House of Eratosthenes

Blogsister Cassy linked over at the Hello Kitty of Bloggin’ to a story at HotAir about some ultra-urban everlastingly-angry male athlete, or rap artist, or whatever…going on record, babbling some kind of foolish nonsense about “the streets”:

Same old story: Order cannot prevail over chaos, until & unless order first surrenders to chaos.

Well, I don’t perform for a living with some hackneyed angry-tough-male act; I build stuff for a living, and if my stuff doesn’t work then I’m out of a job and that’s when I hit “the streets.” So I think this gives me cause to look at things differently. One of the first things I noticed…

It’s interesting nobody ever seems to say something like “lower taxes or there will be a crime wave” or “less regulation or there will be a crime wave.”

Hours later, I was notified of a change in the arrangements coming up picking up my son. Nothing big, an extra 160 miles, two ways, another tank of gas, and — really, this is the only thing I don’t see as an insignificant irritant — an extra five hours. You know, no biggie. “Kidzmom” knew I’d make her squirm over it, and I did just for ritual’s sake. But I’m not really put out anything…so it was a ritual. And I went on with it, pretty much as a favor to her, so she could go back to the local wife who over-promised her, so she could go back and club her husband over the head, who got some kind of itchy thought between his ears that started the whole shitball rolling downhill…on to me. And my fiance. Where it is sure to roll. Since we deliver on things. See, it’s the same principle as “watch how crime picks up if you take away our game.” The people who deliver on things, must yield; the people who don’t deliver on things and live life just minute-to-minute, get to decide things for everybody else…when, since they live life minute-to-minute and don’t plan anything, they don’t even care. They’re put in the driver’s seat anyway.

Like I said: Order cannot prevail over chaos until such time as order surrenders to chaos.

Where exactly goes that get you?

I’ll answer that: It gets you here…

It’s designed to protect the President from terror attacks but Barack Obama was left red-faced after one of his armour-plated Cadillacs was brought to a halt as it left the U.S. Embassy in Dublin.

The gigantic bomb-proof General Motors vehicle, with eight-inch thick steel on its door, didn’t even make it as far as the road outside the consulate.

The car had to be abandoned after the collision in front of waving crowds while Mr Obama and his wife were en route to his ancestral home in County Offaly.

Luckily, the vehicle that broke down was the spare limo used by the President’s Secret Service protection team.

Mechanics rushed in to rescue the vehicle which was lodged helplessly on the ramp, while onlookers stood and watched – some of whom took video footage and photos.

The cars, worth over $1million, is 18ft in length, weighs 8 tons and 8in thick armour plating on its doors.

When the President is riding in one, the vehicle is officially known as Cadillac One. However, it’s more apt nickname is ‘The Beast’.

Specially built for Mr Obama, the General Motors GM.N vehiclse boasts its own oxygen supply in case of chemical attack and puncture resistant, run-flat tyres reinforced with kevlar.

However none of this, it appears, could overcome the might of a lowly speed hump.

Hang on, I’m going to pick this up in just a second…be right back…hang on…++snkckxx++

BWAAAAAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAA!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!! BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ++giggle++ ++snort++ (wipe tears from my eyes)

What’s so funny about this? I had more wisdom to dispense at the Hello Kitty of Bloggin’…

The really delicious irony here is: What is a speed bump? It’s a device used for traffic management, by means of interfering with the efforts of motorists who get too big for their britches…you know, the riff-raff. Obama’s immobilization comes from His coming into contact with the onerous regulatory device…much like one of His close pals who might have forgotten or neglected to pick up the ObamaCare waiver. The result? The whole parade comes to a screeching halt. Whereas, if He was tootling around in my 4-cylinder 2006 Honda…or in His predecessor’s chariot of choice…it would have been nothing but a bump in the road, literally.

