House of Eratosthenes

There are a lot of reasons for my thinking about that right about now. We’re just coming off a two-year-long Presidential election, and I’ve been up to my ears like everyone else in all this talk about whether X is a “good guy” or not. We spend an abundance of energy trying to sort out whether this-guy or that-guy is a good guy. I don’t know why we do this. I think deep down, we all understand Barack Obama can be a wonderful guy and still botch quite a few things; John McCain can be a dirty rotten creepy jerk (DRCJ) and still make a lot of good decisions.

Maybe it’s television. When I was a little kid, it was very popular to have these things called action TV shows, which lasted roughly an hour, and aired about eight or nine o’clock weeknights. Pretty much every minute of that hour was spent proving over and over again what a good guy the main character was. He’d do wonderful ordinary things, like gettin’ down to the latest tunes in a honky-tonk bar or discoteque. And then he’d do wonderful amazing things like jumping over a grain silo in an orange car yelling “yee haw!” Or clocking a bad guy in the jaw with his fist. (Back in those days, you could get hit in the face a hundred times with another man’s fist and suffer no structural damage or even any bruising; a swift karate chop between your shoulder blades, however, would knock you out for a couple hours.) Ordinary or extraordinary, it was all wonderful.

He’d put his arm lovingly across the back of the tender doe-eyed vixen of tonight’s episode, and sensitively tell her that her stepfather’s drinking problem was not her fault and she’d have to stop blaming herself. Of course, as an amateur psychologist, every word he said was gospel, even though this was a guy who chose to wear cowboy boots when chasing bad guys on foot.

You know, we really should have known better. When those shows were on, we had a nice southern peanut farmer in the White House who was about as nice a guy as you’d ever want. Sure, I never saw him jump an orange car over a grain silo, but he was generally regarded as a Good Man. Even all these years later, most people think he’s a Good Man. Even people of different political leanings than his, will grudgingly acknowledge this. At least, the ones who haven’t been paying attention to the pus-filled rancid rot that so regularly spews out of this guy’s cakehole. Today, only by paying close attention can you come to the conclusion that Jimmy Carter is an asshole.

But back then, even the people who followed political events, were convinced he was some kind of super-duper-Messiah guy. Not Jesus, but a really nice man come to deliver us from our own inherent nastiness.

Know what happened?

He screwed up everything he touched. Foreign-policy, stagflation, unemployment, energy, hostages…etc., etc., etc. Jimmy Carter would take charge at noon; by seven o’clock that evening, everything that could possibly be busted, would be.

Therein lies the problem with proving what a good guy you are. If you’ve proven it once, you shouldn’t have to prove it again, like Buck Rogers or Those Duke Boys or Dr. David Banner or Steve Austin or Walker Texas Ranger. And people shouldn’t be spending that much time or energy wondering about it.

There is another reason I’ve been thinking about the Morgan Rule.

Blogger friend JohnJ referred me to an unusually informative article over on — of all places — Cracked Magazine. Really. Y’all gotta go check this out.

5 Government Programs That Backfired Horrifically

No, it’s not a bunch of Bush-bashing about the invasion of Iraq. America figures in to only two-and-a-half of them. Your list is…

#5. Prohibition
#4. Glasnost
#3. The Strategic Hamlet Program
#2. The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909
#1. China’s Great Leap Forward

I’m glad to have an excuse to highlight this one. I think more people need to understand the correlation between dimwitted government programs, and waking up one morning with a trantula the size of a poodle sitting on your face. (Fair disclosure: My grandparents were those people, and they worked through the situation okay. The chronicles scribbled down by those who lived through it, all agree, though, that it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t too much fun.)

Now read that, from top to bottom. Do you see what I see?

Yup. An essential pillar of all five plans…sometimes stated, sometimes not…is…

And after it all falls into place, everyone will be forced to recognize that we are really, really good people.

Why is this a bad idea. Why, in fact, does this always seem to lead to disaster.

The hitch in the giddy-up is a simple one: People will think whatever they want to. This is the simple truism people in power seem to forget, after not too long a time. The worst plans all have it in common that they’ll convince people whoever made the plan, was “good.” In reality, even if the plan turns out to be a roaring success…and this really hasn’t happened very often…the most likely outcome is that after a few years, people can’t remember whose idea it was. There really is no such thing as a plan that will force the common people, to think any identifiable band of elite people, are good. People think what they want to think.

