I see in late July of 2008 the Google search term,
Obama +”real deal”
…still returns over half a million results. Your first search result is an item from February called Why Obama’s The Real Deal, and if I was asked by a political science professor to write a fifty-word summary of the substance therein, I’d flunk for sure. Probably what happened was the author did answer the question, and it just went over my head. But I don’t know why Obama’s the “real deal” and so I remain agnostic on whether or not anybody else knows.
I’m still unconvinced that we have a definition for “real deal,” of any sort. The kind where, you isolate ten people who’ve been caught throwing this slogan around, question them in solitude, and you get back fewer than ten unique answers. One uniform answer? Forget it.
And so it falls to me, to pick out a functional use of the term, one that fits all, or most, of the popular uses of it.
Deep breath…here we go.
REAL DEAL: Flattering slang attached to an individual who possesses a unique ability to sell products unneeded.
I’m looking in from the outside. So if someone who’s been inhaling these Obama fumes can clear his head long enough to offer a definition equally concrete, I will presume superior knowledge on his part and graciously defer.
But within the status quo, while the intoxicated continue to babble their ethereal nonsense, my definition stands.
During his days doing stand-up in the 1960s, Bill Cosby recorded a track for one of his comedy albums about the American Revolution. As only Cosby could tell it, he spun a hilarious version of “the rules” for how the war for American independence was to be fought. The British, Cosby said, had to wear red and march in slow, straight lines, making them targets for the colonists, who were allowed to wear drab clothing that blended into the landscape and who could hide behind hills, trees and rocks as they took aim. It is a bit like this year’s presidential race, with Republicans playing by the British rules and Democrats in the role of the colonists.
: The Rules for Democrats
Democrats (and liberals in general) are allowed to say, write and publish anything they want, regardless of how offensive it is or how much it degrades our political discourse…
Barack Obama is allowed to take both sides of any issue. As a new type of candidate for president of the United States, he is allowed to talk movingly about “change” and “hope” while offering no specifics of any kind…
Obama is allowed to make outrageous claims about the racist tendencies and tactics of his opponent and his opponent’s surrogates. Because he is half black, he does not have to justify these comments in any way.
The Rules for Republicans
:
Any criticism – in fact any negative mention – of Obama, his wife, his blasphemous, anti-American former pastor, his radical supporters, his Muslim father, his Muslim step-father, his education in a Muslim school or his middle name will be considered racist.
I suppose whether things are really working that way, might be up for some kind of debate. If, that is, you have your head stuck in a hole.
The obvious question is, how did things get like this? And I think the answer has more to do with human nature than with democrats or Republicans. One of the advantages of repeatedly presenting people with the products of your thinking, without revealing how said thinking works, is that after awhile people begin to absorb it. I’m referring here specifically to judgments about what’s acceptable and what is not. “That’s allowed”; “That’s over the line.” The democrat party, and in particular Sen. Ted Kennedy, have all been particularly energetic for the last several decades about casually tossing around the phrase beyond the pale. I do not know if the senior Senator from Massachusetts has ever been able to spell it, but boy he’s sure used it a lot.
The paling fence is significant as the term pale became to mean the area enclosed by such a fence and later just the figurative meaning of ‘the area that is enclosed and safe’. So, to be ‘beyond the pale’ was to be outside the area accepted as ‘home’.
Catherine the Great created a ‘Pale of Settlement’ in Russia in 1791. This was a western border region of the country in which Jews were allowed to live. The motivation behind this was to restrict trade between Jews and native Russians. Some Jews were allowed to live, as a concession, beyond the pale.
So “beyond the pale” means to tether a class of people to a shorter leash for the purpose of deliberately diminishing them. Heh. Why, how appropriate.
Anyway, I think that’s how things work this way. Like a dog becoming accustomed to commands from its master. When we hear the same voices intone what we are & are not allowed to do, over and over again, our resident dimbulbs stop questioning it after awhile.
This is probably why, over the longest presidential election campaign in American history, I don’t recall hearing too much out of democrats in general that didn’t have something to do with expressing outrage about something. It’s really hard to criticize them for doing it, once you objectively inspect the eventual and inevitable results. This nonsense works. Sooner rather than later, millions of people are doing exactly what you want…and then, a Savior rises in Barack Hussein Obama.
How best to illustrate the eventual result of it, than via this video clip I found via blogger friend Rick.
Not too many months ago the Pew Research Center – and these are people with great expertise in European polling – said that 58% of all Europeans want to see the United States weakened. Now think about that for a minute. Do you want the United States to be weakened? It’s not surprising that Europeans might want that. After all, a weaker United States might well mean a stronger Europe in international affairs and economic influence. That might be great for Europe, and we can understand Europeans wanting to bring this about. But when these Europeans start falling all over themselves during the Obama 2008 tour, try to remember what their goals really are. Are they slobbering all over Obama because they think he will be a wonderful and powerful world leader, or because they think that Barack Obama is the means to their desired end … a weakened America.
As of now, the Google Gods offer me nothing about this Pew Research item whatsoever, besides other bloggers quoting this thing. I’ll not be joining them for the moment. “Pics or it didn’t happen,” as they say.
But then again — it should be noted that I’m abstaining out of ritual, not out of real skepticism. If the figure isn’t fifty-eight percent, then what am I supposed to think it is? Thirty-five percent? Forty?
I’ve been beaten up one side and down the other, since the ’04 elections and well before then, that we should do this-or-that thing — usually, get rid of George W. Bush — because “our allies” want us to. Few-to-none take the time or effort to inspect what our allies want to see happen. Nobody has stepped forward and said these things our “allies” want us to do, would be good for us…except in vague, nebulous terms, having to do with said allies being satisfied.
This is what the Parable of Bob’s Dollar is all about: Children are supposed to do what they’re told, without asking questions. When you grow up, you should understand you aren’t really synchronizing with anyone on a plan just because they tell you to do something and you do it; you’re supposed to understand what the intent is. And if you don’t take the time to do that, then you aren’t living your life as a grown-up.
The Parable of Bob’s Dollar, as it appeared on Father’s Day ’06:
Just like a Democrat disseminator of talking-points talking down to his constituents, saying “President Bush needs to be impeached,” I tell you to give a dollar to Bob. Never mind why. Just do it. What could it be that I have in mind? The sheer number of possibilities runs high enough to make the whole exercise unworkable.
The most likely possibility is that Bob needs a dollar, or an additional dollar, to buy something. Wouldn’t you like to know what that thing is?
Perhaps, though, it’s something else. Perhaps I caught you saying a dirty word and Bob is the treasurer. Again, the exercise is unworkable. If there’s a dollar-per-dirty-word rule, shouldn’t you know what that rule is, in order for it to work? And what if someone else said the dirty word, and I’m wrong in thinking you said it?
Maybe I have gathered the impression that you have two dollars more in your pocket than Bob has in his pocket, and I want both of you to have the same amount. Again, unworkable. How do I know how much money you have? What business is it of mine? And come to think of it, what about the money in my pocket?
Maybe Bob told me he hasn’t eaten in a long time. Who is to say Bob is any hungrier than you are?
Maybe Bob likes the smell of money. Maybe Bob likes to eat it. Why can’t I be the one who gives him the dollar?
Or perhaps it doesn’t have anything to do with actually giving Bob money. Maybe Bob has twenty nickels or ten dimes, and wants to use a vending machine that only takes quarters and dollars. If that’s the case, shouldn’t I be saying that?
There are two points to be made here. The first is that it is wholly unworkable to communicate anything meaningful to you in this circumstance, and the second is that it is wholly unworkable for any one of these strategies to realize some measure of potential for real success. I have only pointed out the most obvious possibilities of what I may mind in exhorting you to fork a dollar over to Bob; if we were to give it some real thought, we could come up with a list virtually endless. In all cases, our joint venture has foundered on the rocks before we have even set sail. There is no meeting of the minds on priorities, on contingencies, on prerequisites, or any of a number of other vital things. There cannot be. By telling you what to do, and not why, and not what the expected result is to be, I have failed to treat you with the minimum respect you deserve as a thinking adult.
And every time we are told to “do things more like Europe does them” or “do this thing because Europe wants us to do it” — that’s exactly the situation. So if the 58% is not accurate, it makes sense to ponder it as if there’s a grain of truth to it, or more than a grain…because there probably is, for one thing, and for another thing, Europe’s interests are not the same as ours.
And then there’s that other parable about the frog ferrying the scorpion across the river. Well, I don’t think that one fits quite as well. Europeans may have their own interests, which are not our interests, but they aren’t mean people.
But their interests are different. They love Obama. And if you can put your finger on someone, European or otherwise, explaining exactly why — you’re a much better researcher on the innernets than I am.
Are Facts Obsolete? By Thomas Sowell
Friday, July 18, 2008
In an election campaign in which not only young liberals, but also some people who are neither young nor liberals, seem absolutely mesmerized by the skilled rhetoric of Sen. Barack Obama, facts have receded even further into the background than usual.
As the hypnotic mantra of “change” is repeated endlessly, few people even raise the question of whether what few specifics we hear represent any real change, much less a change for the better.
Sowell goes on to ponder Sen. Obama’s ideas against the backdrop of history, and how his ideas have been tried by other countries. He covers punitive taxes and regulations on business, restrictions on international trade, increases on minimum wage rates, and Obama’s disturbing “refinement” of these and other positions as he shifts his priorities from winning the nomination away from Hillary Clinton, to prevailing over his Republican opponent in the general election.
It’s a little unfair, if you ask me. None of this stuff has started with Obama or with 2008. But Obama and ’08 are both important in defining a zenith, or rather a nadir, of what has been transpiring for many years now.
Yes, facts are becoming obsolete. It started with “political correctness” — the term itself tacitly admits that whatever was under discussion was correct on some mundane, technical level, otherwise why include the adverb in “politically incorrect”? Why not just call it incorrect? And so, with that phrase and the underlying concept, we came across a destructive epiphany, that there were multiple levels in which something could be “correct” or “incorrect.”
And then Bill Clinton lied — but oh, wait, no he didn’t, it wasn’t any of our business and we shouldn’t have asked the question.
