anti-scientific deception and obstruction of Mann, Briffa et al, who had previously been given the honorific of being portrayed as a literal tidal wave of truth. You don't get that kind of reportage on a daily basis. We suffer from lazy reporters and their dimbulb language, which is why people like me filter news through intelligent bloggers. It has been over 15 years since I got my news from television, and at the time it was strictly Charlie Rose and before that only the Sunday morning interview shows, and before that only the Nightly Business Report. The last time I trusted the likes of Wolf Blitzer and George Will, who were among the best TV had to offer, was 1989. I sometimes forget how unusual that makes me.

Still the point remains that people who are engaged in professional pursuits of Progressive political interest tend towards debasing their profession in search of the revolutionary while calling it Progress. Just this week I hear of a revolution in Mammography. C'mon. These things actually take time. I'm thinking that perhaps I ought to coin another rule about being wary of people who claim to be on the bleeding edge of anything.

The late Michael Crichton had the right idea. He tantalized us with the possibilities of what's next and reminded us always of human fallibility in his novels, and he was a skeptic of AGW as well in his speeches. 

PS. To Laurie David: Drop dead.

What Is Genius?

from the archives - August 2003

i think of genius as a frantic state of creativity. what genius is is a polyphonic kind of continual expression and combination of intelligences. an individual possessed of (by) genius has a desperate need to make something happen in a way that combines things that are not obvious to the outside observer. genius always draws on a big pool of knowledge but does so in a way that makes its expression appear spontaneous. a genius develops a cross-functional vocabulary through a galaxy of shortcuts. genius is about the energetic orchestration of rapidly assimilated concepts. genius reinvents a domain in its own idiom, and thus genius defies translations. intellect parses genius one step at a time trying to understand the modus operandi.

penn jillette.

as i say this i am trying to think of criminal genius and deviant genius, the controlled pathology. genius is not methodological, it is searching. perhaps genius that is pathological doesn't understand how others don't understand, and doesn't care. madness is genius that doesn't seek transforming public expression - only observation and assimilation.

henry kissinger.

a genius tries to do gravitate all meaning to his inventions. they interpret life through their twisted prisms. the genius is disabused when they try to explain too much, overloading their creation with meaning. they need another breakthrough. the genius destroys himself if he is unsuccessful.

richard pryor.

a genius must attain mastery. he perfects and re-perfects. he throws it all away and starts over. he spins off a million tangents and throws them away. a genius plays with large dangerous tools. a genius gambles using tells too subtle for the untrained eye. the genius throws himself in the garbage just to test his own genius. he pushes the limits and pretends to be immortal just to see if he can, and finally he achieves.

jackson pollack.

after the genius, if they are recognized in their own time, they change the paradigm. suddenly it all becomes obvious - the dots are connected. the elemental genius of the connection becomes commodified. the public overdoses. pretenders and hacks rip off. earlier works are scrutinized.

woody allen.

we expect that the genius knows about life. maybe they do, but they probably look at the world as if they were an alien race. ordinary comforts don't suffice. genius has no peace. thus they must simplify their own life, discipline it - or throw it into extremes. they reject the free life, they spend too much time attending to the demands of their talents.

billie holiday.

genius is hungry and predatory. its talent doesn't save until it is manifest universally. the genius aims for the globe

napoleon.

genius evokes a vast sense of loss and disintegration when it is suddenly missing. on the passing of genius it is always felt that it will take several generations to find and recover what genius has discovered. one wonders how the world would have been different were it not for the genius in our presence. we are contrite for not paying it the mind we should have, we wish we had another chance to appreciate it all over again. but it is too late.

gregory hines.

Explaining A Basic Palin Phenomenon

I had an interesting, but friendly and therefore short conversation about the appeal of Sarah Palin last night. My interlocutor was appalled that someone so un-brilliant can be considered so seriously as a political figure. The President, he said, should be brilliant and intellectual. I said, you've already got that in Obama, but nobody got the irony.

The details of the conversation had to do with the unwillingness of Palin to answer intellectual questions. I thought it was appropriate that a politician should not base their appeal by demonstrating their articulation on theoretical questions. The purpose of being president is not to conceptualize scenarios, but to embody power and wisdom.

So I have just invented a mental experiment to deal with this question in the future so I can explain a basic conservative phenomenon, which is that you don't want your president to be a certain sort of brilliant.

Imagine that we had a global test to find the most brilliant person in the world and the point of this was that we would give this person the power to be the leader of the free world. After an exhaustive survey, we found a man who understood particle physics, spoke 12 languages, could do cube roots in his head, played classical piano, and ran the marathon in 2:15. 

He decides to be Pope.

So my question is now that it can be proven without a doubt that the smartest man in the world is head of the Catholic Church, do you convert? How does it make you feel about your willingness to follow Catholic dogma?

Knowing that I  will be asking this to a certain sort of person who cannot understand Palin's appeal, I know it is a trick question. They will not convert, of course not. They have their own reasons for not being Catholic and those reasons will not change simply because it's run by somebody objectively brilliant. There is just a certain part of one's life that you feel some authority has no business controlling - which is exactly how conservatives feel about government.  

--

All that said, I think the Republican Party is out of its collective mind and that Sarah Palin should be a Senator, period. Why? Well it has to do with that aristocracy of merit thing. Everything about her and her appeal to Republicans is about winning the Culture War, that battle is beneath the Office. 

Information Isn't Power

Information isn't power. Power is power.

I don't understand economics. I'd like to think I do, but there are some secrets behind it that I don't quite get intellectually. I think I understand them on a gut level and my gut is telling me to inform my opinion with the skepticism borne of my Peasant Theory. Which is to say this: The rich get richer because they're rich. Perhaps I should read Adam Smith at long last.

The rich get richer because they're rich, but. They don't control the market nor can they control the weather, time or chance. Most of the time they can't control people they don't literally own. And so there are no money machines in the world - everybody rich and poor takes a chance on investing their money. Excepting that the more you can afford to lose, the more you can afford to win, and speculation favors those who can afford to lose. That's why the rich get richer. Five percent of something humongous is quite large. So the rich who prosper in the market rightly sing its praises just like BMW owners expound the joy of driving. Sure driving is fun for everyone, but more fun for the 2007 BMW guy than the 1975 VW Beetle guy, and that counts double for unexpected crashes.

So it is with information. Sure it's nice to have a cell phone, but you can't compete with a PC and a PC cannot compete with a data center, and a data center cannot compete with a university press, which in turn cannot compete with an intelligence agency. So when I hear people saying that 'Information wants to be free' or 'Knowledge is power' I have to ask, exactly how much information and knowledge do you have and whom exactly are you speaking to? The power of the information you and I can get our hands on doesn't add up to a gigajoule of anything.

Unless we do.

But then we have a different class of problem from powerlessness which is how do you monetize that which by its very existence in your possession rather outweighs everything else you've ever had? IE how do you deal with the Longshot Problem? Well I'll deal with that separately. The point I'm trying to make in this penny ante circus is that most of us never face the Longshot Problem, which is how does one not end up like Mike Tyson, or how do you fence stolen goods, or how do you exploit good fortune without it making you lose your mind or freedom. 

No, the problem we more commonly face is how do we make a world not made for us work in our favor? Simultaneously how do we not take ambition skills and survival skills for granted considering that we are not world historical players? How do we express the fullness of our humanity within the ambit of our ability without getting our mole whacked by those with the worlds big leather hammers? Well I think part of it is not falling for okey doke served up to peasants like 'Information is power', despite the fact that it is. Information about Oprah's career isn't power and Oprah herself doesn't empower.

Obama's Ties to Business, Not

  Why so socialist?

What Is Maya Angelou Thinking?

What is Eric Holder Thinking?

Agre: His Head Exploded

Phil Agre is missing.

I have two thoughts regarding this matter, one of them somewhat unkind and provocative (thus the title of this blogpost) the other a bit more subtle.

First the subtle one, and the official establishment of Cobb's Rule #23: Internet links are weak links.

Borne of personal experience from me, a loner loved only by his family, respected only by certain pedants but friended by hundreds on Facebook and recognized by thousands on NPR, most of us don't have time for each other. Which is to say that while we are addicted to information, given the relative comfort of our lives, we don't DO much with it - even when that information is very personal. It's very easy for someone to spend hours reading what you write, but getting them to have a steak dinner with you is much more difficult. People may think you brilliant, even genius, but that will not get them to send you a nickel. Personal relationships are critical, but quite frankly you don't need that many to be a well-adjusted individual. Never forget Dunbar's Number.

And so there are thousands of people who knew of Agre and read his RRE for many years, myself included. But who was he and did we know him? Nothing. Breaking the barrier and getting in people's faces is, I think, perhaps an increasingly rare skill amongst a generation of texters obsessed with body image. Then again, maybe that's just the neighborhood I live in. Salesmen and politicians have the talent, the rest of us do not.

So we should not be surprised that somebody so 'well-known' could disappear completely. Do you have a private investigator's handbook in you home library? I do, but I haven't read it all. There's a lot of obvious stuff we rarely consider, and never do.

--

Agre is mentally ill. I forget the name of the theory that says mental illness is a consequence of trying to live a lie. As intelligent at Agre is reputed to have been, it stands to reason that he couldn't survive in a mentally healthy state had he reconciled his statements of 2004 with reality.

Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to
conservatives for a quarter century.  In order to start winning again,
liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and
what is wrong with it?  As it happens, the answers to these questions
are also simple:

 Q: What is conservatism?
 A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

 Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
 A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and
 civilization in general.  It is a destructive system of inequality
 and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the
 modern world.

These ideas are not new.  Indeed they were common sense until
recently.  Nowadays, though, most of the people who call themselves
"conservatives" have little notion of what conservatism even is.
They have been deceived by one of the great public relations campaigns
of human history.  Only by analyzing this deception will it become
possible to revive democracy in the United States.

I think of what sort of man would care more about these abstracts than of the people to whom his physical presence is important. I have been that man. I understand the fundamental selfish intelligence which must remake the world, internalize it and explain it to the faceless masses whom you would have hang on to your every word. I know this to be the great conceit of undergraduate professors, lecturers all. And yet I know the intrigue and excitement of intellectual discovery and analysis. I am subject to all of those temptations; I know the pride of conviction and the satisfaction of pinioning a concept in the vice grip of mental acuity. But I also know the horror of being wrong, the humiliation of retraction, the anomie of an obscure denouement in the wake of having been debunked. To the temperament of the academic it is worse than being ugly. It is worse than being sick.