On the other hand, the best plans are the ones that end with “And then people will think about us, the architects of the plan, whatever they damn well want. But at least the plan will be effective.”

These are two diametrically-opposed styles of thinking about plans.

This is why America is a good country: It doesn’t rush to the front of that big pack of countries desperately trying to prove how generically wonderful their leaders are. Quite to the contrary, America is founded on the non-negotiable platform that our leaders are lousy, lying, drunken, dirty-rotten-creepy-jerks. Not so much that, but they require constant oversight.

It’s a precious part of our legacy. And I’m afraid we’re going to lose it on January 20. Millions of my fellow citizens are already convinced that if an idea came out of the mouth of the iPresident-Elect Man-God Modern-Messiah, it must be a good idea.

Face it, Obamatons: Barack Obama could do all five of those things on that list, all over again. He could do ’em before breakfast. After they turn out the same way they did before, you’d still think His poop doesn’t stink.

And that’s fine. An incoming President, by definition, should be popular. Just not to the point where everyone’s distracted from the central issue of whether his ideas are good or not.

Because I think it’s been demonstrated, by now, that governments like ours are at their least effective when they are 1) turned over to people who’ve proven what decent wonderful nice guys they are, and then 2) thrust into a bunch of feel-good experiments designed to prove what is supposed to have already been proven.

Gosh, you know, someone should start a country that is dedicated to not repeating such failures. We could have some, like, really really super-important pieces of paper to remind us not to think that highly of our leaders, so they won’t be tempted to launch such hairbrained schemes to prove what decent guys they are. We could call one of ’em the Declaration of Independence and the other one, the Konstitooshyun…

Seriously, though. I think that’s what the Founding Fathers were trying to do. I think this is exactly what their concern was. Here we are learning it all over again, the hard way, as if we have some internal wiring that compels us to live as serfs within a monarchy. The whole “Make This Guy Think That Guy Is Wonderful” is nothing but a fool’s errand…for both sides. It’s true outside of governments, too. When people are constantly proving what good people they are, something bad is about to happen. It’s a much better option, once you’re accused of something, to just go ahead and be guilty of it if you aren’t already. Because experience has taught me you might as well — people don’t change their minds about things after they have ’em made up. And if you have to work that hard to prove something, you’re probably hiding something ugly, and you’re probably hiding it from yourself.

Just a little thing to think about, in the weeks and years ahead.

Thing I Know #272. When people accuse you of doing something or being something and it isn’t true; when it comes as a surprise to you that anyone would think such a thing about you; I’ve found it is a mistake to put any effort into proving them wrong. If they’re sincere, something is coloring their perception, and whatever it is, it’s outside of your control. If they’re not, then they’re trying to get you to do something that’s probably contrary to your interests. Either way — you aren’t going to change their minds. Don’t try.

Thing I Know #273. This is the flip-side to TIK #272. When you want someone to do something, and you don’t have the authority to force them to, it’s contrary to their interests, and they’ve figured out it’s contrary to their interests or they’re plenty bright enough to figure out it’s contrary to their interests — accuse them of something. It’s your only option. Make sure they aren’t guilty of it. If they’re guilty, they’ll resign themselves to the fact that you’ve figured them out; if they’re not guilty, they’ll do anything you want to prove it. Then you just tie that in to what you want them to do.

I’d love to see some parodies of Obama as Clueless when it comes to his associates. Some skits where he denies knowing everyone he meets would be good. After Ayers, Wright, Rezko, and now Blago, these things should be writing themselves. Where are they?
- JohnJ | 12/11/2008 @ 13:42
John, John, John, you obviously did not get the memo. Only Republican presidents can be portrayed as stumbling (Ford), bumbling, (Bush 41) fools (Bush 43).

Democratic presidents are just too smart, too deep of thinkers, too intellectual, too damn cool to poke fun of.

Same, same with going to war, Clinton doesn’t get the UN on board no problem but Bush doesn’t and he sucks, Carter watches* for 444 days and then it’s Reagan who “makes deals with Iran”, JFK gets us into Vietnam and it’s Nixon who is the evil one (even before Watergate).

*Excluding Desert One, to be fair.
- tim | 12/11/2008 @ 14:39

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Memo For File LXXVIIThursday, December 11th, 2008

Memo For File LXXVII
Thursday, December 11th, 2008