See, our country…our disaffected, and bored, country…laboring under the delusion that life at the time sucked somehow, like we were getting our teeth kicked in by our (chuckle) tarnished reputation around the world…when, in reality, things were actually going pretty well for us, apart from the fact that our economy was imploding because liberal politicians were making all kinds of bullshit mortgage guarantees and, in fact, manufacturing the so-called “toxic assets” we came to need their special magic brand-new programs to clean up…which didn’t work. Apart from that, we actually had life pretty good. The House of Eratosthenes “real motto for America” applied well, in those days, as well as now: “Our Poor People Are Fat.”

But we felt oppressed, so we voted in an Alpha Male to run the country. The kind of guy who never has to change plans to accommodate somebody else…quite the other way around. A super special boy-god-king kinda guy. It’s His World The Rest Of Us Just Live In It!

And then He got Himself a super car. Because hey, when you’re riding around telling your lowly subjects to stop emitting carbon, eight miles a gallon is only the most reasonable rate to gulp down that diesel fuel. Five miles a gallon might be better…or gallons per mile…whatever.

But my point is, isn’t this a constant in chaos-before-order land? We’ve got these so-called “alpha males” — who, really, are just buffoons when you get down to it. Just clowns. They don’t build anything, they don’t make anything work, they just show off. They enjoy the finer things in life just because of their super-awesomeness, and we know they have this super-awesomeness because they’re enjoying the finer things in life. So their very existences become circular arguments. Their admirers sit on the sidelines and moan and wail away something to the effect of…”Well, the cycle must have gotten started somehow right? There must be something special about that guy, right?”

Uh, yeah. He expects it because His mom…small-m mom…was low class and didn’t teach Him any better. He’s a jackwagon. He’s a dick. A lot of the time…nearly all of the time…it’s no more complicated than that. Beginning to get the picture? What we have been taught, since middle school, to think of as “alpha males” are really phony alpha males. The clowns. No-talent guy-smileys.

See, the problem isn’t with these kinds of people. They’re always going to be like that. The immediate problem is, America has become temporarily infatuated with returning to the womb…we didn’t stick to our knitting, we began constructing a new royal family, someone Chosen By God to rule. Two universes were brought into conflict, because His Royal Majesty Barack The First was awarded an awesome wonderful set of wheels befitting His high station…but alas, had to contend with a roadway built for ordinary mortals. With a speed bump. His Deity-ness was compelled to bring one saintly foot into contact with the place where civil engineers work overtime to hurt the drivers, to make driving a painful experience “For The Greater Good.” Were the vehicle to remain massive and awesome, but the speed bump left out of the equation, all would be well. Were the speed bump to remain, but the vessel to be more humble, His Royal Schedule would continue throughout the day unmolested. It is where the two came into contact, the temporal and the divine, where trouble unfurled.

See, the problem is not the people. The problem isn’t the speed bumps, and the problem isn’t the thugs who get face time on some teevee interview where they get to threaten people. The problem is the social contract. The reliable people, the producers, the people who make things that didn’t exist before, the service-people, the people who actually deliver on things…are positioned, systematically, down at the end of the whip. There, they deal with all the chaos and the uncertainty — manufactured by others — only because they have demonstrated that they can. At that far end of the whip which gets cracked, they deal with the things of their own making as well as with the things made by others who are not as reliable as they are. The other people near the handle, who are agents of chaos, then do not have to deal with the things of their own making…because they have demonstrated, repeatedly, that they would not be ready, willing or able to. And so the disorder that they create every hour of every day, by failing to deliver on what they said they would do…is systematically drawn off of them, along with the associated consequences. The things they would not know how to build, like Kevlar-armored limousines with 6.5L diesel engines, are given to them. The lower hoi polloi are left to deal with the speed bumps…except when the exalted saintly alpha males drive over them by mistake.

Eventually, the whole system is shown not to work…but those consequences, too, are drained away. Mechanics rush in to take care of the disabled “Beast,” while His Holiness makes use of a spare Beast.