It's more likely that Agre's disappearance has to do with his mental illness and his mental illness is just an unfortunate and mysterious condition, as are most mental illnesses. It's not as though we understand the process of cognition or could fine tune any electro-chemical brain processes to help us deal with the logical conflicts of our reasoning. After all, great sex, for all it clarifying satisfactions doesn't in fact make us more insightful, it just makes us happier with where we are. Conversely the estranged and alone man only has the comforts of his own conceits. That and manic depression can be a lethal combination.

In May of this year I wrote:

Dennis Miller said something this year that has had a profound effect on me, and it's just common sense, but I'm going to have to name it. I'm calling it ducking down Miller's Alley. Miller's Alley is a one way street home. He basically said don't spend a lot of time worrying about something that is completely beyond your ability to change. I'm the kind of person who needs to be whacked upside the head with this message, because I'm out there on the boulevard like a motherless child. I need to turn down Miller's Alley and head home where I make a difference. So do a lot of people.

An intervention for Agre should now be reduced to the fundaments of love. Get him [a] home.

Crystal

There's no way to get around the fact that today is both my 15th wedding anniversary and Thanksgiving.

This is a big deal year and yet not. Crystal, say the doyennes, is the appropriate material for my giving. But what's crystal clear to me is that there are high elevations which are not craggy. I'm at a plateau and I can relax. My marriage is pleasant and strong. Neither of us want anything particularly special. It's good enough to look back and down the slopes and recognize the rewards of all the work and love we've put into our family. The kids keep asking what they can do. Stop bickering and rough housing, do your chores and quit pestering me. Same as every day.

The turkey is in the downstairs fridge. We have two refrigerators, two cars, two bathrooms, two televisions, five computers, five cell phones, 100 movies, 400 books and 750 music CDs. We are well fed and healthy. The kids all made honor roll for the midterm. I could go on, but it sounds ridiculous, all this pride of acquisition and accomplishment. It all could disappear tomorrow. And so we recognize our position with humility and thanks. In a moment of respite we wiggle our toes and stretch.

On the whole, my life has had a warming climate. It has, over the long term, gotten sunnier. But six years ago it was stormy and cold. I had never in my life been unemployed so long as I had in 2003. Close to six months. I can still remember those days when a Big Mac was a luxury and we ate soup for dinner. Only soup. Pain reminds, but it doesn't define.

I'm reading Iain Banks' Transition. He has found an interesting way to talk about a number of extraordinary subjects including torture, altruism, selfishness, power and the meaning of infinity. But the one that captures my imagination is his writing about the limited liability corporation - of the consequences of embedding legal personhood in a venture from whose wreckage principals can dance away unscathed. This is the opposite of a partnership. If a partnership fails, the partners go broke. There's no walking away. And so it is with family.

What I wish to convey to you is a kind of hospitality that ends in blood. Blood oaths of loyalty or the bloodletting of treason. I want to speak in terms of a feudal, familial arrangement in whose standing my all is invested. Not a corporate family, but a partnership family. I want to speak to you as the patriarch of a clan of permanent significance, in which Marriage is capitalized and friendship is more than the weak links of hypertext in some service you get for free. 

So what I'm saying is that my Thanksgiving and Anniversary wish to you would be to invite you closer to my heart and to my family, into these things in which I am totally invested and from whose wreckage I could never dance away, but in whose integrity is all of my joy. This is the social edifice I have built with my heart and mind and it houses my soul.

It is a faceted house. Not a glass one, but a crystal one, I suppose I might say today. I hope you can feel the warmth I would radiate to you in person. Not some abstract wish for world peace, or some sentiment I might buy on a Hallmark Card. Merely the radiant hospitality of a family, as simple and plain as that. 

Happy Thanksgiving, from my plateau to yours.

A Gay Marriage Loose End

About a year ago, somebody asked:

I enjoyed reading the post but am confused by your response to Snacks stating that you support mature, responsible gay relationships but because the motivation for gay marriage is not purely protection of the minority you are against gay marriage. My question to you is why should the motivation be solely focused on protection of the minority from the tyranny of the majority? Why can't the fight for gay marriage be a self interested desire to benefit equally from legal protections and tax breaks that accrue to "married" people. Legalizing marriage for same sex couple does not require religious institutions to shift their doctrine or play any role whatsoever in the process. The societal change that will occur as a result of widespread access to same sex marriage is the realization by prior antagonists that gay marriage has no impact on their lives. This is the reality in MA and there is no reason to assume otherwise for the rest of the nation. Proposition 8 and others like it demonstrate that basic human and civil rights should never be put to a referendum.

Prop Eight passed, and as far as I can tell, nobody has been talking much about it recently. When it passed, the reaction by protesters was hostility directed against the LDS Church, which was portrayed as engineering a conspiracy. 

The direct answer to the question is that protection of a minority does not require 'societal change that will occur as a result of widespread access to same sex marriage', but this is the honest statement of impetus for a redefinition of marriage. Of course those opposed to gay marriage recognize that there is an impact. The only way for there to be no impact is for there to be no change in the law. That, of course, does not preclude homosexuals to engage in 'defacto marriage', but it does restrain them from the privileges and immunities of Marriage proper. The 'defacto marriage' can and still should be recognized by law as a civil union.

My opposition is satisfied by the passage of Eight and what I take to be the reconsideration of advocates for the gay cause that the sky hasn't fallen, nor have any individuals lost standing in the courts to address human rights or civil rights violations. Of course gay marriage activism was social engineering masquerading as a defense of civil rights under the abused heading of 'equality'. The self-righteous demand for those privileges and immunities of Marriage has been met with a humiliating beatdown at the polls, but little more than that and an end-zone dance. Perhaps the shouting is over, and that's a good thing.

McIntyre vs Briffa: TKO

This is better than Lefkowitz vs Bernal.

Briffa is now a name that will go down in history, with Al Gore as one of the greatest perpetrators of fraud in the modern world. Steve McIntyre will go down in history, rather like the man who finally stopped Senator Joe McCarthy by saying: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" We'll probably forget McIntyre's name as we've forgotten the name of Joseph Nye Welch. We'll probably remember Al Gore. That's fair, the takedown has had many contributors, but baby it's over. The swastika has been blown off the Reichstag.  

This is one of those huge monstrous collapses. It's a scandal inside of a fraud leaked by a hack. It's like Eliot Spitzer wrapped up inside of The Chicago Black Sox with a Piltdown Man on the side. It's like Enron on top of OJ in the middle of Iran-Contra. 

Now that the actual source code that generated the hockey stick has been audited and outed by none other than Eric Raymond, all that's left is the fun of watching the suckers bail. Everybody who has been.. excuse me, every FOOL who has been measuring their carbon footprint is now going to have to explain that they've been practicing voodoo economics. Oh the unwinding! 

People are going to be able to Google "osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro" for a long time and get the goods on what Briffa did. 

But I'm going to put up the most intricate detailed history of skepticism I've seen right here for the permanent record. Check this out:

Download Skeptical Real Climate Science

God, I'm glad I'm not a phony.

FreeMan and the Black Plan

It has been a long time since I've seen anybody left of Akindele articulate (well, there's a loaded word) any semi-serious black community organizing principles. But there's a dude by the handle of FreeMan who has put up some structure and a multipoint manifesto. 

FreeMan is outrageous, optimistic, excitable, intelligent, profane and foolish all at once. Here's a couple paragraphs that show what I mean:

First, we can use mom and pop distribution. Usually the big distributors want you to barely make any money on your product because they tell you to add up the pennies to become a millionaire. Now us, you and me, we got something already in place that we know hits directly our own folk. I know you are going to laugh when I say it but Barber Shops and Beauty Salons litter our neighborhoods just as much as the other God given distribution center the Black Church. If you have any product that caters towards us you would get your product out by making sure everyone who does hair has a display in their shop showcasing your goods.  You can usually make deals with one of the barbers to sell your shit on consignment. I mean how many times have you gotten your hair done and they are trying to upsale you some Black Soap or some Shea Butter? This alone will help spread your product word of mouth and if it’s a great product then it’ll be a local hit.

Second, we can use the internet. As more and more people get online you won’t even need to make a consignment deal. You can go to OUR local black bank set up a online merchant account and sell everything your hearts desire. Shit we can even make house calls for our services if you want. The future looks extremely bright with us just making deals with Amazon to showcase our products and then we can send it out from home. As usual I want us to make our own Amazon so if you’re a Black entrepreneur think about it! Ok now let’s go read how Jeff Bezos started Amazon and build our own!

Third, think UPS! All these products are going to be bought in a new way and they require delivery. If we are only catering towards our own area how big do we really have to be. See look around next time and check how many messengers are doing local delivery next to Fedex and UPS. They are making enough money to out pace the big guys because they only operate in a small radius. Just think when people start getting their groceries delivered as they aren’t going to order fish from the next fucking state. So if you start small doing small shit lets say in downtown with documents when the time comes you’ll be able to expand out with your small cars and refrigerated vans.

The audacity of having a plan to include distribution and warehousing is a hoot. You gotta love it. But, uhm, what's Shea Butter?

Hasan: Seven Facts

Just needed to lift these from Hitchens to have a reference here at Cobb. I'm doing some post-facto witch hunting.

1) Hasan had been in direct correspondence with a notorious preacher of violence, Anwar al-Awlaki, whose enthusiasm for the teachings and actions of al-Qaida has long been well-known to researchers and intelligence agencies.

2) He bought weapons for himself well in advance of a murderous assault on unarmed soldiers awaiting treatment at a clinic—people to whom, in addition to his responsibilities as a human being, he also owed, as a physician, a sworn duty of care.

3) As he unleashed his volleys, he yelled the universal cry of jihad, "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!" (The eyewitnesses on this point, originally doubted, are especially convincing since some of them didn't understand the meaning of the words and only sought to reproduce them phonetically.) On his business card, he described himself as "SOA" or "slave," or possibly, "soldier of Allah." Neither would be especially reassuring in this context.