Saddam Hussein “wasn’t dangerous” even though he was…his “country never attacked us.” No one said then, or says now, that Hussein was a harmless ol’ teddy bear. They just form opinions that make sense only if he was, and then bully others into adopting those beliefs as their own. The accusation that flies around so easily is that if you were for removing Saddam from power, you were losing track of what mattered because Iraq had “nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.” But the central question was whether Saddam was a dangerous, deadly cog in the machinery of international terrorism, and we don’t talk too much about how our fifth-column peaceniks have lost track of that. Even though the facts say they have.
Don’t even get me started on global warming. Consensus? Science is settled? Debate is over? Nobody says so anymore, except to echo what was fashionable a year or two ago. But echo it they do.
Got a kid? Has he put an electronics toolkit together lately? Does he know who James Abram Garfield was?
Economists may point to studies done in countries around the world, showing that higher minimum wage rates usually mean higher unemployment rates among lower skilled and less experienced workers.
That’s their problem. A politician’s problem is how to look like he is for “the poor” and against those who are “exploiting” them. The facts are irrelevant to maintaining that political image.
Nowhere do facts matter less than in foreign policy issues. Nothing is more popular than the notion that you can deal with dangers from other nations by talking with their leaders.
I have been spending all of my life listening to our “leaders” talk about “talking” with some other nation’s “leaders.” In all those years and all that talking-about-talk, I’ve not heard anyone discuss the details of what these talks would be. I come from a strange planet called “Earth” in which this is more than a little strange; how can the details of talk, themselves, be trivial and unworthy of exploration, but it’s somehow worth rambling endlessly about whether the talks should take place? Especially when it’s an all but foregone conclusion that they should & will? But that’s the way it’s been done for quite some time now.
I don’t know where we go from here. My hope is that this stuff moves in cycles, and after we’re done being bored with facts someone will figure out that they do matter, after all, and we’ll have some kind of Renaissance. Tom Swift books, a generation of flesh-and-blood nerds ready to emulate him, and the rest of us admiring the nerds from the sidelines, dazzled by the things they build in their garages — not that a few more of them are nerdettes and isn’t it wonderful because it shows our commitment to something called “diversity.” In short, my hope is that we’ll admire each other for doing things, not for being things.
That’s where we are now; we earn adoration from our peers by being something, not by doing something. We do this because of the condition in which we have placed ourselves, through our sneering complacency about facts. Because of the one all-encompassing, grand-poobah great-grandpappy of all “facts” more important than all the rest, and this is what is being ignored: To live life ignorant of facts and what they mean, is actually boring. It is a meaningless, suffocating existence. Because when you are committed to avoiding the recognition of facts and what they might mean, life is just an endless menagerie of surprises. Nothing more than that.
We are exasperatingly bored, and we don’t even know it. We’ve done it to ourselves.
His point is that when you say outlandish things with a straight face, which is the essence of satire, there’s always the danger that someone will think you aren’t kidding.
So I feel The New Yorker’s pain. The magazine is under fire for a cover illustration depicting Barack Obama in the Oval Office wearing a turban, bumping fists with his wife, Michelle, who wears an Afro and fatigues, and has an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. Osama bin Laden watches from a portrait on the wall. An American flag burns in the fireplace.
The Obama and McCain campaigns have pronounced the cover offensive. There have been calls for a boycott.
Me, I like the cover. It strikes me as an incisive comment on the fear mongering that has attended Mr. Obama’s run for the presidency. Still, I understand why it is incendiary: Some of us will take it seriously.
As absurd, as over the top, as utterly outlandish as the New Yorker image strikes the more sophisticated among us, there is a large fringe out there for whom it will represent nothing more or less than the sum of their fears.
Indeed, as I sat down to write these words, there beeped into my mailbox an e-mail with this subject line: “WOW, The New Yorker got it exactly right, for once.” Said without a trace of irony.
But increasingly, that’s who we are in this country: ignorant, irony-impaired and petrified. So maybe we should just cancel the campaign and ask that the last intelligent person turn off the lights when he or she leaves. And bring the last book with you. Nobody here will need it.
Okay, I get it. Add Leonard Pitts to the list of intellectual lightweights who can’t dredge up any semblance of respect for mindsets differing from theirs. The cartoon means some things to some people, other things to others; Mr. Pitts comes to find out about this divide and it comes as a bitter blow that his perspective is not unanimous. So out come the most rancid insults he can manage to slip through his layers of editors. We are all supposed to agree with Leonard Pitts, don’t you get it?
See, satire is just like any other medium of humor. To work, there has to be a connection between the source of the comedy, and the audience. The assault rifle, the flag in the fireplace, the Oval Office itself, these are all metaphorical — it may be difficult for some to admit, but Sen. Obama has not been sworn in yet — and so the point of the cartoon, which is to be deemed too outlandish to seriously entertain if it is to be successful satire, is that Sen. Obama’s loyalty to the republic should be questioned. Well, I’m afraid the source and the audience have not agreed that that is outlandish. The Senator does have a rather lengthy and rich history of America-bashing dickhead friends.
And this is where satire is often abused, in this age of The Colbert Report. Far too often, is is wielded as a bully stick, to intone that certain ideas are to be thought of as ridiculous, without anyone bothering to explain why. When the existence of the satire is the only incentive we have to regard something as silly, the satire isn’t exactly being given a lot of advantages in doing what it’s supposed to be doing.
And that sad truth of it is — this is exactly what the Obama campaign needs right now. It probably cannot survive without it. It needs a way to bullyingly lecture people that it’s ridiculous to “question his patriotism,” without an associated burden of explaining why, exactly, said questioning is supposed to be ridiculous.
The situation is a rather rich target of satire in its own right.
Update: Add one “Sarah Churchwell” to the list of shallow, self-absorbed dimwits.
We are to uncritically, and without reservation, reject what Ms. Churchwell has rejected, without waiting for a reason to. And if we fail to so reject it we’re just clueless morons.
It’s got something to do with “tolerance” and respecting diverse points of view.
The last young, charismatic white guy challenger who took the most anti-American position possible on any issue that came along, only managed to win 43% of the popular vote; he had southern credentials, was 6’2″, Governor of Arkansas for five terms, and didn’t even have a funny name.
Hey I know where you’re coming from: There is racism out there — just like there are people out there who are convinced the moon landing was staged and the earth is flat.
But there is one reason, and one reason only, to think it is pervasive:
Because if you’re called upon to prove you aren’t one of them, and you fall for it, maybe the Obamamaniacs can get you to vote for their depressing, disappointing, lackluster candidate. Other than that, there’s no reason to think racists are ruling the roost here. A candidate is failing to catch on, he has nothing to offer, he changes his positions constantly, he can’t answer tough questions, he has a long history of America-hating asshole friends, and he happens to be one-half black. If that’s Exhibit A, I’m already wincing in sympathetic embarrassment over whatever might be Exhibit B.
This comes from the pen of Tom Barrett, editor-in-chief of Conservative Truth and OpinioNet, for which I used to write, and it arrives via e-mail. Hits the nail right on the head, I think.
At a recent political rally, Obama tried to overcome these criticisms by emphasizing his commitment to principles. Afterwards, audience members lined up at a microphone to ask Obama questions.The first person at the microphone said, “I oppose the war in Iraq. If you are elected, what will you do about that?” “I will end the war in Iraq within two weeks of taking office,” answered Obama. “All our troops will come home, and I will simultaneously make sure the Iraqi government is functioning and secure.”The second person said, “I’m an illegal alien. What will you do for people like me?” “If I am elected,” answered Obama, “every illegal alien will receive U.S. citizenship, free health care, and a scholarship to the university of your choice.”The third person said, “I’m a conservative. If elected, what will you do for me?” “I’ll send that first guy to Iraq, and the second guy back to Mexico.”
The first thing I notice, is how similar is the media’s reaction to a radical hardcore left-wing liberal getting caught saying what he truly feels, compared to a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina. No protagonist; it’s nobody’s fault; both events are things that just “happened.” Well, in the natural weather phenomenon it’s the incumbent Republican President who somehow made it happen, but give the Jesse Jackson thing time. That’ll be George Bush’s fault too. You know if we don’t obey our instructions to forget about it, toot-sweet, someone in some strategy room somewhere will be brainstorming on a way to hold the current President responsible for Jesse Jackson’s latest embarrassment.
And that brings me to the second thing. Like Officer Barbrady said, “move along, there’s nothing to see here.” What a wonderful thing it must be to be Jesse Jackson! You get to express your profound regret that you got caught saying something, and this massive public-relations tsunami goes out…everyone should pretend it never happened. This is why democrats tend not to stand for anything. There are, in fact, deeply held principles in their camp; all these principles do not agree with all other principles; this causes deep divides and schisms that are well worth discussing.
But it would hurt both sides within the democrat camp to permit any discussion of them. So they remain undiscussed.
Here, the divide is over — and this brings me to the third thing — what is it we’re talking about when we use the word “responsibility?” Truth be told, this nation is chock full of reasonable, moderate-to-conservative people who call themselves “democrats” and look at the R-word the way any conservative Republican does: Responsibility is something inextricably intertwined with the decisions you want to make. Authority, autonomy, control, it’s-my-turn-at-bat…having sex with a good-lookin’ woman…driving a car. These all carry responsibility.
Well the truth of the matter is, Rev. Jesse Jackson represents millions of people — of all skin color — who don’t feel that way. To them, “responsibility” is a burden that bears down upon undesirables. Those who are seen as oppressors within history’s backdrop, people who run corporations, rich people, straight people, white people, males, white-straight-males, oilmen. We/they have the “responsibility” to provide…and there, there’s this huge exploding list. Jobs. Food. Daycare. Minimum wage. Education. Healthcare.
Obama just said “black people” — clearly, in Jackson’s mindset as well as in Sen. Obama’s, the useful meaning of this phrase is something that could be best worded as “our primary beneficiaries” — have responsibility. And Jackson was none to fond of this. On Planet Jackson, there’s the folks who’ve gotten away with stuff and are about to get their come-uppins, and there’s the folks who’ve been trampled and now get to live in utopia. And the latter of those two should not have to worry about any responsibilities, because you saw how he reacted when someone suggested something different.
My suggestion? Let’s go ahead and disagree about what responsibilities are. Let’s go ahead and disagree about whether Obama would be a decent President, or whether Jesse Jackson is good for America. Disagree about all that — but let’s agree the Officer Barbrady approach doesn’t fit in here. No need at all to “move along” from what apparently divides the Obama and Jackson camps within the democrat party.
