Cobb

Shiny

Changing my life.

Obligatory Seriousness on the Harlem Shake

This type of shit happens every century.

Gearhead #1

Buy A Shotgun!

This is moronically hilarious, but Mr. Biden, I will buy whatever kind of gun I damned well please.

The Next Mr. Tibbs

Apparently, there is a 'superstar' cardinal in the running to become the next Pope. His name is Cardinal Peter Turkson. And since there is a sizeable Progressive black American contingent here still doing some thinking about such things, he represents the next Head Negro In Charge. But like many other black heroes, he is a hero not because he has done anything in particular, but that generally speaking, he's the boss over white people. There has been a running joke and brag that is somewhere between 30 and 500 years old about who white people's 'worst nightmare' is. You may recognize "He's *your* President" as another variation of this joke. 

In order to pin an intellectual handle on this concept, I'm going to overload the previous handle of 'The Tibbs Threshold'. You see, there is this famous American movie set in the Jim Crow South, or perhaps just after the beginning of its decline, starring Sidney Poitier - a gentleman of distinction of the sort you only seem to get in James Bond movies today. And Poitier represents Authority and in the process of solving a homicide becomes all sorts of white people's worst nightmare.. etc. Once I invented a concept called the Tibbs Threshold - which was necessary for me while I engaged the dubious occupation of amateur race man. The idea of the Tibbs Threshold is that some white people will insult black men without recognizing that he might have sensibilities developed enough to be insulted. This is essentially how I feel any time someone tries to give me a pound. I don't do dap, and I don't like being called by my first name. "But I thought you were a revolutionary brother, down with the post-colonial struggle." No. 

At any rate, the significance of any Tibbs figure, be he Barack Obama, Derrick Bell, Thabo Mbeki or Reginald Lewis is that he is a sort of unimpeachable source of black power and is a real authority over matters for which black Americans have been underrepresented, ignored or barred. And of course there are always efforts to associate this man with the people. Now of course this doesn't always work. Lots of these would-be role models, heroes and power proxies aren't actually capable or even interested in becoming a champion of the common man. But by definition, that is what a clergyman is supposed to be all about. The leader of the Catholic Church must certainly be about that - so the probability that Turkson would be for the people is relatively high.

But who are Turkson's people? There is where the racial expectations of black Americans are likely to be dashed, raising all kinds of interesting questions back and forth. And that's about all I'm ready to speculate about at this point. 

Obama, Trayvon Martin, Christopher Dorner

I've been reading over some old stuff here at Cobb and I am reminded of what Obama is and what he is not. What he has become, is a craftier politician than he ever was, and now I think perhaps even mature enough to be the man he clearly wasn't four years ago. Be all that as it may what I want to talk about is The Police State.

As we all know, the Coalition of the Damned has been re-energized by the manifesto, rampage and suicide-by-cop of Christopher Dorner. While they entertain their fading moment and rededication to counter-cultural principles upheld by the Blackademic Soviet, I note the particular silence of the President. In fact, aside from his infamous Beer Summit (Skip Gates) and rhetorical support of the Hoodie Happening (Trayvon Martin), the first black President hasn't had much to say about the Prison Industrial Complex, of which he is naturally The Boss. 

I speak up to point out this grand irony to those who are still in the clutches of the illusion that Ghetto Politics is going to remain central to the real affairs of black America. Only people who survived the Middle Passage even got to be slaves, and only those who survived American Slavery got to be Coloreds. Only the Coloreds that survived the great Flu, and Depression lived to be Negroes - but pretty much all Negroes got to be Black. But Black Nationalism and its ghetto politics are dying and the reality that the majority of African Americans are middle class is sinking in. Jay Z and Beyonce are as good as Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. That ain't ghetto. But still after *two* black LAPD Chiefs, there are still blockheads subscribing to Mumia Abu Jamal inspired racial conspiracy theories. 

I have no sympathy because I am a rich American. I try not to hate Americans, but I am often tempted to for the same reasons most of the second and third worlders must. For being so influential and affluent, an awful lot of Americans are pathetically stupid and morally incompetent. Leading the charge towards the Moronic Inferno is that half-assed Coalition of the Damned, hating on police officers and singing NWA lyrics at the top of their idiotic lungs. I am a rich American and I really don't have to put up with bullshit too ignorant to survive where their moral logic would take them anywhere else on this hostile planet. 

Barack Obama is a rich American too, but he is beholden to the politics that keep the society intact - a society of Left Americans only slightly more realistic than its obdurate boneheads who on every predictable moment backbite against law and order. I don't have to put up with the bullshit he puts up with, whew. But I wonder if people who really believe the actions of Christopher Dorner are consistent with some kind of black politics are really using all of their marbles. Actually I don't wonder. I think they are using all two of their marbles. (Those with three marbles unequivocally support Affirmative Action). I know that this thing called Black Politics has been devastated by the ascent of Barack Obama and that in the end it may have been his greatest contribution to America. 

Barack Obama killed Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Tavis Smiley and all of their minions. But you know zombies...

Your Black Republican Problem is Not My Problem

Ishmael Reed wrote in the NYT:

The Republican Party was influenced by the abolitionist Liberty Party, whose leading lights included William Lloyd Garrison, Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, who latersaid: “I recognize the Republican Party as the sheet anchor of the colored man’s political hopes and the ark of his safety.”