4) He had attracted considerable attention by repeatedly using his postgraduate classes at the Uniformed Service University in Bethesda, Md., for the purpose of Islamic proselytizing, for a version of Islam that, to say the least, did not overemphasize it as a "religion of peace."

5) He had, in spoken and written communications, demonstrated a fascination with the love of death and the concept of suicide martyrdom (better described as suicide murder) that is the central concept of Bin Ladenism.

6) Though he may have been upset by the harrowing stories of returned soldiers—as many, many of us have been, incidentally—his overwhelming and reiterated objection to the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and al-Qaida in Iraq, is that it is "a war on Islam." It might be worth noting that this means that the Taliban does represent Islam, whereas the current governments of Iraq and Afghanistan somehow do not—a core belief of the Islamic purists who use the dogma of takfir to excommunicate such Muslims and render them liable, along with many other kind of infidel, to holy slaughter.

7) He seems to have been especially obsessed with the Quranic injunction that forbids devout Muslims to make alliances with Christians and Jews.

Obligatory Seriousness on Global Warming

 

Oddment Branding

Bill Whittle has got my attention again, although he's less brilliant than observant this time around at Afterburner. He explains something we all know - Republicans suck at branding, marketing and the otherwise seductive art of getting people to trust what's inside by making what's outside very attractive. When it comes to philosophy and science, marketing is a waste of time, except when there is no new discovery to be done, which is the case with Republican politics. That's why Sarah Palin is sucking up all the oxygen. She's the only one with any style whatsoever, which is an incredibly dire indictment on the aesthetics of the GOP.

Anyway.

I was at the Rite Aid the other day to pickup some toothbrushes, and I found the un-mainstream area. Take a look at these products. Weird. 

As an American, nothing makes me feel more out of sorts than to have to choose medicines from amongst unfamiliar brands. All of these remedies carry a whiff of voodoo and snake oil to me. One of these items, I swear, contained turpentine as its active ingredient. I know that SSS Tonic used to be advertised on black radio stations in the 1970s and nowhere else. I can also remember all other strange products advertised on black radio, like Glover's Mange and Artra Skin Tone Creme. Isn't it a rather melodramatic that the lonelyhearts who buy Artra at Amazon.com also buy Steve Harvey's romance advice?

Branding is powerful stuff, and it promises things that become part of one's identity in a modern society. It's not enough to just wash your hair and be clean. You must have a particular sort of shampoo for the job. When I was a kid, I washed my hair with soap, and Ivory was too expensive for my family. We used Cashmere Bouquet.

The downside of branding is something I've always been acutely aware of most of my life. That is because I didn't realize how wide the middle class in America was - that we could imbue with social value so many class boundaries of luxury and convenience. And all of this transference of meaning had little and sometimes absolutely nothing to do with the underlying value of the product. You could show up for a job interview clean, but if a 'man' smells like a 'woman', the job is lost. Who writes the rule that men should not use strawberry fragrant shampoo? Why is a TAG watch better than a Movado, or is it? 

The hierarchy of class signifyers in consumer products has a long and storied history in the US. I trace it back to Harley Earl, the legendary car designer at General Motors. It was he who first decided to put a fin on a car and then change the fins every year to compel people to buy another new car, and thus was born the economy of 'trading up'.

The man who wrote the book on the subtle and powerful art of semiotics is Marshall Blonsky, an intellectual hero of mine. His 1992 magnum opus American Mythologies is a whirlwind tour of those who write the rules about shampoo and know exactly what it means to wear exactly which shade of white.

The downside is that the significance of a brand is entirely made from nothing but the accumulated beliefs reinforced by subtle refinements on reflections of the self. People make up their minds what they want to be, marketers show their products in the light of that established being. People buy and become, in their own minds, that thing, and the circle is closed, then reinforced. It defies the laws of physics to orbit around a void, but market phenomenon create their own gravity. 

Until they collapse. Until somebody says, "Hey wait, you're not supposed to drink turpentine!" 

A wealthy country can sell anything. A wealthy society can buy anything. The opportunity for fraud is practically infinite, even as promises defy logic, physics, common sense. Obama can promise anything. GM can sell any car. Citibank can underwrite any venture. Until they suddenly run up against the unwillingness of people to defy logic, physics, and common sense. Then how the mighty fall. Except nothing has changed at all in the universe of reality.

Not long ago, I discovered that forcing the laws of logic, physics and common sense on the masses was the most compelling reason for war. But there are many battles and skirmishes that settle such questions of semiotic deception. We are witnessing one now, as the veils are falling on the 'science' behind global climate change's technocratic elite.

My advice of course is my own discipline. Curiosity, Skepticism, Analysis. Caveat Emptor.

Do I Look Like Mrs. Obama to You?

It took a year. Now reality is setting in. Even the excitable snarks are being told in simple terms that they are willing to believe. (After all, the Chinese aren't like Sarah Palin)

Race & Health Care Reform

I have stopped being surprised at the depth to which conspiracy theorists have stooped to blame the rocking of their worlds by the phenomenon of white supremacy. Now that I realize that their primary and permanent audience are peasants, I rather expect it.

Since, according to these fanatics, the GOP is the source of all racial evil in America and Sarah Palin is the Queen Bee of all redneckery, I expect that any failures to fulfill Obama's dreams of universal healthcare insurance will be placed at the foot of a contempt for black people so fearsome that the Palin drones will spite their own health, etcetera. I'm just putting this out there today so I can refer to it tomorrow.

Scary Michael Steele

Something I missed, but wouldn't pay much attention to directly has reached me indirectly. It's the implication that Michael Steele, head of the RNC, is (gasp) aware that he intimidates people. But of course there is a peasant's racial spin on it. (cf Malkin and P6).

The tempest in a teapot is over the implied abuse or disabuse of the word 'some' in the key phrase "[some] white Republicans are scared of me". You see, Steele is not white and according to legend, non-white people have no business leading America's Right.

What strikes me today in covering this sort of loud idiocy is how people of different stripes will make a dollar out of these 15 cents. Racial inflation. But today I'm rather pointed to comments on Malkin's site reducing in a fairly typical and reactionary way, this matter to one of race. It brings to mind the notion that whites never feel quite so white as when they are told so by somebody who is not. The ability for this to send one into a fetal defensive position is appropriate to the narrative in race in America in which the average Joe has but little opportunity to transcend the fate of his race, as well as the smug self-righteousness of those who claim such transcendence, myself included.

I am an American, I can never wash my hands of this history, but I decide how important it is to the future. In the end, it's just another evil, just another weakness, just another conceit that leads to tears. Nothing new in the affairs of man, and I don't get into the attribution circus.

--

As for Black Republicans, here's an interesting article, with a more sophisticated take on the madness that is the enforcement of stereotypes. Note that the author misrepresents the racial sentiments of Barry Goldwater :

In truth there was no liberal fairy dust sprinkled over the heads of black voters that caused them to flee from the arms of the Republicans. The more likely cause, as many blacks recall, was the unapologetic embrace of American apartheid by the Republican Party’s presidential nominee Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the party’s efforts to establish a new base for itself among disaffected southern white Democrats. Although a higher percentage of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill than did Democrats, Goldwater, armed with the legal and intellectual arguments provided by two of his aides, future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, voted against the bill.

So more stereotypes blaming boogiemen. I guess some people never grow up.

I have had a lot of fun reading over this blog post this morning. Man, we used to rip it up in here.

The Fate of the Educated Man

I've picked up three histories by Niall Ferguson having decided that I'd rather not try to hack the regional ban on his audiobooks over here in the states. I'm starting with War of the World, which I've been meaning to get since Beevor's Stalingrad months ago. Also, as you can see on the booklist to the left, Colossus and Empire. I'm wrapping up Hopscotch, an excellent spy novel which actually reminds me of Ravelstein. 

Continuing on my Peasant Theory I wonder what one is to do in light of the global forces that are arrayed to sow chaos and destruction...but I'm beginning to believe that there is nothing to be done. If that is truly the case, then I'm going to have an interesting problem with my ambition. Or let me say it another way.

The End of Nations
Imagine the worst case, and that case is that we are on the verge of a post-national world order. IE, my individual capacity, augmented by the telecommunications revolution that is the Web, will have access to enough knowledge and knowledgeable people to do what Doug Hofstader called 'joots the system'. It's like a kid who has stumbled upon a listening device to his parents bedroom and Santa Claus has just been destroyed and a ton of other secrets are about to be unbound as well. Might as well not be a kid, poor bastard. Let's say I lose faith in every accessible institution upon which I might entrust my personal ambition. Let's say that you and I get to the point at which we feel better able to defend ourselves than to entrust authorities with the Constitution - you catch my drift. Where do we go?

Well I've been saying the answer is feudalism for a long time and I have sought to recognize feudal order underneath public institutions which are losing our trust. Like many Conservatives, I use the power of family to guard against the dysfunctions of the state. It's always family first. However what about my education? What is to be done with the excess capacity?

Contextual Meritocracy
I mentioned to Dr. E the other night that our meritocracy is not complete. It depends upon the context into which it was entered. If you are living in an agrarian society, you use your smarts to understand how much water you need to cover 7 acres of watermelon seed. But we have been living in an urban, post-war society for 50 years. We assume a great deal of our meritocracy is stable, but is it? What if, in 4 years, there is no such thing as a hedge fund manager? What if there is no such thing as a bond trader? Or if you could possibly believe this, what if there were no such thing as a web programmer? Impossible to believe? Of course it is. Until it's reality. 

So I'm wondering about the fate of the educated man in a post-rational society.

--

But that's all I had.. today I'm feeling rather different. All I can say is that the human animal uses its mind like lions use their teeth. And whether or not there is sophistication in the arts and sciences of dentistry for lions, what matters is that the lion has got teeth and must use them or starve. Likewise a man must think or perish. It is his natural gift, so let us not be concerned with institutional failures or abuses of the mind. The mind must do its work, and if there is no leverage to be had through the articulations of history's accumulations, the mind will still do what it must unabetted. And so a new meritocracy will arise.