And for those criminals who make crime happen in “the streets” just because some football game is not being played — we have this screwball lawyered-up defense industry, to offer the “accused” their supposedly “constitutional” rights.

The real tragedy here is that Ray Lewis is right, just not in a way he expects to be right. There’s an “eighty-twenty” rule at work here: Twenty percent of us are dealing with eighty percent of the consequences of human failure, human unreliability, human fickleness. Another twenty percent of us are responsible for manufacturing that eighty percent of human unreliability, where it did not exist before. Those two twenty-percents, are not the same. They’re at opposite ends of the spectrum.

The twenty percent that does the dealing with the eighty percent of human unreliability, are also responsible for producing eighty percent of the wealth. And then everybody makes a big deal out of the fact that fifty percent of the wealth is enjoyed by ten percent of the people, well you know what? No duh.

But there’s a “tip-over” aspect to this. If twenty percent of us are creating eighty percent of the missed deadlines, or gaps in the social contract, which are then absorbed by the twenty percent at the other end of the spectrum…people see this happening, and it provides a powerful incentive for the next generation to become the chaotic twenty percent, rather than the orderly productive twenty percent. And in a few years, you know what? It’s not an eighty-twenty rule anymore. It’s more of a ninety-ten rule. And then a ninety-seven-three rule. And then a ninety-nine-one rule.

At some point, things do tip over, I think. It would have to be that way, would it not? At some point, the productive/orderly individual would become so scarce, that he’d stop losing control and start to gain it back again…write his own meal ticket, as it were. He doesn’t bust blood vessels or work himself into an early grave producing more. He just produces whatever he produces…and everybody else can fight like wild feral creatures over who gets to consume.

Whereupon, we run smack headlong into the original definition of “alpha male” in the first place. The top dog who gets the first pick. But you know what? The top-dog among a bunch of wild feral creatures, is still a pitiful, pathetic, wild feral creature.

And so Ray Lewis gave our country some pretty good cause, I think, to be embarrassed. He showed that our civilization, in some parts at least, is a dysfunctional civilization that cannot continue in its present form. He spoke on behalf of that other world, the world in which the chaotic, destructive, non-producers get what they want. By offering to the orderly, productive producers — not value to be traded for products and services received — but threats.

And our current President embarrassed the country too. The abortive journey of The Beast, as I noted, was metaphorical. It shows that this working relationship in our civilized nation, in which a non-producing, chaos-oriented “alpha male” of a scavenging beast, is freely given the spoils of the work of all the lower-ranking, but productive, producers. And comes to rely on it; can’t do without it. And is given a steady flow of it.

But becomes stalled, incapacitated, and helpless anyway. The argument does not ensue, only because there is no point having it, no rebuttal is possible: Our way of life is not sustainable. The people we have invested with the power to make rules, do not know enough to make anything else — they can only jab their fists or fingers in the air and pronounce that this, that, or some other damn silly thing, “should” be a certain way. Israel’s borders should be over here, that wealth should be spread around it’s good for everybody…et cetera. They can’t do anything else. The people who know how to make things people can actually use, have bored us, and so we have made sure all the important decisions are made by lesser, non-productive people. The supposed “alpha males.” Who know how to opine, and speechify, and not a damn single other thing.

Who end up being laughing-stocks when their limousines get stalled. Who end up waiting around for a real alpha male, to bail their unproductive non-producing super-pontificating phony-alpha-male asses out of trouble yet another time. While they stand their in their failed glory, before the snapping digital cameras.

So the question that naturally arises: What’s the point of having an alpha male at all? If the people who get to decide who the alpha male is, can’t put any quality thought into what makes one?

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.

But becomes stalled, incapacitated, and helpless anyway. The argument does not ensue, only because there is no point having it, no rebuttal is possible: Our way of life is not sustainable.

And there’s your Left/Right divide in a nutshell. Do you understand this simple truth? Then you are of the Right, no matter how much of a Goodperson you think you are.