Likewise, in an 1872 letter to her fellow activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony wrote: “I shall continue to work for the Republican Party ... for what the party has done and promises to do for women.”

Why can’t that emancipationist sentiment return today? The original Republicans were born from a challenge to the far right — Lincoln gained influence by criticizing the Know-Nothing Party, the far right of his time. The same could happen today, gaining millions of adherents tired of the right’s racism and the left’s big-government stereotypes. Call it “neo-Classical Republicanism.”

The door is wide open. As Mr. Obama’s critics on the black left have noted, blacks haven’t benefited from his presidency as much as other factions of the Democratic coalition. He’s less of a Malcolm X than a Booker T. Washington, who would have endorsed the president’s belief that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

The Republican Party I know is playing three games. The first game is the Washington game of winning and spinning. It takes whatever power it has and can wrangle to get its way inside the Beltway. That results in just what you think it does. These are the Republicans of Boehner and company - they are who they are - lords of influence, power brokers, men with no time for nonsense. The second game is the game of money and votes. If you are local, your job is find out where the money is, get that money. Money means the guy who owns the Ford dealership who shows up at fundraisers and charity auctions. Votes means the people who will walk house to house and knock on doors and sit at voter registration tables for hours on end every weekend. What you want into is the third game.

The third game is the game of ideas and ideology. It's about the culture of the Right. And that is a media game - an open game. Whoopi Goldberg said that TV is the one place where you can have a million followers and be called a loser. Everybody who is black in the American Right knows that there are a million black Republicans, and we all know that's never enough. The Republican Party cannot do and will not do what Ishmael Reed says because Ismael Reed is not standing up on national TV saying "I am a Republican and this is what I believe". Everything he said rings perfectly true and is perfectly acceptable to the GOP, but that's *his* way with words, backed by *his* name recognition by black Americans. It's the same way with Dr. Ben Carson, whom all of a sudden gets this groundswell of support because he knows how to diss Obama in a way that makes lots of blackfolks tingly. But every black American on the Right already knows this.

Any and every proper black self-reliance idea is baked into Republican values. It always has been, and the GOP is not hostile, but welcoming of all those ideas. It's the broad American media that is hostile and most black Americans - those who are waiting for Denzel Washington on a golden chariot - are playing right into that hostility. The ideas have never changed. When JC Watts was speaking on those ideas, we laughed at him because Chris Rock told us to. When Glenn Loury was speaking on those ideas, we dismissed him because we wanted to wait and hear him say Republicans are racist too. When Connie Rice was speaking on those ideas, we said she was sleeping with GWBush. When Michael Steele was speaking on those ideas we said, he can't win a statewide office. You name the black Republican, all of them have the same ideas, and all of them have a bullet aimed at their head a lame excuse on it. Do you hear what I'm saying? Crabs can't wait to get their claws into black Americans who climb up and say "I'm a Republican and this is what I believe." The ideas have never changed. 

Let me tell you what it's like to be black on the American Right. No, on second thought, you figure it out for yourself. Because it works for me and my family, and that's all the black I'm responsible for. Niky Mianj or whatever her name is never going to sing that song because it's an old solid idea that works for Scandinavian farmers in North Dakota, and it works for everybody outside of the cool demographics all around the world and it doesn't make you popular. Conservative values are like calculus. Knowing them only helps you solve problems, and being unpopular isn't a problem.

Did you hear what I'm saying? Being unpopular is not a problem.

Singing has always been a good idea. You can't grow up in America not knowing how to sing a Michael Jackson song. But Hollywood is the bastion of Frankfurt School propaganda and so their job is to put their cool demographics on TV singing Michael Jackson songs. So that way you get popular. I think people like Glee because it's wheelchair and GLBT friendly, and guess what. You don't get to be on national TV making the big bucks by accident. The professionals know how to make you popular - that's the game they are playing. So Glee is what it is by design. But the songs are old and singing is good. The ideas have never changed.

I don't do media any longer. I'm fortunate enough to be a part of the second industrial revolution - the information technology revolution. That's my day job - I build stuff. I used to be in that ideas game. But after a while I realized that I didn't have to come up with any more new ideas, I just had to get more exposure to the ideas I was on about. That meant playing a media game - a game I called 'Famousity'. How famous can you get? To win that game you do your damnedest to stay in the public eye saying *something*. After a while you get famous for being famous. Yeah well, my mama didn't raise me to be a media star. Everybody knows Connie Chung, but what ideas does she stand for? She's popular, that's all. 

So somebody tells me what the GOP *ought* to do to get black votes, what they really mean is somebody ought to make the Republican Party *popular* - because they have an *image problem* with 'black America'. But the ideas have never changed, and being unpopular is not a problem. 

Dorner the Individual

America does not have to take Christopher Jordan Dorner seriously. But we would all do better to understand something that applies to him and applies to all of us as well. In the terms I have used at this blog it is this: Human beings have the right to make life and death decisions.

Dorner is, by all appearances, not on a rampage, but on a vendetta. He aims to take revenge into his own hands. An organization has done him wrong and he plans to make them pay, in blood. 