It almost takes one around to the relativism of Foucault. Was Foucault actually relativist or was he merely an astute observer as was Kuhn? I think Foucault's analysis is valuable. It may not be anti-modern after all. But since I'm still figuring out some things about decentralization and open source, perhaps I should not be so harsh. I've been acting like a peasant. Foucault is useful...

Yeah

Note: Pop culture is supposed to be popular. It has to be easy. It has to be cute.

Is UCLA Too Big to Fail?

I wrote to the LA Times:

There is almost nothing, I repeat nothing, you can spend $100,000 on 18-22 year olds and get something of vital importance to society. UCLA will fail as will the business model of this sort of university. It will fail just as surely as the newspaper industry has failed, and the reason is simple. You can get the same or better information online from people who will share it for free.

Look at MIT OCW. That's free. And a well motivated student can learn what he or she needs to know without the imprimatur of this bankrupt public system.

I attended Cal State in the 80s and wondered what it was I was missing for not having attended UCLA as an undergrad. So I did the common sense thing, which was to go to the UCLA bookstore and buy the books that UCLA students were required to buy. What I learned was that physics was physics and astronomy was astronomy and what I was able to learn had everything to do with my desire and discipline and nothing to do with .. well the patience of smart-assed 22 year old teachers aides.

Everyone who is protesting is gambling on their ability to leverage a dysfunctional political system for funding something a truly smart person would be able to provide for themselves. This for the privilege of having a credential that speaks louder than one's own skills. It's marketing. It's failing. And so are the institutions that hire such dubious individuals, because obviously the endowment is not helping.

Surely the Left commenters here should stop romanticizing simply because UC is a public institution and rather recognize what a UCLA education has become... a bourgeois luxury. If you don't believe that, consider the quality of those opinions written here by students in the fray.

There is a culture of foolishness in America that could do well to fail in this failing economy. And at some point Americans will stop watching television shows like 'Entourage' and spending $2.50 for 8 ounces of energy drinks, or beer for that matter. But until that happens, one cannot take seriously these sorts of complaints.

This is basically when I put on my Dirty Jobs hat. Perhaps our problem as a society is that we have too many 'educated' opinions.

The Power of Humiliation

So I was in an elevator full of men who were wearing the team colors of the Cleveland Browns. They grumbled aloud and boldly that there wouldn't ever be any Baltimore Ravens fans anywhere near. I thought better of making a joke.

My reading of Ferguson is on a brief hiatus, but I was beginning to get the flavor of how the Germans got so aggravated in the years leading up to the election of Hitler. My short story does nothing good for history but humiliation is certainly part of the formula.

One of Cobb's Rules in the area of Boys and Girls has to do with what men love to hear and what they hate to hear. What men love to believe is that their particular skill is valuable. Just as I say that people don't have weaknesses so much as they overuse their strengths, the world of men is a world of hammers in a sea of nails whether or not those are actually nails. What men hate to hear is that they are deluded and useless. Destroying a man begins with demonstrating to him that he has lived a lie his entire life and all the work he has done has been a cruel joke - that he is a fool just like all the other fools. When a woman tells a man that all of his skills are meaningless, she is burning the last bridge to his heart. It is unforgivable for a man to be thought of like all the rest - to the extent a man accepts this, he competes with other men to get to the point of 'are we cool?'. And by the way, a 'bastard' is by definition the man who never says 'yes, we're cool'. The powerful bastard gives no quarter, ever, for any relenting in competition. The powerless bastard searches eternally for someone to dominate. These are men who suffer from the lack of having a father's pride and calming hand.

Speaking of which, I sensed something touching this past week in observation of a father and son up close and personal in their house with whom I shared a delicious meal. A father patiently but firmly pointing out the broccoli and the son with a big pile of food in his cheeks he doesn't want to swallow. My own son was a 'juice junkie' and would live on orange juice and string cheese if he had his way. Boys must be grown into social appetites, and like men, have their real appetites made meaningful and significant. 

So my mind is on Cleveland and it fascinates me to no end that this is a place where steel was made and Rockefeller hung out, but today they are owned in most every way by LeBron James. It's not that James is an improper leader, but that his contract is short and two years hence, he may go the way of Republic Steel - sold off to some bidder from a bigger town. The men of Cleveland have as an expression of themselves, the Cavaliers and the Browns. And ain't nobody better be talking smack about Baltimore.

As it turned out, Baltimore shut the Browns out sixteen to nothing. What's worse, it all happened in under 30 seconds. All of the hotel rooms emptied out and Cleveland returned to a somber pace, laced with some self-deprecating humor which is the only peaceful cure for humiliation, that hedge against ambition that allows a man to laugh when he is the butt of the joke. The other cure is revenge which is sometimes sweet but more often cruel.

It is my observation that Cleveland is not full of bastards, nor is Ohio in general. And although they tend to pick on people to the north and south for their non-Midwestern accents, on the whole they wear their humility fairly well. Still.

On a dark night with rainy streets, there are crestfallen empty buildings on 9th Street that overlook a cemetery three blocks from the new stadiums. There's more money in the sports complex than in the financial district and bars with neon signs stand darkly awaiting a championship season. A Russian girl tends bar facing 10 big screens full of action and excitement from every town but this. Parking lot attendants stare over empty acres now that baseball season is over. The steakhouses are empty every night except when the wealthy fans from out of town fly in to see their team beat Cleveland.

There's no reason for this. It's not about Cleveland in particular because men everywhere have their standards and limits. Surely the Russian girl knows a town without such teams and men without such dreams. There is enough to be proud of without digging too deep. But pride lingers on the edge of disappointment and enough of that leads to bitterness. That was the edge in the huff and puff of the voices on the elevator last Monday night. A rivalry between Baltimore and Cleveland tinged with the readiness of ordinary men to do battle.

Hi I'm a PC Idiot

Peasants! You know, this is what happens to a post-industrial society that has learned to monetize the long tail. 

The Republican Evasion

Republicans are responsible, by and large for all of the tax abatements that are given by states. So states are going broke. There is a conservative principle behind this principle of 'no new taxes' and it is a fundamental and righteous principle. That principle is the defunding of the welfare state. The problem is that defunding of the welfare state requires diligence and legislative acumen, and the dirty secret is that Republicans don't often do that diligence.

Given a choice between raising taxes and not, the conservative instinct is to not. But let me restate that. The libertarian instinct is to not raise taxes. And of course the individual's instinct is to not want to pay taxes. But Republicans are nationalists, whereas libertarians are oxymoronic cosmopolitan individualists. Libertarians don't care about society, so long as it is diverse, comfortable and free - like a sidewalk in San Francisco's South Beach. When people are scrambling like ants you've just blown on, libertarians are happy. Republicans wants them in neat lines, but marching more or less in one direction. Liberals want them marching both ways and jostling elbows, but I digress. 

So when people ask legitimate but leading questions about Republicans trusting government they should be clear that Republicans trust government to do those things that governments are supposed to do, and they want them means tested. Republicans want government to efficient, effective and run like a well oiled machine, predictably, cheaply. But Republicans also believe that the kinds of people who are capable of getting those kinds of things done in any organization are not likely to waste their time doing it on the cheap. Which is to say, there are four kinds of organizations in this world. For Profit, for God, for Country, for Charity. For Country means civil service & military service. 

Anyway I'm rambling again. The Republican evasion is this. Given the chance, Republicans can only find a few things worth doing for Country as a civil servant, and whatever they are, they shouldn't EVER generate deficit spending. So whatever the government is doing that does generate deficit spending and debt needs to be cut, and tax abatement is the Republican answer, whether or not that tax cutting knife cuts muscle and bone out of the Welfare State or any other collateral damage. 

Beware of expedient Republicans.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

"Shepherd doesn't care about danger close."

If you play Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2 on Normal, you will finish it in eight hours. If you play in on one of the more advanced levels, you'll probably have too much time to think about it. I did not want to think about it that long. It's an ugly story.

But there is plenty of good, and some bad in this installment. Is it worth it? Yes. Does it live up to the hype? Yes, but. 

First off, the 'yes but'. This happens to be personal. I've been an XBox gamer for about six years. I've seen all the drivers and shooters and I will have to say that Forza 3 and CODMW2 are the best of the best. I think there are about four more games that I will have to play in my life and then the whole thing will be over. These games are delivering all the realism, and a good bit of narrative. After this, there is nothing but more historically accurate games to play, and if I were rich, that's one of the businesses I would invest in. Hannibal at Cannae, Montgomery at El Alamain. Bradley at The Bulge. Nelson at Trafalgar. You get the picture.. So I'm at the point at which the context of the story is more interesting than the online action, and COD is built for online action, except that it generally has a superb campaign. This campaign? Not so superb, but still excellent.

Essentially, you have to believe that if an American gunned down 200 civilians at an airport in Russia, that Russia would launch a shock and awe against Washington DC. And if you can believe that, then all of this makes sense. The impact of this story was somewhat lost on me primarily because I wanted to play this game so badly. I confess that I just rushed through it, but it's all starting to blur, BUT. This game makes for some truly standout action.

What's unique about MW2 is that there is every kind of mission here. You can tell that the developers wanted to give the player every way to shoot in this game. In the story there are firefights that you essentially cannot survive unless you hunker down and draw fire behind a riot shield while your teammate flanks. This is the best new and original tactic in any shooter, of a much greater quality than that of Rainbow Six. There are stealth snow missions with silenced rifles. There is a  free for all mission where bullets are flying everywhere. There are great sniper missions, one from a helicopter. There are missions with a Predator, and with a robotic halftrack gun. There are buildings to storm on a large scale and small breaching missions with hostage rescue, there is half-dead hand to hand combat, and there is the soon to be legendary terrorist mission. 

I'm trying to think of another battle in a shooter where things got so ugly that I lost my appetite to play. Nothing comes to mind. The situation is this. You are called upon to infiltrate an enemy cell. The commander of that cell, Makarov is one step ahead of you. Makarov attacks an airport terminal in Russia and his crew, including you, casually walk in with machine guns and start mowing down civilians. The control of the system is restricted. You cannot break from the group, you cannot run, all you can do is shoot. I'll be honest, I couldn't shoot the civvies. I killed a couple that were dragging their bodies away at the very end, but for the most part I shot at the ceiling and at the guards that were shooting back. I kept wondering if my reticence would break cover, but as I said, Makarov was onto me the entire time. I, the American, am killed and my body left at the scene of the massacre so that the USA takes the blame, thus begins WW3. Except that it's not WW3 it's just America vs all of its current enemies and foes. 