I was trying to explain my objection to unions to my Thoughtful Liberal Friend (who actually exists; I am not making TLF up). I used the case of Boeing: They want to put a plant in South Carolina because union contracts have made plane production in Washington state prohibitively expensive. He started going on about lost jobs in WA.

And I said, pretty much verbatim: well, the NLRB can “save” those 100 union jobs in WA, that’s true… until Boeing goes bankrupt because they can’t deliver on their contracts, because those 100 union guys have priced them out of the market. And then those 100 guys are out of work anyway. So, would you rather have 100 union guys employed for another year or so in WA, or would you rather have 1000 non-union guys employed in SC indefinitely? Pick one. You don’t get to “nuance” this. There’s no “third way.” It’s not a “false choice.” It’s not “partisan politics.” It’s not a “straw man,” or any of the other phrases you Leftists trot out when someone like me has made a point that you can’t refute but refuse to acknowledge. 100 guys for 1 year, or 1000 guys for at least several more? Pick.

He refused to pick. And there you have it: Leftism, circa 2011. And these guys are in charge.

Ah, well…. we had a good run. Feudalism ain’t so bad when you get a good Duke every now and again….
- Severian | 05/24/2011 @ 06:48
And there’s your Left/Right divide in a nutshell. Do you understand this simple truth?

It’s also the epicenter of the Architect/Medicator divide. Architects live in a place where the reliable people are in control; you earn your staples and your luxuries by promising things and then delivering on the promises you made. The unreliable people end up just flappin’ in the breeze, just subsisting on scraps discarded by others. Which is perfectly fine, since any time they want to enjoy a more comfortable and dignified existence, all they have to do is start delivering. Medicators live in a place where the unreliable people call the shots because they’re so much fun to watch, and life is all about having fun. Every now and then something needs to get done, and that’s a drag, we don’t like to think about it so we tell the reliable people we need them to do something…as if they were stupid oxen or yaks. On the very few occasions that the unreliable people and the reliable people absolutely have to coordinate on something, it turns into a complete clusterfuck, which is organized in linear fashion so that the unreliable people decide how the plans will be changing from one moment to the next, and then the reliable people at the very bottom of the pecking order are duly notified “uh, there’s been a change in plans.” The people at the top of the pecking order…well, they change the plans. On a whim. These are people who, when they were kids, had their moms waiting to pick them up from the wrong places because once they got together in their groups they started hob-nobbing about where to go next, becoming about as reliable as bouncing footballs…and not caring one bit, because the necessity wasn’t there.

And these guys are in charge.

Ay-yup. This is when the oceans began to recede and the planet began to heal itself. But riding in a fancy limousine to get from point A to point B is too stiff of a challenge. America’s President is not up to dealing with Ireland’s most humble speed bump.
- mkfreeberg | 05/24/2011 @ 08:04
Obama hits a speed bump and we get 2,369 words (not counting the title or comments) about the event and its underlying political and/or psychological causes and ramifications. Your mind is strange and wonderful thing, Morgan. Your editing not so much.
- bpenni | 05/24/2011 @ 10:24
Okay now that’s truly snort-worthy, m’friend. You’d keep mum if President Palin had a custom-built limousine provided specifically to show off what an incredibly awesome super-being she is — which she wouldn’t do, but let’s just go with it — and then, as a direct result of such a grandiose sense self-importance and self-entitlement, lost her mobility and had to be rescued before reaching the first egress. I’m trying to envision Exile in Portales keeping a dignified silence on that, keeping things properly in perspective…

Get real. This is just the latest in a long string of events about Teh Won — for example, what is the history of the “Office of the President-Elect” in the United States?