There is a slight difficulty with this morality play. It is that nothing that comes of this drama, no matter which way it plays out, can be called justice. It will be vengeance. The difference is that justice is in the public interest and vengeance is something between squabblers that don't represent anything other than themselves. The more observers and critics attempt to draw large symbolic meaning from this drama, the more wrong they will be, unless they make that distinction. If the LAPD gets its way, then it will have avenged itself, that means nothing whatsoever to society. If Dorner manages to satisfy his bloodlust, it is not a triumph for the little guy, it's all about Dorner. So the problem we have is that everyone playing sides thinks they are cheering, in some way, for their own collective interests, and that is just wrong.

Our society is, for worse, collectivising itself. More and more people are getting involved in fewer and fewer issues with larger and larger battles. The 'significance' of more and more current events are in play for 'society'. America is less of a society of independent individuals than it could be, and I say, than it ought to be. And because of that, we have invested more (too much) of our time into defending groups and institutions that actually don't serve us well. I hope we all learn to be a bit more self-reliant in the future.

Dorner is guilty of expecting that his own personal sense of integrity would be served in his police and military work. And that is to be expected considering how people (on the Right) tend to glorify the deeds and character of first responders and military personnel. But a real trooper knows that subjugate themselves and swear oaths not to their own sense of right and wrong, but to the Corps, the Army, the Air Force. When you die in the course of duty, the flag they drape over your coffin does not have your name on it - you don't die for yourself, you die for your country, your city. And so that is how you are to live. If you can't go with the flow, then head for the door. The cost of being a professional is understanding exactly where your organization falls short. This is a psychic burden young Mr. Dorner could not bear. He couldn't stand a lie if it cost him his job. And he couldn't stand the cost of not having the glory he presumed from having that organization at his back. In other words, it was like discovering there is no Santa Claus. That is why Dorner is transparently sociopathic - his expectations of society, of the LAPD of the US Armed Forces were that they would always and everywhere support his personal convictions. That's not how it works.

As an individual, Dorner's course makes logical sense, to him.  No matter what you know, no matter how intelligent or foolish, no matter what your ability to gain support in your community or society at large, you will always have a point of view that diverges. An individual knows what he knows and sees what he sees and makes judgments according to his experience and learning. All colloboration is a compromise, even between identical twins. We cannot get inside of each others heads - we can only empathize with what we assume to be good enough rationalizations for actions. It always comes down to cases, and every individual's case is different.

Human beings have the right to make life and death decisions. Individuals can. In certain cases they must. But we are a large society and we recognize that we are better off on the whole if we can let some people specialize. The police exist, and we pay for their weapons, because we have decided to proxy off those life and death decisions to them, the professionals, the specialists. But in return we demand that they swear an oath and that they dedicate themselves to serving *us* not their own interests. The job of the police brass is to ride herd on policemen - make them wear that uniform - control their thinking, their behavior - make them stick to their duty. In the case of Dorner, they failed. Dorner's own experience caused him to make a break with the police, he put his own values above those of the the organization he swore an oath to. 

When the LAPD failed Dorner, they called him names - specifically a liar, and then gave him the boot. He was fired. When Dorner failed the LAPD he called them names, liars, racists; and now he has become a deadly enemy. I cannot justify either claim, and that's really not important. 

What is important is that as individuals we recognize what kind of power we give up when we pledge ourselves to organizations, groups and institutions. We need to understand that we submit to the rules, regulations, values and judgments of a collective and that means our opinion doesn't matter as much any longer. If we have a crisis of conscience, then it is our duty to abdicate. Leave. Scram. Hit the door. We have to have a Come to Jesus Moment with the leadership and get that my way or the highway decision. 

I think Americans have become so individually powerless that many of us are making Dorner's mistake. We think that our own personal ethics and values are actually served by those institutions we swear by. When that turns out not to be the case, we are blindsided by our blind loyalties. We cannot believe that promises were broken. And then we want revenge and have the nerve to call it justice. 

The Negro Speaks of Books

I just saw one of those Facebook things about who reads what books etc. Of the hundred they listed, I read 26 and then there were 7 others that I tried and found tedious, or just never got around to finishing. It was an odd list. Then I got to putting together a list of black books, horrified as I was by the set recommended by the Huffington Post. So without comment, I've read 90% of these..

Roots - Alex Haley
Black Boy - Richard Wright
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The Women of Brewster Place - Gloria Naylor
For Colored Girls. - Ntzoke Shange

The Color Purple - Alice Walker
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Black No More - George Schuyler
Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Z. Huston

Cane - Jean Toomer
Middle Passage - Charles Johnson
The Wig - Charles Wright
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Native Son - Richard Wright

Another Country - James Baldwin
Disappearing Acts - Terry McMillan
A Gathering of Old Men - Ernest J. Gaines
Kindred - Octavia Butler
A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry

Up From Slavery - Booker T. Washington
Narrative - Frederick Douglass
Narrative - Olaudah Equiano
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Jacobs
The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. DuBois

The Big Sea - Langston Hughes
If Beale Street Could Talk - James Baldwin
The Best of Simple - Langston Hughes
Dutchman - Amiri Baraka
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - James Weldon Johnson