The battle comes to Washington DC and you fight in suburban Virginia and on the Mall. It's chilling for both its realism and similarity to Fallout 3 when it comes to trenches near the Washington Memorial. Thematically, our creatives are hunkering down for some remix of American failure - the film 2012 debuts this week as well. 

There are vehicle battles in this version which are very fast paced which makes up for their somewhat clumsy control. I get it, there should be frenzied action, but on the Normal level, some of the running kills are a bit too easy and the physics seem a bit contrived. And so let me speak to that. I think that by including all of these different styles of combat into one game, Infinity Ward has reached their limits. They are very high limits, but it's starting to show on a couple of the edges. When it comes to wide open battles, Ghost Recon still sets the technical standard. I still prefer the Ghost Recon tightness and control even though the missions are a lot less realistic in terms of chaos and fog of battle. And for the close in battles and tactical missions, I still like Rainbow Six although some of that is being challenged by the breach missions of MW2 which are very well done. Call of Duty rules in sniping, period. But ODST has really raised the bar for the combination of mission types and control. I felt myself slipping back into my Halo reflexes many times. That's somewhat annoying. 

Here's where Call of Duty rules. The Brazilian favela fighting is brilliant. The combination of weapons, civilians, tight areas, sniping opportunities, dogs, confusion and chaos is unprecedented. I've been waiting to actually hear some voice talent other than Russian and Spanish in all of these shooters and COD delivers with Portuguese and Arabic, finally. The tactical missions, which I have just begun are also very very good. It's an innovation that takes what began in Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell did for training to the next level. Giving a nod to the training missions of the great PsyOps Mindgate Conspiracy, COD rules. 

Oddly enough, for the online, I don't expect much. I'm curious to see if the advantages gained by access to tanks, aircraft, dogs and artillery don't make for greatly unbalanced gameplay as they have in previous games. I much prefer the Halo approach where more powerful weapons and battlefield positions are objects of direct competition rather than perks for kills. But if there are zombie levels, I'll be happy for that.

All in all this is a great game, and I suppose that I will enjoy it as much as anyone my age and sophistication will admit, which is, admittedly declining. Then again, some people watch football.

Pray Today

Let us pray for our brothers and sisters as they go forth with courage and determination to face the forces of violence, weapons of destruction and hearts filled with hate. 

For our Commander-In-Chief,  and our political and military leaders that they may tirelessly seek peaceful settlements to international disputes; we pray to the Lord:

That the Lord may preserve the members of our Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard and Air Force from all harm; we pray to the Lord:

That even in war, we may keep clearly before us the defense of all human rights, especially the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; we pray to the Lord:

That the families, relatives and friends of our military members may be strengthened in this time of concern and anxiety; we pray to the Lord:

That the Lord may help families with men and women in the armed forces to cope with daily challenges in the absence of their loved ones; we pray to the Lord:

That our homeland will be preserved from violence and terrorism; we pray to the Lord:

That the nations of the world will seek to work together in harmony and peace; we pray to the Lord:

That the hearts of all men and women will be moved to pursue true peace and justice; we pray to the Lord:

That violence may be overcome by peace; that weapons of destruction be transformed into tools of justice, and hate give way to true charity; we pray to the Lord:

That grateful for and inspired by those veterans who have given their lives for our country we may bravely face the challenges ahead; we pray to the Lord:

Lord God, Almighty Father,
creator of mankind and author of peace,
as we are ever mindful of the cost paid for the liberty we possess,
we ask you to bless the members of our armed forces.
Give them courage, hope and strength.
May they ever experience your firm support, gentle love and compassionate healing.
Be their power and protector, leading them from darkness to light. 
To you be all glory, honor and praise, now and forever.

Amen.

Black Mental Liberation Notes: Akbar 93

I'm checking out Naim Akbar, who in my opinion, used to be the man back in 1983. As I'm listening to him now it occurs to me that without such folks, we would not talk about slavery. Now I cannot speak for many other people's families, but in mine the end of our racial education was about age 10. And of course for us it was about us - getting our heads together headed down the straight and narrow. I was one of the fortunate kids who got black mental liberation at home, so I think that I had a bit of an advantage in already having what men on the chitlin circuit were peddling during the early and mid 80s.

This diatribe, which singularly defines blackfolks in terms of their relationships with 'Boss' makes some subtle muddification between plantation owners and everyday whitefolks as its hook. But the fundamental question of whether or not people are free is relevant. Certainly the achievement of liberty is an underlying theme in my Peasant Theory. So I'm interested to see how he ultimately defines freedom - whether or not he sees the primacy of the individual or if he believes in modernity. The last thing such speakers want to say is "I don't know" or "We're all the same", which puts them in the unfortunate position of suggesting that they have out-thought the lessons of history. On the other hand, he may just be speaking to his own market of peasants who just want to hear him bang the drums. 

The thing about Akbar is that he's no fool and even though he has dumbed down his rhetoric and gone stentorian since I observed him in 83, he is an educated psychiatrist. He understands how people fool themselves and will have honed his art to handle real psychological dysfunction and weave it into the narrative of black oppression. As I listen to part two, he gets to his bottom line which is that enslavement is psychological. 

The problem with all of these preachers is that they lack any economic prescription. For them, everything is psychological, political and cultural. So they fail to describe economic matters with any accuracy - they often attribute economic action to conspiracy of race. 

This, is by the way, the acme of hiphop. Putting of these 'lyrics' to the jazz-styled beats was the best that it got and '93 was just about the right time for this sound and style. But I hear the anachronistic sample from Method Man from a year later...

Obama? Present!

Barack Obama is husbanding an electorate which is unable to muster a cogent and logical opposition to foreign policy. The very existence of the meme of 'Truthers' speaks volumes to the dubious nature of sustainable information provided through our media on the whys and wherefores of current affairs.

Obama has gathered unto himself a palpable majority of wishful thinkers who are unaccountable to the complexities of real affairs, and who are thus dependent on the whims of the news cycle and loud minority reports. And since Obama has demonstrated himself capable of articulating the 'vision thing', he knows that his version of events can win out in the end.

All he requires is an inept and compliant media, and so far they have been obliging.

But Obama is too smart to be caught in a lie, and so he offers the roundest of platitudes. But decisions? Ha! He is no decider, he is, as his legislative voting record shows, merely present. Or should I say that he is a presence. Listen to his speeches. Does he say what his interpretation of events demands with regard to action? Obama's presidency is not executive in that regard. It is not about what he should do, but what we should all become.

Obama has his mandate. He has become what he was destined to be, there is no more becoming for him to do. So now he just has to ride this thing out and the the story his way.

I just don't get upset about it. Obama stands in a long line. Garfield, Taft, Harrison, McKinley, Hayes, Cleveland, Taylor, Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan... So what?

American Equilibrium

Everywhere I go, amongst people of the middle and especially the upper middle class, I keep hearing this phrase: "It is what it is. Some of the time when I hear it, it is uttered with some frustration. But lately I hear people saying it with a kind of confidence, a willingness to accept reality... as it is. I think that I like this development. It's certainly better than 'whatever, dude'.

Part of my problem is that I pretend that I am speaking for the upper middle class, but I understand it's just me. 

An important part of my political and philosophical growth was my understanding of political momentum and equilibrium. That basically the state of the law and policy is the result of various interests that ebb and flow and interact more or less. American society is a dynamic beast, but it has some equilibrium. For example. Right now, America is at equilibrium with regard to immigration policy. There are no major movements pushing and pulling. The Right, for its part, has generally accepted the premise that all the new illegal immigrants have gone back home because there's no new work as a result of the economic wreckage that Obama is making out of our country. The ideas about illegal immigration haven't changed on the Right, but there is basically no movement on the matter. The Right has other fish to fry. Similarly, the Left is satisfied that now that Obama is in control, all the rednecks in law enforcement have been suppressed and we are truly a kinder and gentler nation. John McCain has been put back in his box and there's no fear of a racist crackdown any time soon. I think the broad middle, those who may or may not give a rat's about immigration, illegal or otherwise, aren't thinking about the matter and nobody is pushing them one way or another. So what we have is the status quo, with all sorts of active and inactive but dynamic elements, at equilibrium.

In other words, nobody's making a Federal case out of it.

One Hundred Forty Six Cheap Drugs From Walmart

It was 2005 when Walmart began it's low cost plan to cover generic prescription drugs. The following is the original list. You can get a 90 day supply of any of these for ten bucks.

A Good Second Look At Obama & Social Justice

One of the better discussions at Cobb was this one about Obama's intellectual roots and the shape of his campaign around the themes of social justice. There are scores of comments that take the debate into interesting places.

I think it is reasonable to say that Obama has triangulated his way out of just about every responsibility he so dramatically highlighted during his campaign. His healthcare bill, which I'm sure is a Rube Goldberg contraption of extraordinary corruption squeaked by in the House and now lies in wait for Senate machinations. Outside of that he has done almost nothing for social justice that I've been able to perceive except extend unemployment benefits to precedent-setting lengths. One could argue that this is an extension of the welfare state in principle, but I think, like everything else it is a measure of desperate pragmatism. After all, as I said, he has vastly underestimated unemployment.

Go read that whole piece if you have time and come up with your easy answers now.

Are there any diehards remaining?

Cobb is Seven Years Old Today

Seven years, 750 thousand hits. 25 thousand comments. 7400 posts.

It ain't a book, but I always said I'm a writer, not an author. 

Was it as good for you as it was for me? 

Cobb has accomplished about six missions for me. It has given me a stupendous sense of achievement. And even though it's sometimes just me sitting in my underwear in a hotel room thousands of miles from home, like I am tonight, Cobb has always been a thoughtful place to be.

Back about three years ago I put it down and published a retrospective. I think I've grown a great deal since then. But certainly my proudest moments were winning the Aaron Hawkins Award and a bunch of other stuff I can't think of at all. 