This is a debate well worth having. What is responsibility? Are you burdened by it by the things you do, or by who you are? Is it a way for people to earn the privileges and the stature they want in life, to change what they want to change and achieve what they want to achieve — or is it punishment to be meted out to dirty rotten creepy jerks (DRCJs) who are somehow associated with historical skulduggery and need a good whallopin’ of some kind?
Because I don’t think this is a “black” thing at all. I think there’s millions of people who feel, when they see themselves or any of their peers or perceived constituents saddled with any kind of “responsibility,” for any reason at all, their first instinct is to cut somebody’s nuts out (or off). They seem to be angry people who have something to say. I’d like to know more about what they’ve got to say. I’d like everybody to hear it — right before it’s time to go into a voting booth and punch a ballot. Then we could show what we think of it. I think that would be a good thing.
Update: As a general rule, when a topic can be easily distilled down into a single intangible noun — Bill Whittle has an essay about it, and if that is the case it is an essay well worth reading. However, next month it’ll have five years of dust on it. Five years old, and solid gold:
Political Correctness, Deconstructionism, Trans-National Progressivism, Liability mania, Crime and Punishment, Terrorism, Welfare, Gun Control, Media Bias, Affirmative Action, Abortion, Education Reform, Social Engineering — all of it — will divide people according to their idea of Responsibility. [emphasis Whittle’s]
This helps to (partially) explain something I’ve often noticed about abortion, environmentalism and secularism. We have people who think humans have a “responsibility” to be stewards of the earth; we have other people who insist there is no such thing as God. There are people who believe when a woman becomes pregnant, it is the responsibility of both parents to carry the child to term.
Now, imagine yourself as an alien who is skilled in the concepts of human behavior, but wholly unfamiliar with our customs. You could be Mork from Ork, you could be My Favorite Martian, you could be Jeannie coming out of her magic lamp after two thousand years. All things dealing with contemporary events and prevailing notions, you need to have explained to you.
I think Whittle’s essay falls short here. You would have to logically predict, would you not, that the people who believe in God are the ones who insist we have a responsibility to act as watchful stewards over the planet. You would become confused even further once you were informed that our religious people are the ones (quite rightly and sensibly) who insist pregnancies are initiated by a Higher Power and it is a transgression into the glorious jurisdiction for any mortal man to abort a woman’s pregnancy. In fact, if one of your earlier introductions to this was through the Book of Genesis, you would become even more confused:
1:28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Once your “Master” or your earthly host got done explaining to you — no, actually, it’s our secularist types who insist we have this responsibility — you’d be mixed up about it for, I expect, an entire year or more. Yes space-alien-man, the abortion/pregnancy thing works exactly the way you inferred; secularist types insist there is no deity to be offended and it’s all about “choice.” But on the environment and “global warming” the whole thing takes on a hundred and eighty degree twist.
So this is where I part company with Whittle: The left does have a concept of responsibility. And they believe in free will.
What decides these issues for them is that they believe free will is only practiced by collectivist groups. In fact, it is a consistent trope of leftist thinking that free will does change the outcome of important things, and should. That they must bring it about.
But then they go on to believe, quite consistently, and often against the historical evidence, that this can only be done through “coming together.” An individual can’t “go it alone.”
I commented earlier this week that if global warming, for an example, was settled science as we are consistently told it is — we would handle it much the same way we handle science that really is settled, such as with regard to Mad Cow Disease. Grabbing hold of everyone we know, everyone within earshot and line-of-sight, and bullying them around until they thought of the subject matter the way we do… that wouldn’t have anything to do with what had to be done. Instead, we’d delegate responsibility for the outcome of the incident, to those who are best qualified to affect that outcome. And then we’d go about our lives hoping for the best. Nothing grassroots about it.
True leftists like Rev. Jackson, simply put, don’t believe individuals can have responsibility — except, as I wrote above, as punishment for historical wrongs. The more noble variant of free will, the kind that has to be embraced in order to enact positive change…that is reserved for groups.
Whittle goes on with an observation about an old speech made by Abraham Lincoln, that deals with the toxicity of the mindset disclaiming the virtue of noble, individual, free will:
Many years before his election as the nation’s 16th President, this man, Abraham Lincoln, spoke at the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on January 27, 1838. It is worth our time to whisper these words aloud, to ourselves, to be sure that we understand what he is saying across a gulf of a century-and-a-half of differences in rhetoric and speech.
He said:
We, the American People, find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them — they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader — to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
How then shall we perform it? — At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? — Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! — All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
The idea of individualism, of personal responsibility, is the centerpiece, the granite foundation, of the very idea of a free people. For that reason, it is under direct attack on many fronts from people, who, through motives well-intentioned or ill, find such an idea intolerable because a nation of individuals is immune to repression, coercion, social engineering and control by the elite. The threat, as Lincoln so eloquently foresaw, comes from within and it is here, now, well-established and growing.
We have to fight back. We have to fight back hard.
We have to fight back now.
So you see how responsibility for personal defense ties in with this. And this speaks to why, when responsibility and free will become intertwined with accountability, for someone to take on the heavy burden of overseeing the outcome…this is a responsibility, along with many others, that cannot be delegated to a group. For groups are notoriously lacking in this accountability. That’s why the environment and other endeavors are wholeheartedly embraced as “responsibilities” by the left that in so many other areas, rejects the concept of free will. When responsibility has to do with finger-waggling, the left likes responsibility just fine. Unplug your toaster! Change your light bulbs! Drive a smaller car!
And it’s quite reasonable for you to pick up an undertone in selectivity about the finger-waglees. The left spends a lot of time and a lot of hot air talking about how, in these efforts, “we all” need to “come together.” Well, as always seems to be the case, “all” doesn’t mean “all.” We see that when environmentally-conscious politicians drive to their speaking events in SUVs that get six miles a gallon or less; we see it in the celebrities who believe in “responsible gun safety,” whose bodyguards carry concealed weapons.
That, right there, is why Jesse Jackson wants to cut off Sen. Obama’s nuts. Noble responsibility, the kind you intertwine with an outcome-changing effort that is truly great, is a group thing; it is to be invested in a group, so that when a bad plan turns to crap it’s nobody’s fault. The pejorative cousin, the “You Hafta Worry About This Because You’re A DRCJ” (dirty rotten creepy jerk) is an individual thing, but it isn’t there to achieve anything. It’s there to weigh people down, to punish them.
Whittle’s right. This mindset that individuals are incapable of embracing glorious and productive free will, the kind of free will that is necessarily involved in accomplishing great things, is treacherous, toxic, and will eventually kill us if we let it. We have to oppose it at every turn.
I think if they want to call this their “premiere project” they should look at renaming themselves to something like Untruth Through Lack of Action; that is the subject of the movie isn’t it. Vote Republican, and some cute girl won’t have sex with you.
I remember back in my extreme youth, before Bill Clinton came along and before I had too many opinions about politics — I slept with women who wouldn’t have had me if they thought I was a Republican. I’m not entirely pleased with those notches on my bedpost. Had I declared an extreme hardcore Republican-ness way back when, and lost whatever opportunities I would’ve, I wouldn’t be the worse-off for it.
Then I slept with some women who wouldn’t have had anything to do with me if I had been a democrat.
So…all it takes is one “I only sleep with Republicans” type of woman who’s decent-looking, to raise all kinds of questions. Like — guys, do you wanna do it with a woman who only sleeps with Republicans? Because if she’s putting out, you already know she isn’t the militant-fundamentalist type. (And maybe you’d be better off if she was, but that’s a different question…)
Or do you want to sleep with a “lady” who’s been dreaming of chogging on Bill Clinton’s knob? I mean, it basically comes down to that doesn’t it. Maybe there aren’t any straight dudes putting this “film” together. Obviously, straight-dudes are the intended audience — and as one, I’m thinking the same thing the first commenter is thinking. Or more like “do I want to share some bucket o’meat trollop with that ferret-faced guy with his ass-pin on his lapel at the end?” And he looks like a pedophile.
And Lord knows what in the hell she’s carrying. Her STDs probably have STDs.
Poor silly donks. Backed into a corner. If only they had picked a decent candidate for President this year, they wouldn’t be so desperate. Bribing horny young drunk guys with sex for their votes, and it isn’t even real sex. Sheesh.
…With shovel in hand, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama visited a flood zone in Quincy, Illinois on Saturday. Obama helped locals fill sandbags to place on the banks of the Mississippi river. Obama has vowed to push for state and federal aid to help victims of the floods.
Wow, what a swell guy. But the angle of a picture can really change a lot about a story.
I hope he eventually left them alone so they could get back to filling those sandbags.
Because you-know-who has now tossed so many people under his bus, that now they’re starting up a “Can I Get An Amen Here?” campaign to throw the “throw ‘im under the bus” cliche…under the bus.
Exactly who is throwing whom and from where did this much-abused phrase come?
Long a staple in the sports realm, the phrase experienced a resurgence in popularity (and overuse) earlier in the presidential campaign when Sen. Barack Obama eventually threw his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., under the bus, denouncing him.
The euphemistic phrase, which now also means jettisoning a political liability, has taken on a twisted and ubiquitous life of its own. The presumptive Democratic nominee seems to be a leader of the pack among under-the-bus flingers, slingers and tossers, according to cable news pundits and blogosphere scribes.
Mr. Obama has been accused of heaving his white grandmother; his former foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power; the former head of his vice presidential vetting committee, Jim Johnson; the Muslim community; public financing of presidential campaigns; his not-quite-e-mail-pal, Scarlett Johansson; and even his short-lived customized presidential seal — all under the bus.
:
Trying to appeal to people’s sense of righteousness and decency, many writers in recent months have railed against the phrase, saying it’s well past its prime. Some have even called for a moratorium on use of the metaphor, but politicians, pundits, journalists, politicos and others have not seen fit to oblige. It seems “to throw (someone) under the bus” won’t go gentle into that good night.
Uh, well gee that might be because right about now there’s a point to throwing it around. It’s a little unusual to wish for a word or phrase’s demise, at the moment when it’s service to linguistic demand is at it’s peak.
Wow, that’s almost an in-kind contribution. Changing the English language in the middle of the Obamessiah’s campaign, so that even if someone wants to say something bad about him there aren’t any words with which to do it.