Captain Blackman - John A. Williams
The White Boy Shuffle - Paul Beatty
Miseducation of the Negro - Carter G. Woodson
Faces at the Bottom of the Well - Derrick Bell
Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby - Stephen L. Carter

The Economics & Politics of Race - Thomas Sowell
The Content of Our Character - Shelby Steele
Breaking Bread - Cornel West
Black Macho & the Myth of the Superwoman - Michele Wallace
Notes of a Hanging Judge - Stanley Crouch

The Alchemy of Race and Rights - Kimberly Crenshaw
The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual - Harold Cruse
Race Matters - Cornel West
Ethnic America - Thomas Sowell
Malcolm X Speaks - Malcolm X

Afrocentricity - Molefi Asante
The Oxherding Tale - Charles Johnson
Sula - Toni Morrison
Japanese by Spring - Ishmael Reed
Flyboy in the Buttermilk - Greg Tate
Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Bohos - Nelson George

The Inutitionist - Colson Whitehead
The Colored Museum - George C. Wolfe
The Piano Lesson - August Wilson
Sugar Cane Alley - Euzhan Palcy
Biko - Donald Woods

Kaffir Boy - Mark Mathabene
High Cotton - Daryl Pinckney
Parallel Time - Brent Staples
Colored People - Skip Gates
Jazz - Toni Morrison

Waiting to Exhale - Terry McMillan
Bloodchild - Octavia Butler
The Neveryon Series - Sameuel R. Delany
Yes I Can - Sammy Davis Jr.
The Street - Ann Petry

The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin
Sister Outsider - Audre Lorde
If He Hollers Let Him Go - Chester Himes
Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley
The Rage of a Privileged Class - Ellis Cose 

 

Gun Sales Obiter Dicta

(I heard this on the internet)

INVENTORY UPDATE: We traveled to Texas for Industry meetings concerning the shortages, here's what we were told.


Smith & Wesson-is running at Full capacity making 300+ guns/day-mainly
M&P pistols. They are unable to produce any more guns to help with the
shortages.


RUGER: Plans to increase from 75% to 100% in the next 90 days.


FNH: Moving from 50% production to 75% by Feb 1st and 100% by March 1.
Remington-Maxed out!

Armalite: Maxed out.

DPMS: Can't get enough parts to produce any more product.

COLT: Production runs increasing weekly...bottle necked by Bolt carrier's.

LWRC:Making only black guns, running at full capacity...can't get
enough gun quality steel to make barrels.

Springfield Armory: Only company who can meet demand but are running
30-45 days behind.

AMMO: Every caliber is now Allocated! We are looking at a nation wide
shortage of all calibers over the next 9 months. All plants are
producing as much ammo as possible w/ of 1 BILLION rounds produced
weekly. Most is military followed by L.E. and civilians are third in
line.

MAGPUL is behind 1 MILLION mags, do not expect any large quantities of
magpul anytime soon.

RELOADERS... ALL Remington, Winchester, CCI & Federal primers are
going to ammo FIRST. There are no extra's for reloading purposes... it
could be 6-9 months before things get caught up. Sorry for the bleak
news, but now we know what to expect in the coming months. Stay tuned,
we'll keep you posted...


Related commentary from Bob Owens :
They didn’t know when they’d be getting anything back in stock, from
magazines to rifles to pistols. Manufacturers were running full-bore,
but couldn’t come close to keeping up with market demand. It wasn’t
just the AR-15s, the AK-pattern rifles, the M1As, and the FALs that
were sold out. It really hit me when I realized that the World War-era
M1 Garands, M1 carbines, and Enfield .303s were gone, along with every
last shell. Ubiquitous Mosin-Nagants—of which every gun store always
seems to have 10-20—were gone. So was their ammo. Only a dust free
space marked their passing. I’ve never seen anything like it.


Every weapon of military utility designed within the past 100+ years
was gone. This isn’t a society stocking up on certain guns because
they fear they may be banned. This is a society preparing for war.


Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein and the rest of the Statists have done
more to promote gun ownership than the NRA ever did. Well done,
Democrats!

A King of Reason

I am reminded that there are quite useful bodies of knowledge out there that serve the exact purposes of we ships at sea. I have the good fortune that people are looking out for me, even in my doldrums of doubt and nary progress. One such rescue came in the form of a pointer to an award winning philosopher by the name of Alvin Plantinga. While you and I have been guessing, he has been proving. 

In my dreams of avarice, I am in possession of a great mansion. It is all I have ever truly desired. For in this house is a parlor populated by poets, priests and politicians and I let them have at it. Something like my blog in its heyday, I suppose. Yes, I want a salon. I rather guess I ought to go about designing it, neh? All this online scribbling is wonderful but there's no food in it. 

Anyway, for the T50 to ever get a chance to have a private audience, which would ultimately be publicized, this ought to be an interesting way to go about it. At any rate, here's this dude. Check him out. 

Obligatory Seriousness on Christopher Jordan Dorner

We woke up this morning with a police helicopter hovering over our neighborhood. Two women delivering newspapers early this morning were shot about 4 blocks from my house. I sleep like a rock, but once I was up the annoyance was persistent. It turns out that a couple or three counties in Southern California are on alert on the lookout for a manifesto writing ex-cop and Iraq reservist whose name will now live in infamy whether or not they shoot him dead. 