Cobb has allowed me to work through all of my issues and questions about American society and politics, and I think it has made me once again into the kind of person I once was - a humble person who listened intently to people with the genuine ability to be amazed by their stories. It has given me a way to be passive yet intensely moral which is a very difficult balance that used to put me in people's faces. I think most importantly and more recently it has allowed me to age gracefully, to accept being the older man that I will soon be when I turn 50 and drop this puppy. It has allowed me to care in public and engage as a citizen, to teach and to learn, to facilitate reflection and to clarify, to fight melodramatically and to celebrate matters of the spirit.

I realize that these are odd things to expect from electronic publication, and so I'm an odd fish, but I feel that I am in communion with thinkers and men of letters throughout history. In short, it has been a great 7 years. 

And so it continues.

Pogrom

Odd word isn't it? Pogrom. We don't use this word much in America. Why? Well because we like the term 'race riot'. But we haven't had one of those in a very long time. I was only a kid when we had Watts and Detroit, but I'm not clear on whether or not that was blackfolks burning down their own stuff or whitefolks and blackfolks killing each other on the street. I'm pretty sure it was the former, and for LA after Rodney King I'm sure it was. So we don't have pogroms.

Every once in a while, an Afrocentric will try his seventeen paragraphs of truth on me and walk away pissed that I'm not impressed. It's not that I don't understand or that I fundamentally reject where they're coming from so much as it is that there's no consequences one way or another. What do I mean by no consequences? I mean nobody's burning down any buildings. Nobody is taking a mob from house to house looking for the right kind of scapegoat to hang in a tree and set on fire. What we get is people upset, insulted and offended. We get loudmouths full of self-righteous indignation. It's almost kind of sad. You may or may not recall that a month or so ago (and I still get everything on the Kwaku Network) somebody posted a picture of a Barnes & Noble shop window with a picture of the President surrounded by books about monkeys. It was either a hoax, or not. But I remarked that the person who took the picture and emailed it to 'us', did not have the temerity to smash the window with a brick. So how offensive is it really?

Oh. Did you get my little joke? Haha.

Now I'm going to quote something from page 166 of the book I'm reading on WW2.

In reality, Yugoslavia was an uneasy amalgam not just of Croats, Serves, and Slovenes, but also of Albanians, Bosnian Muslims, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and Turks - not to mention Czechs, Germans, Gypsies, Hungarians, Italians, Jews, Romanians, Russians, Slovaks and Ukranians.

..and then across the page

In Czechoslovakia the Germans were effectively excluded from the 1919 elections in clashes with Czecch gendarmes and troops - the so-called massacre of Kaaden of march 14, 1919 - fifty-two Germans were killed and eighty-four wounded.

Now I'm just discovering skirmishes I didn't know about Germany and Poland in the years between WW1 and WW2, but I'm struck by the number of ethnic groups in Eastern Europe that were basically behaving like tribes and not Westphalian nations. My overall impression of the period between 1900 and 1920 thus far is a broad area in Europe where the idea of a nation is not firmly established. You have royal families, socialist and communist revolutionaries, and ethnic blowhards all in the mix of instability. And so for any number of reasons, no less than the madness sustainable by an organization of 50 fanatics, all sorts of small and large pogroms came to be in Europe.

We don't often think of Montenegrins or Macedonians here in the states, and it's almost impossible to imagine, given our history curriculum, that Germans might have ever been persecuted by Poles. But those are the facts, and some many thousands died due to tribal warfare in 20th century Europe outside of the two great wars.

The opportunism to defeat modernity always presents itself.

Wife the Ho

There aren't many things in life that are so poignantly absurd and profound as a rich American rockstar on the verge of... Well, I can't call it. Judge for yourself. The question is NOT how does this get on the air, nor how many millions are listening. The question is how long didn't you know this was on the air?

Destination: US

A thoughtful reader just passed on this interesting tidbit from a recent Gallup survey:

The United States is the top desired destination country for the 700 million adults who would like to relocate permanently to another country. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of these respondents, which translates to more than 165 million adults worldwide, name the United States as their desired future residence. With an additional estimated 45 million saying they would like to move to Canada, Northern America is one of the two most desired regions.

It's interesting that I think such immigrants get multiculturalism when they go to Canada. But I would hope that the 165M coming here, which I would welcome in a heartbeat, would not expect it. The question lies of course with the political prospects for Progressivism and its multiculturalist oblivion - the sort that can't figure out the difference between a Muslim and an Islamist. So long as such self-congratulatory Baby Boomers pass through the American alimentary canal, we might be more assured of a couple post- 9/11 generations who actually understand the importance and the difference and aren't afraid to ask. 

--

In a related story on Bloomberg Surveillance today, which I now listen to via WunderRadio live from NY, (since I'm on GMT -5 instead of -8), there was a cat from MIT who spoke about the wonder of entrepreneurial culture. According to this professor of business, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a hotbed of animal spirits. It's something that can't be taught, but the self-selection is already there. You do apply to get into MIT. Presumably the entry requirements for the US are a bit more lax.

There are oaths to swear and burdens to bear that immigrants would put up with. The price of the ticket. But on the whole, I love the idea. 

Ghoul Systems

What does Google do with your data after you die? What does Yahoo do? What about Facebook? How does anybody actually know when you are dead in cyberspace? Seems to me that this is a problem that hasn't been well thought out. How long would it take that thing that is the current equivalent of a death certificate to circulate to all of your web service providers, and how could it be faked? I mean if identity theft is so easy...

Obama's Biggest Mistake (So Far)

I think we just had election day last Tuesday. Yep. That's true. so it has been a year. So let's just narrow it down to one, big, fat unavoidable fact. Obama is breaking his neck to pass a government funded health care insurance plan. I am reminded of the woman who was three months pregnant in February of 2008 who wanted to vote for Obama so that she could get health care for her baby. Hmmm. I wonder if the poor woman has a job. The big fat unavoidable fact is that Obama misread the entire economy and has done nothing to solve its biggest problems. 

But let's just focus on one fact OK? Unemployment. This is the chart which I would like to bring to your attention. It's all over the web permanently, and I invite all of my blogger friends to multiply this by publishing all the brave predictions of the great and powerful Oz. 

The unemployment rate, people, is 10.2%. And there are predictions that it will go to 13%.

Additionally, the so-called under-employment rate, which includes part-time workers who’d prefer a full-time position, and people who want work and have given up looking, reached 17.5 percent last month, the highest level since records began in 1994.

Companies aren’t “cash constrained to hire workers,” and instead are being “cautious about economic bellwethers,” Rosenberg said. “It just comes down to the economic outlook,” he said.

The economy has lost 7.3 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. 

Just to remind you of how faulty Obama has been on the economy, let us remind you of how wrong he was in June of this year.

Cherokee

I have begun to use Google Scholar more and more often. One of these days JSTOR is going to be free, and I will use it even more. For now, the guilds of academia are using economic jiujitsu to force peasants to read uncited unreviewed material and use a bit of common sense. Since common sense is not quite enough to be authoritative, I'm just a blogger and you're just a reader. But we could be authors and scholars if we had the moola. 

Be that as it may, I find it interesting every once in a while to find Google opening some interesting books. Take this one for example. The Cherokees: A Population History by Thornton, Snipp and Breen. No that's not a footnote, it's a hyperlink. A hyperlink is superior to a footnote, that's why they were invented. But you understand that footnotes are considered superior because credentialed academics use them.

So the conventional wisdom, which is part of the multicultural canon, relates the story of the Trail of Tears as a genocidal horror. Exactly how horrific was it? 

So what I want you to do first, without going anywhere is take a wild guess as to how many Native Americans were 'exterminated' by Manifest Destiny. I'm sorry to say that I have already done a little checking and cannot play along with you - generally I say things when I blog in realtime and then in the next sentence do a test, but as you can see I already did a test in the hyperlink above. If you were too lazy to click the link then you can play the game, if not then you can sit smugly like I am and imagine what other clueless individuals are guessing. 

OK good. Now you have an idea in your head. The answer is 4,000 for the Cherokee. Hrumph I can't find the link. Now as soon as I use 'Trail of Tears' at Google Book Search rather than 'Cherokee Population Study' at Google Scholar, you get a flavor of how sentiments change the interpretation of the numbers. 4,000 is a nice number because it dovetails rather nicely with the number of victims of the WTC attacks, which a host of Americans are wishing profoundly we would just get over and stop warring about just 10 years later. But is that a fair restriction on human memory, or are they right? I mean human souls were no larger then than now - the value of a human life was no greater in 1830 than today right? 

I don't have an easy answer to that question, but I am learning something about the geopolitics of tribes into national ethnic minorities and what can befall them as ideas about race, nationalism, ethnicity and other factors change in the face of calamities (economic crises and war) that challenge larger bodies. Oh wait. Here's the link. Cherokee Population Losses During the Trail of Tears, by that same Russell Thornton.  So now you have a name to associate with a highly cited authority on the Cherokee population which was somewhere around 30,000 max in the 1700s and hovers somewhere around 325,000 today. 

Now I know that the chances for any tribe to maintain and retain the integrity of their indigenous culture decreases exponentially in an inverse relation to their urban integration. So I'm not trying to say that those 300,000 have much chance from a multicultural purist point of view. Then again, I don't believe they could teach the boys at Green Giant two cents about corn or the Kentucky Derby crowd a farthing's worth of horse knowledge. No doubt they were what they were way back when they were. But what they are today are 10 times as many souls - preserved as well as anyone. I mean how many of you can trace back your family to 1830? 

What matters in this post is that charges of genocide should not be relativistic, especially from those who claim racial neutrality. A red man's soul lost to the ages is no more significant than a brown man's or a yellow man's or a white man's. And I think if our common sense were a bit more well informed about who is killing whom in what numbers throughout history, we wouldn't make such a big fuss over some of the things we fuss about. For example, how could some asshat traitor who's on a one-man jihad (or as part of a 20 man cell for that matter) affect the entire population of American Muslims? Well that depends on how faithfully you hew to the trail of actual dead bodies, rather than crocodile tears. And it depends upon how you view matters of ethnicity, religion, creed and color and those other things that we Americans are supposed to DISREGARD with respect to the enumerated rights and responsibilities as citizens under the Constitution. 