While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has vowed to make pay equity for women a top priority if elected president, an analysis of his Senate staff shows that women are outnumbered and out-paid by men.
That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.
Obama spoke in Albuquerque, N.M. last week about his commitment to the issue and his support of a Senate bill to make it easier to sue an employer for pay discrimination.
:
On average, women working in Obama’s Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That’s according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama’s Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one — Obama’s administrative manager — was a woman.
The average pay for the 33 men on Obama’s staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama’s staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama’s staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729. The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)
Why does this not surprise me.
The older I get, the quicker those five words in sequence raise the hairs on the back of my neck — and the farther & longer those hairs stick up. And the thought that I might be alone in this, relatively true as it may be, is something I simply cannot accept for who in their right mind can remain hospitable to this in 2008?
Make It Easier To Sue…
Sounds about as palatable to me as “come here, children, I have some candy for you…”
And of course there’s always an unpleasant surprise. It’s inevitable.
What makes it so? I imagine maybe it’s that thing where a flashy and quick advertisement of phony egalitarian ideals has a great appeal to someone who does not believe in them. Kind of like, if you have a huge pecker, there’s no need to compensate by driving a flashy red car.
This has come to be a much more all-encompassing thing to me than just democrats and Republicans. With the center-of-gravity of my lifespan now in my rear view mirror, my first inclination on meeting people who are anxious to showcase what nice people they are, has slowly evolved to be to run like hell in the opposite direction. The fruit has got to be a different flavoring than the peel, otherwise there wouldn’t be much energy involved in showing the peel.
Even in politics, where “showing the peel” is the job. It still consumes just only so much effort, and if it consumes more than that it must be false advertising. If this is accurate about Obama’s campaign, my theory has been proven correct yet again. Those who make a great big show out of believing everyone can & should have “equal” opportunities, are the last to believe in it.
Oh well. We’ll hear about this all over the place, or else it’ll be one of those “this is why we have blogs” things. I really don’t give a rip which one it is. democrats who want to punish businesses, once put in a position where they have to run something like a business, commit pretty much all of the sins of which they accuse others. Like a checklist. Or a game of whack-a-mole. They do a great job of not missing anything. So color me unsurprised.
He could be caught tomorrow in a bathtub, naked, with Larry Sinclair, puffing away on a crack pipe while getting serviced by 3 Boy Scouts and 2 altar boys and they’d still think he was the bee’s knees.
But I dunno.
I think Harvey at IMAO gets it, for this fictitious quote he stuck in The Obamessiah’s holy piehole. For that link as well, I get to thank Colorado Right. But it could have been attributed to just about any socialist-in-donkey-clothing tax-and-spend democrat:
“But how will you pay for it?”, sobbed Marilyn.
“Same way I’ll pay for everything I promise – by stealing money from someone who has more of it than you but less than me.” [emphasis mine]
Oof. You see, that’s almost worth framing.
I’ll pay for it by stealing money from someone who has more of it than you but less than me.
Someone just shrink that down a tiny bit more so it’ll fit on a bumper sticker. I’m a democrat, and I’ll steal from someone who has more loot than you but less than me.
I feel this subconscious sympathetic twinge for these people when they start arguing with me. It’s so sad; they’ve got nothing to say and they damn well know it. “Hope change got elected to the Senate the real deal illegal unjust war”…and that just about wraps it up for them. That, and bitching about people mentioning his middle name, some global warming propaganda, and they’re done.
If nothing else, the 2008 election will resolve the question of whether the Democrats have been losing the White House in recent decades because of their message or because of their candidates’ inability to articulate it well.
:
After the 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 elections, Democratic leaders argued that the American people had not rejected their ideas or governing philosophy. Instead, they said, their nominee had not effectively communicated the party’s core message. It wasn’t the American people rejecting those views and values, they contended.
Whether that was an accurate reading of the electorate or a self-serving analysis by the party’s elites, it has made wonderful cocktail party fodder for years. But it has also been used as a rationale by those who didn’t see the string of defeats as a call to retool the party’s message.
These Democrats argued their politics were not out of step and there was no reason to overhaul the party message; they just needed to tinker with it around the edges and find a better communicator to make their case.
Well, give the democrat party for being consistent with itself, for once. If you think you’ve got a good message and you continue to fail at the presidential elections because your “messengers” suck so much, it would logically follow that someone with a polished talent for delivering messages would really capture your excitement.
The part about the message being perfectly decent, or adequately decent, doesn’t quite fit in though. Five elections lost in 28 years, comes to 71% failure. The same guy won the only two elections that went to the democrats in that time — so that’s five democrats out of six who lack the hunting talents to go out with this bait and bring something back. What kind of message needs a turd-polisher so impassioned and so skilled, that he has to bubble up to the eighty-third percentile before he can think about taking it on? It’s not quantum physics. It’s “vote for us and we’ll stiff those other guys to give you some bennies.” I have a reputation for making essays much longer and more bloated than they need to be, and in the verbal medium I’m not nearly as much fun to listen to as Sen. Obama, but even I managed to fit that on one line.
The editorial continues:
Nevertheless, it’s clear that if Sen. Barack Obama loses this November, Democrats will have to conclude that yes, in fact, their defeats are linked to their brand of politics, not their salesman’s communication skills.
Not only is the political playing field stacked in the Democrats’ favor — an unpopular war, an even less popular Republican president, and a slow and perhaps shrinking economy–but also their White House candidate is the extraordinary communicator in this race. Sen. Obama is clearly the most charismatic candidate and the best public speaker that the Democrats have offered in many decades. Some might say since John F. Kennedy; others might go further back.
Therefore, the argument goes, if the Illinois senator, who could sell ice to Eskimos, can’t close the deal, there is a pressing need for a serious overhaul of the Democratic mindset.
I doubt that very much. What the hell are they going to do, say to themselves “well, we tried driving a wedge between the classes for all these years and we failed, I guess America is the one garden on the globe where the weed of socialism can’t take root.” And then find a sudden hitherto-undiscovered loyalty to capitalism, free trade, the right to self-defense, the right to worship freely, to eat meat, to drive big cars, to leave the coffeemaker plugged in, to defend the country on the battlefield and in the public discourse without apologizing for doing so? To travel overseas and say “I’m American” without “sorry” tossed in immediately afterwards?
No. Obama could get creamed like Walter Mondale — which I highly doubt is what’s gonna happen — and four years onward they’ll be back to sell us the same crap. Everybody who has money must have stolen it, everybody with a different skin color is out to screw you, sacrifice is the only noble human virtue, the Constitution is a living breathing document, you’re breathing too but you shouldn’t be because you’re poisoning the planet, you shouldn’t have guns, you shouldn’t worship a god, you can’t drill for oil because the caribou will be upset, there’s nothing that can be done about high gas prices but to blame Republicans.
In short, you aren’t here to do anything, you’re here to be comfortable. And everything in your life that’s comfortable is because of us — even though our central purpose is to make sure you can’t do anything — and everything that makes you uncomfortable is because of those other guys. Vote for us, we’ll make sure you have everything you need or want, limited, of course, to the extent to which we think you should want it. You’ll eat the food we think you should want to eat, go to the schools we think you should want to go to, drive the cars we think you should want to drive, pay your carbon sin taxes, rely on a public agency to defend your family from the guy breaking into your house…and, basically, become a well-managed non-unique human ball bearing.
That kind of message has to do with preserving an aristocracy. The ivory tower types get to make up the rules as they go along, the hoi polloi down in the trenches just go where they’re told and do what they’re told. democrats have a real passion for this, and it’s the kind of passion that comes from personal insecurity and a desire to control others.
If it was the kind of “message” that would be dropped after a string of electoral defeats, it woulda happened by now. No, the message will not be changed. It is expected to endure even throughout the most discouraging setbacks; it is designed to so endure. And that’s proven easily: You’ll not hear it defined, by a democrat, with the level of clarity that was used above. It’s stated by those who seek to promote it only in vague terms, behind thick veils of obfuscation, peppered densely with buzzwords like “choice,” “wealthy,” “working families” and “environment.” Such protections are not available to messages that are subject to dismissal, if & when they are found to be bad messages. These are the protections wrapped around fake ointment products, that will continue to be sold, no matter how many people reject it or how many times they so reject.
Simply put, snake oil salesman don’t give a rip about the oil. There are the sales that are made, and there are the sales pitches that make those sales happen. That’s all that matters to the snake oil salesman. That’s one of the most reliable ways you can tell he is one.
Now that I’ve picked on him, noodle on the following as an equal and opposite righteous thrashing of the other guy. Along with all those bosses you know you’ve had…the aggravating ones that, now that you’re done with ’em, they haven’t been worthy of too much thinking since then.
I was trying to find this description of Wesley Mouch in Atlas Shrugged, last year sometime, and anytime you go looking for anything in Atlas Shrugged it’s like finding a tiny needle in an enormous haystack. I came up empty back then — and then when I went looking for the passage about Cherryl Taggart (finally locating it on p. 827) I stumbled across the Mouch thing on p. 496.
It’s pure gold. Describes much in our lives. More than it should. You know people like this; you know you do.