You see Dorner has promised to wage asymmetrical warfare on the LAPD, and he sounds like he knows how to do it. So obviously they'll be bringing in any number of hotdog specialists to track down this man who doesn't seem to have any pathological pictures available for the press to make him look crazier than he is. Now that I think about it, I hope they don't bring drones - but I have a feeling this could be the beginning of something ugly for a number of reasons.

Manifesto Destiny
Whenever somebody writes a Manifesto, it basically means - "Hey I know I dont' have a legal case but I'm about to go off the deep end - here's why..." In Dorner's life story we learn that he's been fired for not getting some other cops fired, and essentially being zero-tolerance for called 'nigger'. It's rather sad when even Snoop Dogg has more self-esteem. I mean nobody likes being called ugly names, and anybody ought to take offense, but usually a slap in the face followed by throwing breakables across the room generally gets that point across. This nutcase is talking about whipping out the .50 cal and sniping the freeway. 

How Many Is Many?
Right now, although it's unclear, Dorner is a suspect in a double murder. A basketball coach and his fiance were the first targets, tangential to some ugly part of his career. Since that happened yesterday, I think he has either shot or killed two or three police officers. So obviously they've got eight or nine law enforcement agencies on a big old manhunt. Last I heard, he hightailed it up to the mountains. So the irony of course is if he's actually up there, then they'll be chasing him through the woods with dogs. So he's some sort of mass murderer, I'm just not sure what the tipping point is. Either way, a lot of us will feel a lot better to see him hogtied. 

The Devil You Don't Know
Whatever the manifesto says, whatever the locals report, whatever the amount of dirt you might find in the LAPD, there will be a campaign of shame against Dorner. It's not really necessary though. A double homicide is all the bad you have to know.  So that's why this is obligatory seriousness.

Under the Jail
Dude is planning jihad and he's not afraid to die. Blaze of glory? Naw. I say get the gas and the tranquilizer darts. This dude needs to be humiliated. Too bad we don't pillory.

Related articles

Christopher Jordan Dorner, Disgraced LAPD Cop, Suspected In Irvine Murders

Manhunt for Former Cop After 3 Officers Shot

Wrapping Up

Scholar's work at the Knob Hill Community Center is all done but the paperwork, and once again I have paint spots on my knuckles.  

Getting Religion

Twice now, I've been hearing that religion is something I must have recently got, or should be in the process of getting. It's a puzzling thing to hear, and I'm a bit disconcerted about it. 

Here's what I think is going on. I think that I have all the inward commitments without spending much time in my outward expressions. I'm also playing a long, big game, and take it for granted that most serious people are. But in the way I suppose that warfighters must do their pushups every day, since I don't exercise some clearly visible form of religious discipline it might be construed that not only am I not in the long game, but that I might be indifferent to it. 

Well. I'm not going to pretend it's not complicated, because it is very complicated - my spirituality is complicated to the point of being exhausting. Talking about it is like dragging a large stuffed dog out of the closet and describing how it was when it is alive. But the long and short of it is this:

I do not understand why there are Catholics and Protestants who are not mutually exclusive. In other words, without a clear definition of procedural heresy, I am willing to bet my eternal soul that my interpretation of the meaning of the life of Christ is just as valid as that of any ordained minister. And I base that on the fact that the words have changed. What words? Why the words by which churches organize their rites to communication the Gospel to the laity. That means either the church is less than certain about what and how it should communicate, or it percieves that it must adapt its messages to the people and the times. We've been through this in reference to Spinoza.

Somewhere there must be some fraction of The Theology that explains how in some way the change from Latin Mass to English has improved the understanding of the laity in the matters of their own salvation. The implication being that saying some different set of marginally less well understood words in rites may have jeopardized the souls of the millions before Vatican II. Unless it didn't and the spirit of God is not captured in recitation at all. Between these extremes is a truth that I never expect any priest to sit down and explain to me. On the other hand, I cannot say that I've given too many that opportunity. Rather I am convinced that I'm already a good enough Christian in my public deeds - which is public writing and yet not so presumptuous as to second guess the Grace of God. In other words, if I'm wrong, then maybe all of Lutheranism or Presbyterianism or Methodism is wrong. If you can't explain the theological differences between those sects, you're really not in a position of religious authority as far as I'm concerned. But if you can tell me why an Adventist might be a better sort of Christian than a Baptist, then you might inform my own syncretism. 

Outside of that, I know I'm a good enough Christian, so much so that I don't bother saying so. Actions speak louder than words.

But since I do deal in words, it is important to me that mine be clear and cause the effects for which they are spoken and written. And in fact I do have within this corpus an entire section of Matters of the Spirit. When I last left things off, I was wrestling with the foolishness of the New Atheists. And yet that is another something which is bothersome. 