Then again, you're likely to hear that since 20 million Cherokee were exterminated by America (oh I'm sorry did I put that number in your mouth?) there are no rights and responsibilities we conscientious progressives are bound to respect from America. Or as Fernandez put it today with characteristic irony, "Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism', meaning pissing on the Constitution because of who wrote it or who happened to disregard its implications over two hundred years.

Genocides and pogroms matter. Populations matter. Massacres matter. They all matter. Do you see where I'm going with my peasant theories?  Peasants are the ones who die. They die for being on the wrong side. They die for being on no side. They die for being in the way.  You and I, we are no more or less peasants than the Cherokee. Except we have the tools of democracy (and Google) to help us understand the fallacies of peasant-think. We must think like kings or die like peasants. It helps to be able to count.

BTW. Welcome to my new category 'History'. 

Quote of the Day

"The reason a meritocracy works is that all the members of an organization operate under a single consistent set of rules. What political correctness does is overlay a second, or even a third set of unspoken rules on top of the formal ones. Suddenly nobody knows what gives and the system seems not only unpredictable but may be perceived as unfair. Worse, it encourages those with “special” attributes to segregate themselves to take advantage of the new and unwritten rules. It can be enormously disruptive."

Fernandez

Silas, AL

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.
-- Matthew 6:28

Willie got straight A's, was a Jehovah's Witness and wore a hearing aide, and so even though they were archrival footballers, the boys in Silas accepted him whereas his homefolks in Butler rejected him. Willie has twenty seven stories, at least, about life two feet above ditch level, where sanity is only accepted on faith. Willie relates to the kind of situation where it's about taking all of the bullets out of the gun but one and hoping that's a mitigating circumstance when you're looking for the man who beatdown your cousin. He never had to shoot because they couldn't find him. He was hoping they wouldn't find him, but it was that close. Willie tells the tale of that redbone college girl who invited him to study in the dorm but turned out to be wearing daisy dukes and a halter top that Friday afternoon.  He's not ready for a brew yet, so the Mountain Dew was on me. 

It took 87 minutes for the chicken wings to thaw and get cooked up and so it was past midnight and the Iggles loss before I hiked back to the Marriott. I never expected to wait that long for some hot food, and I didn't expect anybody to walk up to me for any either. But I know the feeling of walking around downtown Cleveland pissed off and looking for something to eat, except Willie wasn't pissed off.

As usual, some folks will size me up to be a Que dog or an Alpha, depending on my attitude. Willie said I fit the Alpha profile when we got around to that part of the long conversation. But it took a long time for him to get past the immediate past which for my man was a hard knock life. I'm happy to fit my profile, but I get the feeling that it's hard for Willie to get other folks to deal with the fact that he's something other than an ex-crackhead. He just turned 33 and hasn't had a taste in two years. He has been a dental assistant and an auto mechanic, 'strictly blue collar' and tells tales of legendary BBQs and his fool friend Chuck who didn't realize what a good woman he had before they eventually got married and moved out West. 

Willie's a peasant of the better sort. One who doesn't pretend to be anything more and yet knows the transformative power of God. I asked him how old his father was, knowing I was ready to say something pithy about how young 33 actually is. He has three he says. the one we all have, the Heavenly Father, his biological father and the man who raised him. The man who raised him is 83. The man who keeps him putting one foot in front of the other is infinite and Willie is full of acknowledgement. The third man is available via Facebook and things are getting better, step by step. Willie is figuring a way to share his story of redemption with the knuckleheads he's accustomed to being around, especially the younger ones. It's easy to see him as that kind of counselor, just as soon as he can turn his inner conviction into inner strength, and his outer expression into one of evident socially redeeming purpose. But today Willie is a man whose good times are tainted - too tainted for funding by my interpretation of the eyes that fund. But I know something about American men that I don't think too many men bother to find out.

Unemployment is going to 13%, according to the latest experts on Bloomberg Surveillance this morning, and as Tom Keene puts it, there's something wrong with the term 'small business'. Officially, small business means less than 500 employees, and those are all the companies that are getting no bank loans these days. So there's a class of financiers in America that can't even be bothered with 'small business', so what are the chances for peasants like me and Willie? 

Take a look when you have a moment, because even the Google VW has been to Silas, Alabama. Right in the middle of town, there's not much of a town. And good kids come to big cities like Cleveland, where the regional banks are failing left and right, and sometimes it gets down to taking crack, or taking down scores, or as in the case of the Imperial Murders, just taking other people's lives and dignity. There's still not enough bandwidth to get all those stories out. They are born on the tongues of men like Willie. There are some towns that reject you for your differences, even if those differences are character strengths. There are some towns that accept you, and there are others that ignore you altogether.

Where do you go when all the things that are too big to fail actually fail? You go where things are too small to succeed but actually succeed. 

My mother is sending me Bible verses, and I know a third of the famous ones. So I'm thinking of King James, the only version I remember. This is the story of Christianity that stands when other institutions fail. This is the story of faith in mankind that transcends market fluctuations. This is a story of the power of redemption - of something that works for the peasants even when the royalty stands wealthy, illiquid and clueless. I can give it a Deist name or not, but it is the divine that resides in our souls - that thing that tells us right from wrong in all circumstances - that thing we try to suppress intellectually or self-deprecatingly. 

There's a lot of small business around this land. 

USS New York

Yeah. You know where they got some of that steel don't you. That's right. Ground Zero.

 

Treachery

Well I've heard enough details to make up my own mind about Hasan. He's a traitor and he should be hanged. Simple. 

Merely Black

Over at the Respectable Negroes and TCoates as Adam shared with me, there's an old discouraging existential battle going on. It is the battle between the essential and the merely black. 

The pique is some highschool teacher somewhere in the South is losing his job because he presumed that his students might be merely black. But somebody involved in his pillory presumed that his students must be essentially black, and therefore a line that might be crossed by mere humans without a problem suddenly necessitated a collection of existential shackles.

You see this teacher made his students dress up like cotton picking slaves. 

I'm not going to make a big deal about this although it truly annoys me. And by big deal I mean write a long essay explaining all the nuances. I'll just say the whole bloody thing is stupid, but just what you might expect idiot peasants to get all bent out of shape about. 

What if the kids were Italian and the teacher cast them as Romans in the story of the Crucifixion? Surely that would be something? No it would be nothing. Since TCoates is the mainstream twerp on this talking point, we all have to be sensitive because he's sensitive as we mistake sensitivities for intellectual acuity. The teacher should sue, for whatever that's worth.

Oh, but I'm not being clear. Coates is filling up enquiring minds with the details of light-skinned fantasies that die hard. Etching out literary lines of colorstruck insecurities and solidifying a caste of millions still fundamentally incapable of thinking their way over a color line. Existentially speaking that is.

I'm getting to the point at which I hate black people, just the way I hate Mexican food. That's because what everybody takes to be 'Mexican food' is only the Mexican equivalent of American junkfood. Tacos and burritos are hamburgers and hotdogs. Everything 'black' these days is cultural junk, which is why we're talking about the psyches of highschool students who cannot portray history without becoming slaves to.. well.. the legacy of slavery.

Ironic Photo of the Day

This would probably make John McWhorter feel rather strange - all these copies of his book on sale at the local Dollar Tree in Redondo Beach. Some seller did some fast talking, or some buyer had a point to make.

Revolver

If you asked the premier rock critics, at the time I was young and impressionable and on the outside looking in at your America, they would tell you the greatest and most socially significant song from the greatest and most socially significant band would be Eleanor Rigby from The Beatles. And if you ask any contemporary critic which is the best remaster of that song, they will likely point to the one that I hold in my right hand. The Parlophone 2009 Beatles remaster.

And so I listened to track number two over my Resolv 65a studio monitors and I can tell you that it sounds great. Except it doesn't sound significant, and finally I can forgive that questioning and puzzled teenager that I was trying to reinterpret all of Western Civilization through the lyrics of Lennon and McCartney. It's just a great song is all.

The most difficult thing my kids generation will face is that answers will be here, there and everywhere. All for the querying, like manna. Except it will take a lifetime of reinterpretation until they realize they've been surfing on the perspectives of the producers. What could be more crippling than a satisfied curiosity?

It's tempting to be lazy. And I'm starting to understand that temptation - to use analogies and popular culture to explain and allude to deeper truths. So no matter how clever, I'll just listen to the rest of the albums I bought today and just enjoy them for what they are.

• Sgt Pepper
• Revolver
• Rubber Soul

More songs than anybody needs to make it through a couple weeks, now that Dollar Tree is playing the tritest versions of Jingle Bells. Already.

How I Sleep At Night

Nocturnes.

I have a fairly long playlist which starts almost always with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I first started to go to bed every night to Beethoven back in 92. It's odd how I got into the rap criticism stuff last week without giving anyone much of an idea of what I listen to now. Here's a new on by Per and I always catch his latest solos on YouTube by subscription. And in my old classic 'recovery' style, I've learned a couple dozen new Beatles songs I never knew that I knew, and some I never knew at all. Other than that, I've got Thomas Dolby and Linda Ronstadt stuck on blast in my head. Per clears out the noise and makes me quiet down. That's beauty.

Death From Nowhere

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."

It would be foolishly speculative to assign a particular motive to the mass murder perpetrated yesterday to Army Major Nidal M. Hasan. But that hasn't stopped people from their agendas of spin. Such is the way of disaster. People do what they are expected to do, only more vocally. Those who defend Islam against all Americans foreign and domestic, those who do obeisance to the noble sacrifice of the divine calling of soldiering.. all play their roles with amplification appropriate to the size of the tragedy.

But only The Shadow knows.

And of course in this case it is ironically true that it is a psychiatric specialist whose job it is to plumb the hearts of men who knows why he went on a murderous rampage, with two handguns. And now, just like the flashlight on the cover of the dime novel, we're all trying to focus on the killer.