Wesley Mouch came from a family that had known neither poverty nor wealth nor distinction for many generations; it had clung, however, to a tradition of its own: that of being college-bred and, therefore, of despising men who were in business. The family’s diplomas had always hung on the wall in the manner of a reproach to the world, because the diplomas had not automatically produced the material equivalents of their attested spiritual value. Among the family’s numerous relatives, there was one rich uncle. He had married his money and, in his widowed old age, he had picked Wesley as his favorite from among his many nephews and nieces, because Wesley was the least distinguished of the lot and therefore, thought Uncle Julius, the safest. Uncle Julius did not care for people who were brilliant. He did not care for the trouble of managing his money, either; so he turned the job over to Wesley. By the time Wesley graduated from college, there was no money to manage. Uncle Julius blamed it on Wesley’s cunning and cried that Wesley was an unscrupulous schemer. But there had been no scheme about it; Wesley could not have said just where the money had gone. In high school, Wesley Mouch had been one of the worst students and had passionately envied those who were the best. College taught him that he did not have to envy them at all. After graduation, he took a job in the advertising department of a company that manufactured a bogus corn-cure. The cure sold well and he rose to be the head of his department. He left it to take charge of the advertising of a hair-restorer, then of a patented brassiere, then of a new soap, then of a soft drink — and then he became advertising vice-president of an automobile concern. He tried to sell automobiles as if they were a bogus corn-cure. They did not sell. He blamed it on the insufficiency of his advertising budget. It was the president of the automobile concern who recommended him to Rearden. It was Rearden who introduced him to Washington — Rearden, who knew no standard by which to judge the activities of his Washington man. It was James taggart who gave him a start in the Burueau of Economic Planning and National Resources — in exchange for double-crossing Rearden in order to help Orren Boyle in exchange for destroying Dan Conway. From then on, people helped Wesley Mouch to advance, for the same reason as that which had prompted Uncle Julius: they were people who believed that mediocrity was safe. The men who now sat in front of his desk had been taught that the law of causality was a superstition and that one had to deal with the situation of the moment without considering its cause. By the situation of the moment, they had concluded that Wesley Mouch was a man of superlative skill and cunning, since millions aspired to power, but he was the one who had achieved it. It was not within their method of thinking to know that Wesley Mouch was the zero at the meeting point of forces unleashed in destruction against one another. [emphasis mine]
Kinda reminds me of a certain energetic and charismatic young man — a decidedly underqualified young man — running for President this year. But that’s just my opinion, of course.
Update: One of that underqualified young man’s supporters argues for nationalizing the refineries…as classic an illustration as can possibly exist, of confusing mediocrity with excellence.
Hat tip to St. Wendeler at Another Rovian Conspiracy. The uh, er, socializing, I mean, uh, whatever was acknowledged to be a Maxine Waters “oopsie” moment…mouth started getting ahead of her brain there. Well, it doesn’t seem to have been a misstatement at all. As St. Wendeler points out, they’re getting more brazen, more sure of themselves, and their true colors are starting to show.
They’re disciplined in dealing with the situation of the moment, and therefore presume that those among them who are capable of amassing power, must be cunning and brilliant and therefore their plans must be ingenious. It’s a simple case of mediocrity being confused with excellence. And plans that have been tried repeatedly, and failed, being thought to possess some sort of beneficiality or merit.
UCLA students show their support for the Obamessiah — you’ll notice, there seems to be something terribly wrong with keeping that kind of support secret — by streaking in their underwear.
There’s another first in the Barack Obama campaign, and it came from UCLA students. Hundreds of UCLA men and women donned designer underwear with Barack Obama’s picture on the front, and dashed across campus early Thursday.
The briefs were the creation of designer Andrew Christian. A silhouette of Obama was on the front, and “08” on the back. Christian said the Obama underwear run were a perfect vehicle for him to premiere his campaign-themed garments. He might consider a Hillary Clinton bra, if she makes the ticket as vice-president.
There won’t be any John McCain underwear, since Christian is a Democrat.
My gal came up with a priceless retort to this. Okay, so a President Barack Obama is in favor of unruly kids running down the street without any clothes on — duly noted.
The underwear run is an annual event at UCLA. It’s a way for students to blow off some steam, before final exams.
College is a place where you or your parents pay some premium tuition so you can learn how to think critically — it costs more now than it used to, and you have a lot more time to learn how to do it than your parents ever did. And yet, what passes for college-level decision making today, is looking around, seeing that your pals are streaking in their underwear, and deciding to vote the way they’re voting because it’s so coooooooool.
Tomorrow’s leaders.
Color me unimpressed. Umptyfratz-and-eleventy thousand dollars should be able to buy some better critical-thinking skills than that.
Last weekend, I had noted a very special morsel that had made it’s way into the editorial pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. Mark Morford had wondered if Barack Obama was an “enlightened being” and used a special term to describe him, a “lightworker”:
Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.
I had wondered if this Morford guy had been tapping into the Yin and Yang archives over here at the Blog That Nobody Reads. Well, it seems this was not the case. And I should have seen that coming, because Morford’s whole point is that it is exceedingly rare for a Lightworker to become a politician. Had he been talking about the Yang, as I thought, that observation probably would not have been made because politics is the most naturally Yang-y pastime or profession modern man has ever devised.
So Morford was clearly alluding to some way-of-communicating that had to do with giving off a “natural vibe,” some special quality that exists outside the purely verbal path of communication. Yet Morford himself does not seem to fully comprehend what it is. Which probably means he didn’t come up with this on his own…he comes out and says he didn’t. So where’d he get this? He says “many spiritually advanced people I know.” Who are those folks, and what do they have in mind?
Mrs. Peel points to a fascinating fellow by the name of Steve Pavlina, self-help guru, motivational speaker, and former developer of shareware games. DP Undead later expounds on the idea with some additional research. Near as I can figure, the first epiphany goes to Peel…
[Pavlina] starts by asking if you are a lightworker or a darkworker. This post gives an explanation of “polarity.” Basically, you should choose either to serve others or to serve yourself, and dedicate yourself fully to your choice. Only thus will you attain the true heights to which you are destined, young Skywalker…er…
Anyway, a later article discusses lightworkers and defines them as cells in the body of Christ “Source.” (He doesn’t actually mention “Source” in this particular article, but it’s mentioned in other posts. It’s basically God, but Pavlina is much too enlightened to believe in God, so he has to call Him something else.) A lightworker is like a white blood cell. It seeks out sickness in the body of humanity and tries to heal it. A darkworker is like a cancer. It feeds off other cells to gain more power. In this article, Pavlina theorizes that because so many darkworkers are in power now (he doesn’t actually name President Bush, but it’s pretty obvious from this and other articles that that’s who he means), many people are feeling the call to become lightworkers. The body of humanity is diseased, and lightworkers must fight the disease.
Well if Morford did indeed copy his comments from this, he could not also have borrowed the concept from Yin and Yang; or if he did consolidate the two of them somehow, the concepts must have gone whistling over his head. What Pavlina describes isn’t even close to what originated on these pages…
Are You a Lightworker or a Darkworker?
Asking this question is like asking whether you’re a black belt in karate or jujitsu. Most likely you are neither, since most people never make such a commitment in their entire lives. Lightworkers and darkworkers combined probably account for less than 1% of the population. [emphasis mine]
Yin-and-Yang, contrasted with the above, maintains the opposite. Once the two extremes are defined, most of us are situated on one or the other. It is the no-man’s-land in between that is sparsely populated, and would account for a freakishly picayune sub-selection from amongst us. The rest of us are sitting on some extreme wingtip, or are headed in that direction. Yin-and-Yang, you might say, theorizes that we are “polarized” at birth or shortly afterward.
It would take a phenomenal expenditure of energy and concentration to avoid being a Yin or a Yang, because whenever you are met with a “complex” challenge you are forced to choose a method for solving it. And before you’ve labored toward the solution, you’ve begun to solidify further your allegiance toward one extreme or the other. Quoting myself in Installment Ten:
People are confronted by complex problems, and they solve those problems in a Yin way, or a Yang way. The mold they have cast for their personal development, since childhood, will determine which of these two methods they will use.
The “complex” problem is complex because…
1. The nature of it demands a multiple-step plan;
2. There is no pre-packaged solution available that can be implemented with the resources at hand;
3. It is determined that any proposed solution, will involve some level of uncertainty and risk.
And you can resolve this by drawing on the energy and consciousnesses of those in proximity, or relying on your internal cognitive resources. One or the other. So it’s intellectually non-feasible to maintain a middle ground here. You’d have to keep track…okay, last time I relied on others…this time I’ll figure it out for myself…now, last time I relied on myself so this time I’ll collaborate with others.
That’s not viable because we have an instinct to develop, maintain and augment the talents that are of greatest use to us. No, what Pavlina is describing is something different. It’s a bell curve. Ninety-nine percent of us hang around the middle, and the majority of them are in the center, the “Big Middle.” The one percent that remains…maybe less than that…”polarizes.”
What does it mean to polarize?
When you decide to polarize, you’re making a commitment to living a certain type of life. It is similar to making a commitment to a particular field that takes a long time to master, such as training for the Olympics, becoming a concert pianist, or becoming a grandmaster at chess. You aren’t just going to wake up one day to discover that…oh yeah…you’re a 10th degree black belt, nor will you suddenly wake up and realize you’re a lightworker or a darkworker. Polarizing as a lightworker or darkworker is a huge long-term commitment. It doesn’t just happen by itself in a flash of insight.
The decision to polarize is a decision you make with every fiber of your being. For some people it may be a natural choice, felt as a type of calling. Others have to spend a lot of time exploring both polarities to make the polarization commitment very consciously and deliberately. But most people never polarize.
If you polarize as a lightworker, you are dedicating your life to serving the greater good.
If you polarize as a darkworker, you are dedicating your life to serving yourself.
So Pavlina is sort of an Ellsworth M. Toohey, perhaps with more benevolent intentions, but with the same credo. Harmony and symbiosis with the common good, is good; selfishness is toxic and bad. The ego, therefore, becomes a cauldron of poison and evil.
I’m humbled and intrigued that Pavlina and I have come up with two theories so different, and yet, having so much in common. He used to write software; I used to write software (it seems his stuff was games, and my stuff was industrial-work automation type things, which is also interesting). I stopped and got into project management; he stopped and got into motivational speaking. He may still be writing software — I dunno — but I had my own reasons for finding different ways to earn a living, and they had a lot to do with the Yin and Yang theory. It’s credible to me that being a motivational speaker must be very different from developing software, although I’m experienced in one of those and am a complete stranger to the other. I suspect he had some kind of personal crisis similar to my own. Or it’s possible that he just appreciated the pay hike. But I strongly doubt that’s all there is to it.
Anyway, at this point in Pavlina’s theory about lightworkers and darkworkers, we run into some even more interesting things. Quoting DP Undead…
As I read this guy’s explanation of Lightworkers and Darkworkers, I realized, I’ve seen all this before! And in fact, video games may well have a role in this nonsense. I recognized this basic framework of this philosophy from a video game released for the X-BOX in 2005, called Jade Empire. I later came to the conclusion that he borrowed from a game called Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) which was made by the same development team before Jade Empire. Jade Empire was based heavily on KOTORs engine and gameplay.