I will simply say that I do in fact need my own personal priest, and I think of myself often in the same way as the Clint Eastwood character in Million Dollar Baby. I am not bloody likely to get the sort of priest I think I deserve, which is actually all I'm really looking for - when I bother to look. It is something I expect I can find in the best of friends, which is why I am seeking a particular sort. You see I'm looking out for my soul and defending it against corruption but I need someone who can understand what kind of shit I'm apt to deal with in the process. I know myself and I am not looking for absolution, just someone who can recognize the level of deception I am capable of and occasionally remind me of what I'm supposed to be doing because I should, not merely because I can. I don't need abstract scolding, I need somebody to hear out my dastardly daydreams understand their deliciousness and tell me of consequences I hadn't considered. Walking the straight and narrow is boring. Pushing a mafioso off a roof is much more satisfying. Surely in the eyes of God, the risk of the latter is more valuable than the discipline of the former. So I could use the kind of spiritual partner who understands why I watch gangster films and climb fire escapes. 

Sometimes I get the feeling that I am dealing with people who are unable to  deal with Colonel Jessup and I wonder if that's the sort of religious expression they are expecting out of me. 

I am not on a mission to comfort some restlessness or brokenness in my heart. I continue to seek wisdom in all of its manifestations. Sooner or later I expect to come to a reconciliation of religion and philosophy and all sorts of other things too tiresome to discuss at the moment. To me, religion is the application of rigorous self-discipline to moral improvement and spiritual refinement. Religious organizations, like the Christian Church give us a template, a form and a set of frameworks and communities within which we may pursue and apply that discipline. I think I've got mine all set, but I am not utterly convinced I could not be improved by the right friendships and relationships with proper members of proper sects. But I do think I'm special. 

I think I'm special enough to merit the consideration of all I've written on the subject. Absent that, I will consider advice as advice. 

There's another thing here as well, and that is the extent to which I perceive that weakness of the Church to exercise its discipline in an effective way towards the betterment of society that doesn't sound like and yet underweigh by half any marketing campaign. We live in a very corrupted society and world, and it seems to be all the Church can do is to barely hold on. That's a problem. 

On The Proper Failure of America

At my reunion last night, at long last I got into a political discussion with Phil, Big Carl, Serious Mike and Cap'n Steve. Unfortunately, my feet hurt, I didn't let Big Carl get a word in edgewise, Big Mike blew in and out, and Phil and I already agree. But since this is an issue that is quite near to my moral universe, I needed to continue on. This is for Cap'n Steve and so many others like him.

The other day I remembered something about a class of problems called Rabbit Holes. 

A rabbit hole is a problem whose solution begets more problems. When you begin to address it and solve one part, you create new parts. These new problems may be puzzles, they may be new mysteries. There may even be rabbit holes within rabbit holes. Often the wisest course of action when faced with a rabbit hole is to avoid it altogether. Alternatively, the wisest course is bravado, overkill and simplification. Don't even pretend that you can solve the problem with any finesse, just jump in and get busy.

I have been making excuses not to involve myself with the business of politics while still being very concerned with the proper ends of politics. My problem is that I am impatient with the kinds of arguments and discussions that are not as informed as the ones I've been having here for the past ten years. I've got work to do. 

I was amazed when Jeff Bezos not long ago predicted the future with perfect accuracy. He said that in five years he will not expect that his customers will be asking him for lower quality service and higher prices. So the logical conclusion is that he must arrange his business to produce higher quality and lower prices. If you can't configure your business to do the same, then you have no future. So it occurs to me to apply this reasoning to the operation of cities, counties, states and federal bureacracies. But what I see ahead is failure. So before you get the idea that I want failure for failure's sake understand that I am taking Bezos' path. It is not coincidental that this mirrors the business strategy of my day job. To wit:

There are certain complications built into the way things are that allow people to drag their feet in dealing with obligations they ought not be caught up in. They wouldn't have such obligations if it were not for their faulty behavior and/or their failure to predict the future in the way Bezos has. There are a lot of American entities that are dancing on high cost, low quality platforms that are simply unsustainable. These are a class of rabbit hole problems. The federal deficit is a rabbit hole problem. Universal health care is a rabbit hole problem. And for the lot of these and many like them, the wisest course is not to try and patch them up, but let them fail.  

As some of you know, I am building the same kinds of systems I have been building for the past 20 years on the new cloud platform. The cloud is going to let me build higher quality products for lower cost. But my company doesn't have nearly the market share or revenues of the vastly more expensive home grown systems of the clients I used to serve. They are going to have to learn things the hard way. 

My negative attitude about politics means I am not going to waste my breath, time and energy trying to come up with a solution to today's rabbit hole politics. We all know they are broken and I am out of the patching business. I am no longer working with duct tape, chicken wire, bubble gum and spit. Nor am I working with bulldozers, wrecking balls, dynamite and dump trucks. I'm not even on the board for urban renewal. I'm just building the next generation of buildings which will be immune to the kinds of failures I predict in the future for the unsustainable status quo. You see? A new kind of city government, a new type of state legislature, a new sort of federal bureacracy needs to be evolved separate and distinct from what is doomed to fail. Lazy people will hobble to the new system if they survive the crash of the old, but thoughtful people will advance the new as the proper future.

Steve informed me that when the big Sequestration comes down, he expects that the Navy won't be participating in Fleet Week any longer. It came as a surprise and as no surprise. The US Navy will fail. 

I take Chesterton's advice very seriously. I am not going to destroy that thing whose purpose I don't understand merely for the sake of erecting something new. I'm working in a medium that will allow us to work alongside the ailing patient - it will clone the best DNA and put it in a more antifragile body.  We can work in parallel with the old and the new. I'm not engaged purposefully in a zero-sum game, just like Netflix co-existed with Blockbuster for a decade. But we're offering the old thing and the new thing too - for less. 