As I have in my middle age been reduced to a shadow of my youthful ambition, I sit transfixed by the messages of the dead. Not just these 12 dad, but the millions of dead in the Fifty Years War of the Twentieth Century AD. Niall Ferguson is my ghoulish tour guide who explains the ruins of the ghosts of wars and financial disasters past. I walk with my head in his books amongst the living, sometimes ashamed that I pay so much attention to the dead. The dead who never knew what hit them. That's most of our fates. We'll stay on the stair climber even as we fight off shortness of breath, chest pains and tingly sensations in our arms because we think we can outsmart death. We look straight ahead on the elevators ignoring one another and counting our bank balances in our heads because we think we can retire in security. We clean our rifles and tie our bootlaces and polish our buttons because we think that with our gear and training we can take death to the enemy before he takes it to us.

Death is not impressed and will not be constrained by human explanations.

The answer Hasan will give is going to be simple. And the only way you'll be able to see how simple it is is if you understand how much death mankind is able to deal out without thinking. It doesn't take much thought or effort to kill 12 people. But most of us don't think long on such calculations. But to go spontaneously barking mad when you have military training doesn't take much doing. In this regard, Stalin was right about killing millions. And if you consider what a lifetime of soldiering could produce, by any standard, an Army Major who only orchestrates the killing of 12, is a miserable failure. But similar to shark attacks and lightning strikes, Hasan did the ordinary thing at the extraordinarily unexpected time and thus becomes famous, but never more dangerous than capricious nature. He'll babble out an excuse, or a reason, or a mute defiance or a jeremiad of conspiracy and then we'll all have our say of 'See I told you so'. Responsibility will be placed in a theory or a policy or a dogma and we'll all be satisfied that Hasan fits a profile - that nothing out of the ordinary happened here. And we'll all be right. Because in a world of millions of commentators, excuse me let me amend that.. in a world of millions of second-hand and third person meta commentators, 12 deaths is a light snack of melioration. Next year Hasan at Hood will be a question on Jeopardy.

But to explain 10,000 dead is something few are called to do, and so I am focused on the greater deed.

It might come to pass that Hasan at Hood becomes some rallying cry to a pogrom we will reflect upon in retrospect as future historians catalog the slings and arrows in this peaceful interregnum between the last and the next time men organized for Big Death. He will be among, perhaps, the thousand points of darkness that eventually sink our boats of hope. I think I heard last week that John Allen Muhammad was finally sentenced to die by lethal injection. He only killed 10, and he had an accomplice.

So we will have 'justice' of words and spin and other nonsense by this time next week. And then Hasan will die, perhaps sometime after 2012. That's the way of peace and we are living in peacetime. It cannot be denied for Hasan is living amongst us. But I suspect that it incrementally raises the stakes and hastens the next time around when death comes from everywhere.

Midwest Chill

I can't remember the last time I wrote a pure diary entry. I've been pontificating a while. So it occurs to me at 11:34pm Eastern time that I've created something of a unique voice for myself, taking as a primary cue some dude named John Cheever of whom I haven't read the first paragraph. I just know how one particular critic said he should be remembered and it occurred to me lo those many years ago that I should be the John Cheever for my black American generation. If not me than whom? Only Farai, and Trey Ellis come to mind. Hey, he's got a blog! Awwwww shit!

Item the First - Run Away!!
If you, like me, are a fan of Monty Python, you know exactly how to intonate 'run away'. So here's my reality based idea for the evening. You see I suffered through (well, not hardly because the food was superb) an $80 dinner sitting catty corner from some feminist academics who were speaking about wimmen and minoryties. One of these academics happened to be quite clearly > 300 lbs. And so since I am reading Niall Ferguson's accounting of the the 50 Years War it occured to me that during such periods of war, such wimmen do not survive. Sure there are lots of crowds who don't survive for innumerate irrational reasons. But on a very basic level, when danger approaches and you can't run away you get steamrolled.

As I was writing earlier today (my brain has in high gear and high spirits since yesterday when the Cavs won) about the power of the words 'cunt' and 'homophobic', certain triggers are just silly. Which is to say that in the face of war and destruction, words don't count for much. However as we have lived in peace for a great deal of time, we have leveraged and economy of words that allow post-modernists to defy the very laws of physics, not to mention rationality. And so it comes to be that there are possibilities that 300 pound wimmen can launch lethal barbs in the forms of post-modern critiques. Now since I'm not an Iowa Writers Workshop grad student, I can bah humbug and number of withering blue pencils and not give a rats. So it is not for any sense of self-preservation that I offer the following foolproof method of escape from the overbearing verbal barbs: run away.

They literally, figuratively, logically cannot catch you. They are incapable of running. Their entire universe doesn't require it of them, which is why the laws of the universe, most intrinsically the universal gravitational constant works to your advantage. That is, if you conform to conventional forms of beauty, which are supposedly so fricking evil.

Item the Second - The Foxhole

I have the following notes scribbled on the hotel stationery, literals..

choice in crisis - sexuality
gay acceptabilty vs female depravity
vs social acceptability of gay sex

Oh. Now I remember. Alright. Situation: bomb shelter, or just perhaps a bomb shelter mentality. You are in desperate straights or you believe that to be the case. What sexual behaviors exhibit themselves? Are men the sexual aggressors and initiators? Do women become more loose? Does sex become more instinctual? That is basically to say, if civilization fades, what social sexual restrictions and conventions lose force?

My guess is that, generally, that in crisis, that's the best time to take note of sexual preferences. Which is to suggest that I believe that it is only in an enlightened society - ie, extremely cushy 'nurture' that the 'nature' of homosexuality becomes more acceptable. And to the extent that women are actually oppressed in society with regard to notions of their sexual freedom as a possession mediated by patriarchy... well they just get more slutty around the alpha males and everybody's OK with that. See what I'm saying?

What I'm not saying is that there's any noble savagery to be found, rather that homosexuality is not so natural as its cracked up to be. Instead it is a cosmopolitan sophistication, a luxury and a vice of bourgie choice. Not something for the peasantry because they are 'born' that way. And ultimately any society which suggests that homosexuality is not a perversion, is by nature a luxuriant society. Whether or not that luxury is decadent or immoral is not the subject of this idea. Merely that absent a certain kind of social pressure mankind is proportionately more het than what is currently considered 'normal' in America's ruling classes.

Item the Third - Belly of the Francop
Look it up.

Item the Fourth - Shout out to Dr. E.
What an extraordinarily cool evening. I will write about it at length.

Die, Fag

I'm now on the lookout for the word 'homophobic' to describe in negative terms any article of cultural criticism. When I find it, I will automatically assume the critic is a wuss and then make appropriate adjustments.

There are, among my contemporaries, several or maybe few, who cannot seem to get over the fact that Malcolm X was assassinated by a black man. It seems to them, the very hight of hypocrisy or conspiracy. I can't remember which, but my understanding won't mitigate their outrage. That is the nature of outrage, by the way. People just want to stay mad. And so I believe it is with those critics who wield 'homophobic' in their arsenal of opprobrium.

The article that launched this minor deflection from my ordinary tangents was over at the Film Freak which was the joint that got me interested, for a week, in Mad Men. In the space of a few paragraphs they assailed a couple of flicks, one about Michael Jackson and the sequel to Boondock Saints. All the time I was reacting, I thought that Boondock Saints was Layer Cake, but I recall them of a piece. Some ultraviolent cool flick with people being bloodied to rock music. But now that I recall the plot of Boondock Saints, I'm actually more ready to concede the arguments.

Nevertheless, the point of my weighing in, aside from my general anti-yuppie sentiments regarding the moral compass of the Hollywood aesthetes and the questioning of the sanity that might consider Larry David a 'genius', is whether or not it makes a whit of difference if someone calls you a fag when they are in the process of shooting you in the head. Or the slightly different question on the matter of homophobia, which is hardly as deadly as say... cholesterol.. whether anyone who can stomach your garden variety shooting-people-to-rock-music-movie should be palatable if one cannot handle namecalling. Is this just another case of calling attention to the mote while ignoring the beam?

Well in the case of Boondock Saints II, given the premise of the original film, probably not. But in the case of 'homophobic' as criticism, probably so. Film Freak has piqued my curiosity and exposed my bias, which is why they remain on the RSS feed, but I'm really on this deflection.

Malcolm is dead, and I still say he was more important than Matthew Shepherd. But what happened to either of them is not commonplace by a longshot. What goes by the screens as 'racist' and 'homophobic' has become such a weak and often witless bleat that the meaning of death has lost its sting. This is why, I suppose, it has become fashion to write movies about mass extinctions and the slaughter of henchmen.

Speaking of which, I caught P2 this Halloween weekend. It was extraordinarily creepy precisely because the victim was quite obviously a woman who had no reason to expect to defend her life in such a manner as she was forced to by the circumstances of the film. She had been completely bred out of her killer instinct, except at the very end of the film at which point the antagonist called her a cunt. She then, like a daemon bit of computer code summoned by remote control, did something more depraved than anyone accused of torture at Abu Grhaib. She burned a man alive.

If we are becoming so trigger-bound within our already demoralized culture that the mere utterance of a single word pushes us into mindless outrage, then that more than anything shows how brittle we are. I'm sure there's a psychological term for that.

PS. I already know what you're going to call me. Try again.

Faith vs Articles of Faith

I'm reading Christopher Hitchens' reflections on his various debates with religious authorities et al, and I think it is very tempting to confuse faithfulness with adherence to doctrine. He says:

Usually, when I ask some Calvinist whether he is really a Calvinist (in the sense, say, of believing that I will end up in hell), there is a slight reluctance to say yes, and a slight wince from his congregation. I have come to the conclusion that this has something to do with the justly famed tradition of Southern hospitality: You can't very easily invite somebody to your church and then to supper and inform him that he's marked for perdition. More to the point, though, you soon discover that many of those attending are not so sure about all the doctrines, either, just as you very swiftly find out that a vast number of Catholics don't truly believe more than about half of what their church instructs them to think.

Hitchens reminds me of the tendency for pedants to believe that everybody who is not has ample time to make philosophical sense of their world and adhere to inconsistencies because of mental lapses, incapacities or worse. And when it comes to religion, secular foes are particularly prone to this sort of error - the assumption that people buy into a coherent slate of beliefs and behaviors. It's a particularly annoying thing to do, especially if one is divorced. 

I always recall that there are social implications to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem and that the mind rationalizes so that it doesn't halt. Human behavior isn't provable, especially not by cynics.