Yes, this rings a bell. I have KOTOR — I never really could get too far into it. It’s a character development game, much like Sims. You define the attributes to your custom character and then you play. If the character customization doesn’t interest you overly much, you’ll find it a little boring. That’s why I couldn’t get into it.
DP Undead continues with Jade Empire…
In Jade Empire, you could either follow the philosophy of the Open Palm or the Closed Fist. Open Palm is a philosophy that argues one should always give aid to someone, be in tune with nature, and to know and accept one’s place in this world. Closed Fist is a philosophy that teaches self-reliance, to control one’s surroundings, and to try and be ambitious. Lightworker and Darkworker operate on similar principles. From Morford’s article,
The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics.
Let me repeat Jade Empire’s Open Palm philosophy: Open Palm is a philosophy that argues one should always give aid to someone, be in tune with nature, and to know and accept one’s place in this world.
The reason you don’t see an Open Palm or Lightworker on the national stage is because philosophically speaking, they aren’t supposed to be ambitious. This is why Morford is so excited.
:
In theory, Lightworkers and Darkworkers operate on similar principles, but our guru [Pavlina] deviates and argues that true Lightworkers have no malevolent side, and Darkworkers are by their nature destructive, which as we learn is more like the concept of Jedi vs. Sith. Lightworkers work for the common good and to “raise consciousness”. Basically typical liberal hippie Marxist crap. Darkworkers are malevolent, in our guru’s world, and indeed Morford’s world, capitalist pigs, the Bushitler and Enron. He argues that both can get to the same place in terms of power, but that the Darkworker by his very nature leaves a trail of chaos and destruction in his wake, not unlike the Sith or Closed Fist. [emphasis in original]
There follows in Undead’s analysis, a procession of excerpts alternatively from Guru/Pavlina, and Morford. This is the evidence that Morford is recycling material from Pavlina, and speaking for myself I find it reasonably convincing. You be the judge.
But not before you get to the whoopass smackdown tidbit of evidence. And I promise…it is whoopass smackdown…
I thought it was a coincidence until I saw this. What is it I see? Look,
In your life story, you can choose to be the hero, the villain, or an NPC (i.e. non-player character, someone passive who watches the story unfold from the sidelines). Most people live like NPCs, but the hero and the villain have far more power to direct how the story unfolds. There are lots of heroes and lots of villains in this story, but there are orders of magnitude more NPCs.
All bold mine [DoublePlusUndead]. For those that don’t know, NPC is a term that is very common in role playing games (RPG), both of the tabletop and video game variety. If you’re not a gamer or D&Der, you’ve probably never heard these terms before. Upon seeing it, I think our guru based this stuff on KOTOR and Jade Empire! He’s selling dopey leftists like Morford a bunch of warmed over RPG themes! Talk about Darkworking!
I told you it was whoopass smackdown.
Priceless. There follows in Undead’s analysis a complete rundown of these role playing game features, complete with screenshots.
Let’s return to Yin and Yang for a second. One of the observations I made is that the Yang tend to have an instinctive compulsion to make all non-Yang more like them. They are recruiters. There can be advantages to this in certain situations, but it’s not a rational decision. Not a deeply rational one, anyway. They have the tendency to see “Yang-ness” as functionality; baseline functionality, the most elementary level required, to perform any task worth performing. Whoever doesn’t have the same PH balance is therefore defective.
In our information age this is especially tragic — because we rely on tools, indeed, multiple layers of tools, that can only be developed by the Yin. At least, with any reliability, and with any baseline threshold of quality.
I would imagine in the shareware game development field there would be, behind closed doors, some fierce culture conflicts between Yin and Yang. Games like these would involve an intensified and structured (deep but not broad) development of a capable and reliable engine — how pictures are displayed on the screen, how the players move around, how their location in a given instant is tracked, what’s absolute, what’s relative, how the hardware is interfaced to the software, etc. — an effort in which the Yin would enjoy an enormous functional advantage. This would be followed by a meandering and creative (broad but not deep) definition of the game itself. Placement of the objects which are the players, fields and obstacles. In this effort, the Yang could participate with a greater degree of influence and effect, with a favorable outcome. And then take over the lab culturally, as is their natural tendency. All non-Yang, convert or depart at once.
This is exactly the kind of thing that eventually drove me out. I found my software development skills were very much like a jet fighter with some powerful engines but with a bulky, non-aerodynamic shape. Headwind drag, you know…proportional to the square of the craft’s velocity. That’s basically what happened to me. I’d build something, it would work, I’d get promoted — and there arose a pressure to perform in a Yang capacity, a capacity in which I had never really brought too much to the table, and hadn’t pretended to have any capability for doing so.
I found myself contributing, with great effort, only marginally to some of these projects. I’d have been promoted because I had great success in some other area, an area in which I was no longer challenged. I remember vividly one example, in which a boss tasked me to figure out how to work some gizmo. And, very much like Dilbert’s boss, he’d manage step-by-step — come back in a few minutes and check up on me, with some pre-defined notion of what step I’d be on, what exactly I’d be doing, supplying mid-course corrections if that was not what I was doing. Well, waitaminnit…doesn’t “figure out how to do” something, imply an open-ended path? Unless he knew something already, that I was being paid good money to figure out, which I doubt was the case.
Nope, it’s the step-by-step approach. People like steps. I’ve learned, gradually, that people who have a habit of working according to step one step two step three, have a tendency to start looking at everything that way. They enforce it, in situations where it isn’t appropriate. Rather like assigning a taxicab driver to “find a way to get me to Brooklyn Bridge”…and then, four blocks into it…”hey, this isn’t the way!” You’ve outsourced the decision-making, or you haven’t. There are some jobs that fall into the “tying shoes” definition — they demand unshared authority. We’re sometimes slow to pick up on this. It’s just a simple human failing.
In this way, I began to find the new demands that were made of me, didn’t seem to have much to do with the actual success of the project. Challenges that were more my forte, on the other hand, were going unmet. Not only by me, but by the team as a whole. What was my major contribution? My specialties tended to be purely functional: Ordering hardware vendor interface toolkits, reading the technical documentation which was usually wrong, calling tech support, applying upgrades…getting the damn thing online. That’s what I did. There arose a prevailing viewpoint, and I never saw too much evidence to substantiate it, that this was unnecessary and my talents were in much greater need over here. Meanwhile, gizmos that we needed to be working, weren’t working, and I was isolated from any opportunity to continue my contributions to those.
It happened three times in six years, and I got out. I’ve since noticed this is a universal thing: People who engage the world through their personalities, their competence at collaborating with others, giving off & picking up “vibes” — and, executing those all-important steps according to pre-written scripts — want everybody else to do things that way too. This is, I think, why Pavlina is a motivational speaker. It’s like what they say sometimes about cops: If you get a thrill out of bossing people around and beating them up, a cop is a good thing for you to become, so a lot of cops & security guards are supposed to be bullies. Don’t know how much of a problem that is; I try not to spend too much time talking to cops in that kind of setting. But the principle is certainly a valid one.
And Pavlina does write like kind of a Yang-bully. Lightworker, good; Darkworker, bad.
My girlfriend and I watched The Fountainhead Saturday night. Gary Cooper, speaking as Howard Roark, covered the problems with Pavlina’s logic very well (although, according to legend, he confessed to Ayn Rand right afterward that he really didn’t understand what he was saying). It’s something Pavlina really needs to see. And you know, just on the off-chance he’s scanning these pages — you never know — it couldn’t hurt to excerpt the relevant passage. Ayn Rand, once again tapdancing on the boundary between what is real and what is silly…but this one’s an inch or two within bounds. All denialists will avoid, in abject fear, the object exercise of honestly sampling history to try to refute it.
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrwed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building — that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.
His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man’s spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.
The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power — that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He had lived for himself.
And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.
Now, getting a scanner or optical jukebox driver to work with a document automation system, is a far distant cry from building motors or airplanes or power looms or anesthesia. But I’ve had twenty years to bear witness to such little skirmishes across the border of Yin and Yang, and it’s a constant that the Yang show this Pavlina-bullying. This gives rise to two mysteries to which I’ll try to offer some answers here: One, what motivates the Yang to try to rub out others who are not like them; and two, how do they ultimately succeed at this — even though, when they succeed, the rest of us lose things we in fact need.
Here are some ideas on how this comes about.
1. The Boundary
Picture Yin and Yang as two castles hundreds of miles apart, in two different valleys. From atop the keep of each castle, it is possible to see everything within the respective valley bowl, but of course, not one inch further than that. With binoculars, telescopes, whatever have you.
And so a person who lives in each castle, has three frontiers. Himself, the castle, the valley.
What makes the two castles different, is how the castle is cordoned off: There is a moat around the castle of Yin. In other words, when a Yin works on a project consistent with the makeup of his own character, whether it’s designing, inventing, implementing, cataloging…there’s always a boundary. It’s a closed system. And within any system, order must prevail or the system stops working. The Yin will place a great deal more priority on an object of disorder inside this “moat,” than a similar problem lying outside of it.
The Yang are missing this boundary around their castle. All things within line-of-sight, that are out of place, require adjustment. That means — the valley. You could say that the valley, to the Yang, performs exactly the same function as the moated castle does for the Yin.
This moves the Yang into a natural position to collaborate with others. People, universally, have a tendency to do what they’re told. The Yang police this valley, looking for trees and molehills and squirrels that aren’t adhering properly to some rule. They find something, and the conversion begins. That means a conversation begins. While this is going on, the Yin is not making himself visible. He’s toiling away on something, in his castle, behind the moat.
2. Myopia
With respect to the “castle/valley” analogy mentioned above — the Yang have to go beyond the boundaries of the castle, adjusting all things in the “valley,” or enclave demarcated by the line-of-sight, to some standard of orthodoxy. It’s sensible to presume this is an exhausting task. Sufficiently so, that even if there is a process of organizing whatever’s not-yet-complete against the available resources, much of the work will still have to be defered to a later time so as to not overtax the resources.
That is if there is a process of organizing the work against the resources. Even that, usually, is left undone.
No, it’s much more common for the Yang to just trip across this stuff as they wander around the valley, rap knuckles, and move on.
I noticed this with old girlfriends. They’d behave as if the world was coming to an end so long as I did do, or didn’t do, X…usually “show your feelings” or “be more sociable.” We’d bicker. Somehow or another, she’d come to an understanding that, as Popeye says, I am what I am…and duly show her disgust.