How do you build a better democracy? You start with fiscal transparency. Not just the kind of Woodward and Bernstien hit pieces that define our entire notion of '-gate' scandals. I am convinced that today's journalism lack that longitudinal view. Tomorrows news will include yesterday's and today's data. Not just "This just in" but "We draw your attention to the health and safety of the American embassy security situation that we have been monitoring for the past 7 years"  -- See? Here are the budget numbers, here are the votes for the appropriations, here are the directives, here are the projects that succeeded and these are the ones that failed. No mere 2000 word specials. A nation of millions of Americans can do 2000 word journalism specials every day for 10,000 bureacracies. This is how democracy will be changing as the old stuff dies. It's time for us to come up with a better way of putting policy together than Robert's Rules of Order. 

I will be involved in collaboration with people here in California, and my avocation will be to make systems of transparency and redundancy. Every lawyer I talk to says, oh yeah it's easy for me to get case law out of Lexis and Westlaw. As easy as Google? As easy as Facebook? As easy as YouTube? If it was easy, then any high school kid who has a viral video of somebody getting beat up at McDonalds would be attaching the case docket number to the video. They would be attaching the names of the attorneys in the case and having the testimony in PDF files on the sidebar. They would have the judgment or settlement figures in a spreadsheet right there. And this would be as impossible to fake as everything else, because the people will make it their business to get to the facts and stay on type of the facts far longer than the profit area of the 'media cycle'.

This requires several tools that don't currently exist and are not easily accessible to the internet public and experts at large. Today. 

This is not about being mad as hell about what doesn't work. I don't have time for that. I have new things to build while everything else fails. 

The Occasional Brotherhood

Thirty five years ago I graduated from high school. It was, in fact, my 17th birthday. Tonight I entered the time machine to find out what happened to those long lost brothers. 

I had two missions, both of which were accomplished. The first was to find Ted whom I've been looking for since I discovered that his son knew my son from high school. The second was to try to say something resonant and hopefully inspirational to Paul without making a blithering idiot out of myself. I was pleasantly surprised to have carried these matters off although I did tear up at the end of the second task. If either of those had failed, I would have been disappointed despite the worlds of other secondary missions I had.

I needed to close with Don and make sure he didn't end up in a body bag in a ditch. He took a real risk hitchhiking down here from Oakland. I needed to explain to Chris why after several years, I had not shown up to his volleyball game. I threw my back out the first time and proved myself something of an embarassment. Either way, I never could manage to connect. Although I may be giving up the sport because of my bad shoulder, it was good to make that explanation. I wanted to see if Mike had gone nuts from his CT work, but it turns out that investigations are much more satisfying than HUMINT, so Mike is cool. Mario was his usual cool, leader-of-men self, and he actually got me to fetch him a beer. There's something very clever going on in that dude's head that I might figure out one day. 

I wanted to ditch the Mass. I really have a bad attitude about what I perceive to be an unholy amount of tinkering with the traditional wordings of professions of faith. It truly, truly unnerves me. Especially when I am so apt to want to get into extraordinarily gritty philosophical and theological discussions. The only person I got into that dimension was Phillip with whom I now have a new double bond - one through psychology and the other through Vermont. But I did end up in the chapel after all having not driven slow enough from the South Bay to get to the campus. And so took communion having humbled myself in realizing how many of us have died. 

I promised Dennis that I would attend his next function. I will. I misspoke to Rob about Mayfield. I knew I was connected somehow and I thought it was through Richard. It turns out that my sister Kay is a teacher there, duh. Richard went to Campbell Hall. I confessed to Robert why exactly I am no longer a 'liberal', basically because I can't stand radicalism, and well, I used to be radical. I promised Vernon, whose wife is lovely, that I can perhaps enter into a longer term discussion about how to think about the tools I'd love to provide him with. I once again said nothing of consequence to Pat whose charm is immediate and disarming. 

What I didn't realize was that Steve and I were so much alike politically - to the extent that I am 'political' any longer. And here is what I would like him to understand, among other things. It may be that more cities have to fail, and it's very difficult to predict what level of failure, failure is. There's a longer and deeper story here, but I guess I'll have to handle that separately.

There were other surprises. Andrew and I have similar perceptions about the ballbusting tactics of the Han Chinese, and we absolutely agree that they are bling obsessed. I can tell he's a real gearhead, but we didn't actually talk cars, amazingly. You see I really wanted to poke him about the new Vette and F1 racing here in the States, but perhaps another time. 

I have a very good sense that Weston and I should have long talks. I don't know why, but I am reminded that he has a mischeivous sense of humor. I swear that Dan C. does indeed look like the most interesting man in the world. I only saw Ricardo for a moment, same thing with Roland. I should have spoken to Ben but didn't get around to it, same thing with Dan S. By the time I got around to talking to Al and Rod, I was on old man time - like man I should be in bed but I'm only here now to sober up.

Of course I had to remind Richard that he was absolutely my best friend in high school which he made me immediately, of course you were about it. And I kept shaking my head with amazement at how much Jim looks like the President. I was in surprising violent agreement with everything Thomason said and implied about the overstressed nature of American high school and I think very deeply about the effect it has on my daughters. 

