I don't know how long it has been since I've been following the The Nutnfancy Project, but it's probably less than a year. Most likely in February of this year. I don't know. The long story goes something like this. About two or three years ago I was looking for a new aesthetic - some way to encapsulate what I knew that I was soon to be all about. I knew it before then, back when I got rid of the BMW thinking, but I was lost without a way of expressing this fully, and I didn't like the idea of making myself look beautiful. OK nevermind, the long story is boring. The bottom line is that my style is this kind of rugged utilitarian. A lot less on shirts and slacks, a lot more on shoes and jackets. All bling on the wrists reduced to fabrics and a concentration on the timepiece itself, and of course the aesthetic of the EDC.
The king of EDC and of a number of other things is Nutnfancy. If you don't know him, look him up. He's in the T50 now. Not long ago, on his motorcycle trips, he stopped in a Utah town called Green River and met a man named Tim Vetere. Vetere is the sort of man that people forget exists, especially comfortable people who talk a lot about what's wrong with America, a game I really stopped playing a long time ago despite the fact that I still carry the scars. Vetere is a melon farmer.
I'm not going to tell you why Tim Vetere is special. You'll have to see that for yourself. But I have to tell you that it kind of surprised me to see the follow-up that came back through the TNP because of Tim. It is full of the most egregious sentimental overflow you can imagine, the kind of mushy stuff I generally avoid like the plague. If you understand anything about my personality, then you know that I have worked to become something other than arrogant and yet there is some edge about me that must be maintained in order for me to go where I do, thoughtwise - if that means anything. And still, you also know that I do cry at proper movies.
I'm not quite sure how to reconcile my reaction to Tim and the outpouring, because I value myself for the strategic and long view and my studied indifference to the up close and personal. If there is a utilitarian calculation in the value of ethics, then I might futher justify my distance. But I am not so sure of that these days, as I read more of John C. Wright's Apologetics and as I consider the simple deeds done by my own father. After all, I am aiming to perfect my soul, and I do that every day with people I meet every day. It is important to me that such work bears fruit. I don't know how it will work out. I'll study Cato and I'll study Seneca for reasons of humility. I wish to engage my world properly.
Everything in my heart goes out to this demonstration of faith and courage, and I know it to be what sustains us all. And I suppose that if I'm having a breakthrough at this very moment, then it is because I am seeing in this small event precisely what I saw with regard to 'black leadership' after having read Gwaltney's Drylongso. There is no great need for leadership among the masses of people. There are sufficient righteous ones among them to survive. Motherwit is plentiful enough. Common sense doesn't need to be legislated. And so I need to configure that into the next of Cobb's Rules. As perfect is the enemy of good, legislation is the enemy of common sense & social responsibility. All we need to be is good, and social. No - ism required.
Society vs Cops & Courts from Michael David Cobb Bowen on Vimeo.
I think that if you put these two things together, you can begin to understand how I am skeptical of democracy, but in favor of democratic action. The appropriate response to the situation of the Veteres is accomplished through the private action of the Nutnfancy project. What is not needed is some bloviating politician, 'representing' the distress of people who lose their first born sons to motorcycle accidents regulating the motorcycle industry, or granting federal subsidies to the melon growers of America. Nor do you need to have a university study or market research done on which sorts of people respond positively to this kind of stress. You need, more than anything, the kind of messenger that Nutnfancy is himself.
What is not ironic in the least is that Nutn is the sort of person who would be ineffective in the bureaucracy that is the American Congress. He would be crushed. It is not a Parliament for the common man, but a Byzantine institution which lives in a thrash of self-amendment. I see this image of a man on the back of a motorcycle trying to balance a scale by adding something on each side every other moment. It never stops wobbling and it gets heavier and heavier.
Never doubt that America has the capacity to change the course of mighty rivers. It is often done in defiance of common sense. Most of the time, all we need is to get a drink, or to water our plants.
We can do for ourselves in society. We need politics less than we think.
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