Next time she caught me in my bad habits, we’d have the conversation all over again, with the same urgency involved in reforming me, no new points made on either side — as if it had never happened before.
I know I’m not alone, especially among the guys.
Behold — the myopia. The Yang seem to exist in a state of exhaustion from patrolling the valley. They work themselves into a state in which they can look at something right in front of them, and not see it.
So they run things; and they don’t have much appreciation for what the Yin do, even though they count on it.
3. Migration of Work
Things that we use across a vast expanse of time, tend to evolve into multi-layered tools. Generally, the Yin are responsible for developing the lower layers and the Yang contribute more productively to the higher layers. Your most helpful analogy here is a road, with one crew bringing in concrete and gravel, which they then scatter around evenly after preparing the bare land for the road; and another crew trucking in asphalt, being sure to spread it around smoothly.
The Yin lose the limelight rather naturally, being the bedrock people; their work is easily forgotten, covered with asphalt. Really — they never had the limelight. When that bedrock is laid down, nobody’s around to see it except the people who are directly responsible for putting it in. Recall the comments about the role playing game, with the graphics engine, and the mappings. After the engine is built, major upgrades notwithstanding, it is forgotten in the same way as the bedrock under the asphalt. That doesn’t mean the engine is not there, or that it is not needed. It just becomes a piece of history…as does the graphics engine. The ongoing challenge of creating new maps, and filling in potholes in the asphalt, makes it easy to forget this important contribution.
We do this with everything we use. Cell phones, for example. Yesterday’s exciting innovation is today’s comedy relief — unless you really need it, in which case it is what we could call a “staple.” Very complicated technologies, ones that were thought to border on the impossible not too long ago, become sort of like a pencil. The damn thing works, or it doesn’t.
It’s a natural evolution of working with emerging technologies that are stacked up on top of each other; they work, because they make use of other related things. Our attention is drawn to the highest layer, the one that is still under development. The point is that when we forget what went into the lower layers, we de-value the processes and styles of thinking that were needed for their development — unless those processes and styles of thinking happen to overlap completely with what’s needed for development of the higher ones. That usually isn’t the case. So we have a very sensible tendency, in my mind, to reform our thinking energies to better conform to the task at hand. Unfortunately, that means where we need to release ourselves from our legacies in order to do this, we will. And we evolve much more expertly, in this way, when the work we are about to do is that of a social nature.
4. Compartmentalization
This is a continuation of the above. As we migrate the work and the energy of our thinking as we confront it, we have a tendency to place the contributions of the Yin into a sort of a box. Think, here, of your personal computer at home. Here it is 2008, and it’s a…browser tool. With maybe some custom birthday card printing programs on it…Google Earth…and some other stuff.
That isn’t really how you thought of it ten years ago. Back then, browsing the Internet was just another application. You used Calculator, you used Notepad, and you browsed. Then you had the “real” programs. But the point is, a decade ago you thought of it as the wonderful bundling of amazing technology that it still is. What you take for granted now, was a bit of a challenge back then. Swapping virtual memory into the onboard memory so it could be accessed by multiple applications, without locking up and taking your work into the Phantom Zone. That isn’t much of a challenge now, hopefully. There are hundreds of other things your computer used to do, rather unreliably, that now it seems to do effortlessly. Back then, you had tolerance for the failures to drive your video card without locking up tight…tolerance you wouldn’t have today, because you take the technology for granted.
And that’s the way it is with the power loom and the airplanes. It was once a miracle that heavier-than-air craft could fly. Now it isn’t. That’s the nature of technology. As we adapt to it’s use, we tend to forget all the complicated pieces that go into it. The pity is, we get distracted by other ongoing chores that are, in fact, much simpler. Loading a web page? There are some advanced security features, Active-X controls, cryptographic handshakes for secure web resources, authentication protocols. There are Java applets. But by-and-large, it’s all pretty much the same stuff. It isn’t nearly as complicated as the stuff that used to be a challenge, and is no longer…like…finding a hardware-independent, stable way to swap shared components among multiple threads and applications, some of which might be poorly behaved or trying to access memory that isn’t available to them.
And that, I maintain, is true of all technology. We have a tendency to be distracted by new challenges that seem to be more demanding than yesterday’s, when in fact they really aren’t. Working on a higher level, yes. Demanding greater levels of cognitive skill in their implementation and troubleshooting…no. If that were not true, it would be a sign that yesterday’s job was not successfully completed, and is still in need of a re-do.
5. Ritual of Collaboration
If there’s one singular defining characteristic of the Yang, it is a need to conceal the point-of-decision. In other words, their way of making important decisions requires the projection of an illusion that the decision has already been made, when in fact it has not been. The illusion comes from their taking active steps, visible by design, to fixate their names next to the decision; to associate it with their reputations. I want Obama to win, we just went to a Barbra Streisand concert, I’m a Boston Red Sox fan.
One tell-tale sign that gives them away, irreversibly, is for them to seek emotional confirmation and support that the decision is the correct one after they have used their individual identities to confirm that it was.
People who navigate the First Triad in proper sequence (fact, opinion, thing-to-do) have no need to do this. They have the facts, which are things that are known; they have the opinions, which are like digital picture images made up from the pixels which are the facts; there are the things to do (or not do) in service of a stated goal, and those things make sense in some way because of the opinions derived from the facts. For those mature thinkers, the time to collaborate with others is in gathering the facts and forming the opinions. The thing to do is decided by whoever owns the goal.
Once it’s done…collaboration is not only useless, but a trifle silly.
So the Yang make the outsiders, the non-owners, feel better because their methodology of decision-making defeats ownership. And people like to feel like they’re part of things, even if they rightfully shouldn’t be owning the decision. And, even if the decision has already in fact been made.
This magnetic pull on the general public toward putting the Yang in charge, is most powerful with matters that are in fact “owned” by the general public, or some membership standard that approaches that level of universality. Rock concerts, sporting events, and elections. With “decisions” like these, it seems fitting and natural that everyone should have a part in deciding it, that no one should be excluded.
What people tend to miss out on is that the need for fellowship, motivating people’s actions after the decision is supposed to have been made — it gives away a truth that those responsible, would just as soon forget. Simply put, the decision has not yet been made; and the passion of the participants, depends on the decision having not yet been made. If you don’t behave according to the facts as you’ve gathered them, then you have to be behaving according to established rules, and if the decision were already made then it would be a rule.
But the Yang make their decisions first and then seek emotional support from their peers afterward, which makes them more approachable…or creates the illusion that they are more approachable. If anyone wishes to doubt the tremendous pull that has on the rest of us, let them explain the avalanche of “girl videos” in which we are buried in this election year of 2008. Hillary Girl, Obama Girl and McCain Girl — have made their decisions about who’s worth supporting, and now seek emotional confirmation from the rest of us in those decisions:
They’ve made their decisions by declaring which “side” they’re on. Yet they still seek the participation of others. It isn’t for consultation, it’s for affirmation. This makes them more inviting, by nature.
The deceit that takes place here, only partially by intention, is that they appear to be laboring toward giving power away by allowing invitees to actually decide things. In fact, they seek to suck power up from those invitees, since the important decisions have already been decided. Invitees are therefore invited to “participate,” perhaps do some hard-labor work or recruiting work, but to do little-or-nothing in the realm of actually deciding anything. This is a filtering that leaves intact all the obligations and burdens of ownership, while adroitly stripping out any authority that would be naturally associated.
6. Jealousy
Note DP Undead’s observations about open palm and closed fist…let’s repeat them one more time.
Open Palm is a philosophy that argues one should always give aid to someone, be in tune with nature, and to know and accept one’s place in this world. Closed Fist is a philosophy that teaches self-reliance, to control one’s surroundings, and to try and be ambitious.
Now, if you’re like me you’re thinking, Why would anyone have a problem with self-reliance and ambition? In the final analysis, there really is no good answer to that question. If you’re polarized as “Open Palm” and you believe you “should always give aid to someone,” this contempt for self-reliance makes even less sense because if you and I are facing a common disaster, and neither one of us have taken steps to be self-reliant, we end up in a trample-fest competing for finite resources. We each attempt to survive, at the expense of the other. If you’ve taken the trouble to achieve some measure of self-reliance — stockpiling things like a life raft, a generator, a four-wheel drive truck — you could help me out. Non-self-reliant people are not in a position to offer aid…at least…they usually aren’t.
16. People who are overly concerned about their emotions, don’t want anyone else to be overly concerned with thinking.
…as are Items #24 and #25…
24. People who imagine themselves as part of a group, with no individual identity, don’t want anyone else to have an individual identity either.
25. People who can’t solve problems because they don’t think rationally, work pretty hard to avoid acknowledging that someone else solved a problem.
7. Audible Confidence
This is not VOLUME. This is the tone you have to your voice when you’ve spent a lifetime “having the floor,” upon your request.
There is a certain futility involved in the egalitarian ideal of “making sure everyone has some say.” People like to think that’s self-enforcing, like waiting in line in a doughnut shop: It’s 5 a.m., the shop is open, there’s one cashier and five customers. People just naturally arrange into a queue. It’s a refreshing reminder of civilization.
Not so with taking turns having input in a group environment. The floor is yielded, easily, to those who simply expect the courtesy. You can hear it in their voices, that they expect it.
We tend to think of this as leadership. If it were leadership, though, the content of what’s said would have primary relevance as this priority scheme is worked out. That is not the case. There are reverberations, natural frequencies, pitches. Barack Obama has this kind of phony, auditory leadership. He begins to emit dulcet tones, and people “feel” like hearing what he has to say, before they know what it is (and with a rich track record, on his part, of talking a whole lot and saying very little). In truth, what they “feel” is a futility involved in trying to instigate a real dialog with him. You can tell by listening to him that he simply isn’t accustomed to it.
Another aspect to audible confidence is promptness. You have to speak up early, in order to be heard. Trouble with that is — the guy who investigates before speaking, is going to lose out every time to the guy who speaks before investigating. This is not always a disaster, and it’s not always counterproductive. As George Patton used to say, a good plan today beats a perfect plan tomorrow.
But on the whole, we do tend to have an unfortunate sense of what “evidence” looks like, when we’re looking for evidence of leadership. Audible and quick, tends to describe what most of us want to find. This is antithetical to understand what’s going on prior to settling on a course of action. And understanding what’s going on before settling on a course of action, is the very first requirement to solving complex, challenging problems, for the very first time.