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I spend too much time outside of the company of such men and the unease I had five years ago in approaching all that was both symbolic and real about that fact melted away this time. I did not spend any time analyzing the fact of our brotherhood or the premises behind it. I simply decided to take it for granted, and so when Jim and Bill made a small point about our absence of color lines I told them they were full of shit. Such things needn't even be mentioned, but it was beautiful to be kissed anyway. I reminded me, immediately of what kind of man I am not but Bill is, and by that I mean radient of love enough to teach the arts to young people. I am way too hard for that. In fact, I told my wife that no matter what happens to me, no matter how rich I get (if that is to be my fate) I will never wear Tommy Bahama - it always reminds me of Weekend At Bernies. But Bill is a member of what I take to be the proper Hawaiian Yacht Club, and he's happy that Ellison will bring more boats to the islands.

Such are conversations, especially when you watch Layne and Tom and Duke and Jimmy, that seem to go on. And I know they are conversations I have missed, taking my own path as I have. I know I am in a serious way, outside of everything, as I have become accustomed to that point of view. That is why this is one of 8000 blog posts - I am talking to myself. Talking to myself sometimes makes me very sure of certain things and sometimes uncertain of very sure things. Finding my old brothers alleviates a great deal. 

Five years ago I became a little bit more determined to get in closer with a few local brothers: Harold, Larry, Phil & Darryl. We had a couple bar nights and a couple smokers at my house. It was therapeutic. It was just magical to share to get loud and be ourselves in a way that life doesn't ordinarily ask us to be - perfectly honest and giving each other a chance to remind us how we can be. This year Don got us to breakfast for Phil's birthday and Ricky was here from Houston and Richard from Chicago. The magic picked right up.

And yet it is occasional. As I struggle with the death of a few men I have known and realize how matter of factly I have dealt with death in both the real and the abstract, I tend to forget that these are dramas others know as well - and for what touchstones of virtue we shared half a lifetime ago we can walk right into our brothers' lives and speak. Tonight it was easy. Ordinarily we don't go there. 

It's on me to make this brotherhood more than occasional. I know that there are more surprises and cross-connections that can be discovered in six hours. But I could hear in Mike's tone something we all seem to understand. We experienced something that is more increasingly rare today. And there will come a day when we all face death in the realization that people will see it as something more or less expected. Our rarity, our uniqueness... I am reminded that we are uncommon with a necessary quality in common. 

I don't know how many folks read this blog - I can only assume that more of my old classmates will than do ordinarily. I write this way less and less nowadays - I have always expected this arena to be of the continuing conversation. I already discount that happening here; unfair perhaps, but then so is missing brotherhood. There are so many conversations I started that I will complete in my own speculations until we all meet again and that may have to suffice. My brotherhood is not contingent, but it is occasional.  And this was an occasion for all of us to remember what care can be (because it has been) undertaken for our best interests as young men. As always, that is how civilization is born and how it is borne. 

Goodnight y'all. I'm always here - give me a shout. 

78 - the greatest of great

Puzzles, Mysteries, Rabbit Holes & Black Holes

(Originally Summer 2010)

In my world of problem solving there are four classes of work, puzzles, mysteries, rabbit holes and black holes. Puzzles are those problems where you have all the pieces and you know what the end result will look like. All you have to do to a puzzle is solve it. Puzzles are just a matter of time and effort. Mysteries are tougher. You don't know all of the pieces and you might have to build some of them to get the solution, so you know what things are supposed to be, but how to get from point A to point B is, well, a mystery. Mysteries unravel as time goes on and soon become puzzles, if you're crafty or lucky.

A rabbit hole is a problem whose solution begets more problems. When you begin to address it and solve one part, you create new parts. These new problems may be puzzles, they may be new mysteries. There may even be rabbit holes within rabbit holes. Often the wisest course of action when faced with a rabbit hole is to avoid it altogether. Alternatively, the wisest course is bravado, overkill and simplification. Don't even pretend that you can solve the problem with any finesse, just jump in and get busy.

The black hole might sound like an infinite rabbit hole from which there is no escape. But it's actually worse. It's a rabbit hole that you didn't know you were already in. In the argot of the intelligence business, it is the unknown unknown. Not only do you not understand the class of problem, you don't know if you have it, how long you've had it or what you've been doing all this time to make it better or worse. A black hole is where people in the Matrix live, who've never heard of the Matrix. One might equally call a black hole a black swan, but I'm trying to be original here and there is this subtle difference. Whereas a black swan is necessarily a future event upon which much or little might hang, a black hole is a present condition - one whose origins and ends are unknown. Leave it at that.

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Adding to this, I would say that upon the discovery that you have been in a black hole and that is revealed, you get one of those 'everything you know is wrong' moments. In that way it is like a black swan. A black hole moment is like discovering the lyrics to a song you thought you knew all of these years and suddenly you see them printed and you're like 'wow'. Sometimes it changes the meaning of everything you thought. Most of the time, you kind of interpolate yourself out of trouble - because you might not have been that far off with the mumble you mumbled in place of the actual lyrics. But it still warps you because you never knew you had a problem.