It strikes me as a better expenditure of words than most; it’s an important issue. King Barry is deciding all kinds of things. Some are great, some are small, some are up to Him to decide and some are not. But to whatever extent President Obama possesses sanity, it doesn’t seem to extend to this particular facet of basic mental health. He seems to think it’s up to Him to revise national borders, or to proclaim Jessica Simpson to be a little chunky around the hips, or that the Cambridge police acted stupidly, or Rick Wagoner needs to step down as chief of GM. Well, if He’s got a mental health problem in this area, but His decisions still work on some level, maybe that’s not such a big deal. But when you put everything Chairman Zero picks into a big pot & cook it up, we see the results — it blows up and makes a mess.

Now I’m not going to claim to be a concise writer, I never have. But how in the world could you view this as a trivial issue? The same lack of thinking discipline that put this eight ton juggernaut on top of a speed bump that immobilized it, is applied to every other thing the executive branch is deciding through January of 2013. We spend just a couple paragraphs ruminating on that, if that much, and then move on to hockey? RLY??
- mkfreeberg | 05/24/2011 @ 10:40
You act as if Obama drew up the plans for the limo himself and I SINCERELY doubt that is/was the case. You got a beef? Take it up with the Secret Service and General Motors. Obama is just a passenger on this particular train (limo).

My comment was all about concision. Well, not ALL, but mostly. This particular horse was dead right around the time you wrote “(wipe tears from my eyes)” yet you continued to flog it.

re: snort-worthy. Heh. I got sumthin’ truly snort worthy for ya: “President Palin.” See: (wipe tears from my eyes). You can play that at LEAST a couple o’ different ways.
- bpenni | 05/25/2011 @ 10:59
You act as if Obama drew up the plans for the limo himself and I SINCERELY doubt that is/was the case.

He might as well have, mightn’t He? What’s the abstract, conceptual difference between the limo plans, and all other plans that come from the Obama White House? Eight tons of ornamentation around The Guy That Really Matters…along with devices for purpose of protection, which have yet to be actually functional in any way, from what I understand. As I said, metaphorical. These words could be applied to the Reinvestment Act as well. The special-protection special-favors part of it, could be applied to ObamaCare with its hundreds and hundreds of “waivers” for all the buddies & pals with the right connections…

It ends with an overly-expensive, overly-heavy, attention-sucking device teetering uselessly on an everyday traffic calming device. Can you think of a Palin parallel? A single one?
- mkfreeberg | 05/25/2011 @ 11:05
Oh wait, that’s not concise. It’s important to be concise…about certain things. Very well, here’s concise:

Her stuff works. His doesn’t.
- mkfreeberg | 05/25/2011 @ 11:05
It ends with an overly-expensive, overly-heavy, attention-sucking device teetering uselessly on an everyday traffic calming device. Can you think of a Palin parallel? A single one?

“Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” QED.
- bpenni | 05/26/2011 @ 13:45
QED, indeed.

Palin succeeds at P.R. where Obama fails…and P.R. is supposed to be His game. She’s kicking His ass on His own turf, and has been since 1/20/2009. Non-stop.
- mkfreeberg | 05/26/2011 @ 13:48
Palin succeeds at P.R. where Obama fails…

“Succeeds” is in the eye of the beholder. You asked for a single example of “an overly-expensive, overly-heavy, attention-sucking device” and I responded, as requested. What do I get in response? A non-sequitur. Not that THAT was unexpected, of course. 😉

I think you’re violating one of your nearly 400 “things I know” maxims, Morgan, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to go looking for the exact “thing.”
- bpenni | 05/26/2011 @ 15:33
“Succeeds” is in the eye of the beholder.

No, it’s not. There are factual measurements in my article…and Obama’s wundervehicle was left factually teetering on a speed bump, factually useless. This isn’t up to individual interpretation. She succeeded…he failed…you’re trying to wring something else out of it. But these are not isolated incidents. She’s Palin and He’s been failin’, that’s all there is to it.
- mkfreeberg | 05/26/2011 @ 15:36

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Unreliability is the New ReliabilityMonday, May 23rd, 2011

Unreliability is the New Reliability
Monday, May 23rd, 2011