8. Resource Reward
The Yang are far more receptive to re-distribution of wealth. The exploration of reasons for that, could drone on in a bulky thesis devoted to that subject and nothing else. We’ll not explore it in great detail here, but we can skim across the top and identify some key motivators. For starters, Yang are more sympathetic to re-distribution of wealth because they can afford to be that way. Think back on Pavlina’s “Open Palm” model; their world is already open, and re-distribution of wealth has everything to do, on a cosmetic level at least, with openness. Also, what concentrations of wealth are needed to do, tend to be efforts toward which the Yang aren’t terribly sympathetic.
There is an irony to this, though, because the Yang aren’t truly open. They excel at forming fellowships with people, of course; but a “fellowship” is meaningless if it extends membership to the universe, so for the fellowship to exist, some people have to be left out of it. This is unavoidable.
There is a spirit of egalitarianism where they congregate, but it isn’t borne out in reality. There are concentric circles involved. You might say, the moat the Yin have dug around their castle, hasn’t been entirely forsaken by the Yang, but used for other purposes. You see this in elementary, middle and high schools. People are on the “ins” and on the “outs.” There are events and methods people can use to hop over the fences, and when this happens, it’s a fairly rare occasion. There is difficulty involved in the fence-hopping and most poeple never do it — in one direction or the other.
Birds of a feather flock together. Our evolutionary history has made it so that we are accustomed to living in tribes. Once we gain control of resources, and the resources are in demand by persons inside and outside of our circles, we have a tendency to parcel the resources out to people inside the circle.
Being accustomed to interacting this way, the Yang are especially reliable in this. So the irony is, the egalitarianism is more credibly exercised by the Yin…and they aren’t trying to do it. You send a dirty joke through the e-mail to a Yin whom you haven’t contacted in awhile, and his response is going to be pretty much the same regardless of whether you were inside his circle or not. That’s a great joke or that’s a stupid joke; wonderful to hear from you; how’s the wife and kids?
With a Yang, your membership in his circle is going to determine the reaction far more than the content of the joke. If you’re in the fellowship, it’s an opportunity to reconnect, and you will so reconnect. If not — it’s — great joke. Got a call coming in. Keep in touch. Bye.
And so, those who work according to these concentric circles of trust, pour vast reserves of energy into making sure that resources are allocated to those who are inside the circles. It gets bad enough, often, that membership inside a circle comes to be thought of as a substitute for getting work done. Yes, it does. That seems like such a bad idea that nobody would step up and articulate the thought that maybe this is what we should do…no one would say that out loud. But the tendency is for this to become the way we behave. And this, in turn, tends to exacerbate the differential by which the Yang become more receptive to wealth distribution.
They become hostile to the idea that an individual should earn wealth, by independently getting work done. They become hostile to independence — even while relying on the fruits of someone who made the most of it. This is exactly what Howard Roark was talking about.
This inspires an echoing of something, at which I’ve hinted lately, regarding the Obama campaign. It doesn’t have quite so much to do with electing our next President, or electing someone who will “end the war,” or electing a black guy so we know everyone can grow up to be President. It’s not about that at all. It’s about a fellowship.
And a fellowship is meaningless if it doesn’t exclude someone. The circle is defined just as much…perhaps more…by what lies outside of it as compared to what lies within.
So our Obama people — whether they realize it or not — are really all about excluding people. They have to do this in order to give their fellowship meaning. What exactly they want to do with people outside the fellowship once their guy is sworn in, they themselves don’t seem to know exactly. But they certainly don’t want to give everyone a voice in what is going on.
…just really working hard to scour up things that are interesting and still avoid any mention of…you know…that guy.
He’s been talked-about much as of late, and there’s really not very much to him at all. Including his prospects. If we feel more than we think, he’ll win, and if we think more than we feel, he’ll lose. No way to predict which one it is. He talks much, says little, and whether or not he’ll be any good for the country is pretty much a done-deal.
Speaking of…that guy whose name we’re trying like the dickens not to mention…
It’s interesting that Kos is offended in the exact opposite direction by the end of the Tuesday Midday Open Thread.
Given the dearth of diversity at the Washington Post editorial page, it’s offensive that one of the few women on their pages is this one.
That would be Anne Applebaum, being dutifully taken apart by liberal blog, Sadly, No! Her crime? Asking the question that is the moonbats’ favorite rhetorical this year — is there racism behind every otherwise legitimate complaint about our Messiah? — but pointing it in the wrong direction.
Fred Hiatt’s Concubine Speaks. You Listen.
Republicans have started wracking their brains for clever ways to say, without appearing racist, that Obama’s skin color is a reason not to vote for him. Not so long ago we had Tony Blankley saying that not voting for someone because of their skin color wasn’t bigotry or racism, it was “demographic consciousness.” Now the loathsome Anne Applebaum, a distinguished member of the WaPo editorial board, hits it out of the park with this column where she argues that people shouldn’t vote for Obama because some foreigners are racist.
Permit me a bunny trail here.
Anne Applebaum never said people shouldn’t vote for Obama…not for any reason. Not within this column, in any case. She lays on the accusation good and thick, and carves even-handedly with a double-edged sword insofar as what the political consequences overseas from an Obama presidency; she’s silent on what we ought to do about that.
But — she has accused people of being racists, who aren’t Americans. Kos and Sadly have decided the R-word is to be thrown around this year only to make Obama the next President, and for no other reason, and so they start throwing it at her. Interesting.
This engine which drags us, like a tugboat dragging an aircraft carrier, toward voting for the least qualified candidate by calling us racists if we dare show an ounce of skepticism — it’s an interesting construct, that engine is. It’s a powerful little beast, but it runs hot. Applebaum’s column could be interpreted, reasonably, as an exhortation to vote for Obama because once he gets in we’ll show those racist Europeans that change is in the air and there’s no stopping it. But the hot-running engine chugs away, burning itself out, as all the finger-wagglers start waggling their fingers at each other, feeding on their own.
It brings to mind a comment I made here & there about the supposedly-upcoming Wonder Woman movie. The dormant status of the picture, now, is a direct result of “creative differences” that emerged when it was a moving, vibrant project that enjoyed funding and talent. My idea is, therefore, that the movie will not be made any time soon and probably cannot be made in our current eon. Simply re-designing Wonder Woman’s uniform, let alone re-thinking the more complicated components — what powers does she have, anyway, and are we going to get rid of that invisible jet? — elicits accusations of sexism in all directions, for whatever reason. Another powerful engine running hot, burning itself out before it accomplishes anything.
The real tragedy, of course, is that this creates an environment in which it’s exceedingly difficult for anything to be done except by one of those dreaded white guys. Someone of a designated minority group achieves a position of prominence, and likelihood for better things…and behind him arises a battalion of nanny-do-gooders screeching away, essentially, “Do Everything My Way Or Else You’re A –Ist!” And before anything gets done, they turn on themselves. We saw it with Hillary: You’re a sexist if you point out she’s crying, and you’re a sexist if you tell people it doesn’t matter.
So. Now you’re a racist if you don’t have the word “Obama” loaded into your spellchecker. (I added it to mine weeks ago, so my test with Microsoft Word didn’t get anywhere.)
I think the lesson here is that accusing people of things is a great way to stop something, but a lousy way to keep it going. If you want to get something done, and you’re working with other people to get it done, sooner or later you’re going to have to resign yourself to the idea that some things aren’t going to be done your way. Obama is very promising as a candidate for our next President — even now, you’d be nuts to bet anything against him — but there’s a powerful argument for calling the whole thing for McCain right this very minute. When his own supporters can be counted on to call each other racists any time they disagree on how this-or-that should be done, it becomes a lot like the Wonder Woman movie. A cancellation “due to creative differences” becomes not only easy, but inevitable.
Oh well. Better that kind of stalling-out and seizing-up happen to the Obama candidacy, than to the entire nation.
Now excuse me. I’m going to go run my spellchecker. If you want to accuse me of something, please be gentle.
Have I put up enough posts yet that don’t have anything whatsoever to do with what’s-his-name?
I don’t think so…but things keep coming up. He is, after all, the Man of the Hour. What a raging pain in the ass that is. But some of what pops up, isn’t that bad…like most of the stuff from FrankJ, this is too good to miss…
Obama has been saying McCain will be Bush’s third term, and McCain has responded by saying Obama will be Carter’s second term. I think that’s a good rebuttal, but maybe there could be more creative analogies for an Obama term.
AN OBAMA PRESIDENCY WILL BE
…another Batman movie by Joel Schumacher.
…the return of New Coke.
…a restaurant that serves nothing but Spam.
……and…many…more…
Except, of course, Batman movies and beverages are relatively harmless. It goes without saying that harmlessness does not apply to Obama, either as a candidate or, horrors, as our new President. We know this to be true. Everyone who would try to convince us otherwise, just indulges in a lot of yelling and name-calling vis a vis President Bush — nothing else.
In an election campaign in which not only young liberals, but also some people who are neither young nor liberals, seem absolutely mesmerized by the skilled rhetoric of Sen. Barack Obama, facts have receded even further into the background than usual.
So I feel The New Yorker’s pain. The magazine is under fire for a cover illustration depicting Barack Obama in the Oval Office wearing a turban, bumping fists with his wife, Michelle, who wears an Afro and fatigues, and has an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. Osama bin Laden watches from a portrait on the wall. An American flag burns in the fireplace.
Becky, girl, ya 
So Pavlina is sort of an Ellsworth M. Toohey, perhaps with more benevolent intentions, but with the same credo. Harmony and symbiosis with the common good, is good; selfishness is toxic and bad. The ego, therefore, becomes a cauldron of poison and evil.
I noticed this with old girlfriends. They’d behave as if the world was coming to an end so long as I did do, or didn’t do, X…usually “show your feelings” or “be more sociable.” We’d bicker. Somehow or another, she’d come to an understanding that, as Popeye says, I am what I am…and duly show her disgust.
There is an irony to this, though, because the Yang aren’t truly open. They excel at forming fellowships with people, of course; but a “fellowship” is meaningless if it extends membership to the universe, so for the fellowship to exist, some people have to be left out of it. This is unavoidable.