Volatile Commodities

I fear the price of rice.

In some countries this commodity is as much a part of the customs and culture as it is a common staple. If the price of rice gets out of hand, confusion, protest and rioting are the natural result. In the most extreme cases, governments which ineptly manage the price of rice face certain coup d’Etat.

In December, 2005, US Secretary for Agriculture Mike Johanns held a press conference in Hong Kong. While speaking of a general desire by the World Trade Organization for all members to eliminate government subsidies by 2010, and Johanns’ describing his feeling that change would most likely happen as scheduled, the following fiery exchange on the price of rice, as transcribed by officials at the US Consulate in Hong Kong, took place:

QUESTION: “Is rice specifically not something that would be an (inaudible)?”

SECRETARY JOHANNS: “J.B. works in this area, so I might ask J.B. to offer a thought.”

Well, we are left to wonder what an (inaudible) rice might or might not be specifically. Poor transcriber wouldn’t even offer a contextual clue! Mysteriously, I note that this “J.B.” person never takes the stand and is not mentioned anywhere else in the Hong Kong transcript. So much for that.

But it’s clear even the vaunted Sec Ag is very cautious when speaking about rice. He’s obviously aware that speaking out of turn on the price of rice could lead to unexpected ripples in the world economy. Maybe he’s delegated this delicate subject to a covert team of agriculture specialists, shadowy field operatives who are only known by their initials.

I had put that dangerous thought away until this week.

A few days ago, I read that our old friend Paul Wolfowitz, now the subdued World Bank President, resurfaced in Frankfurt. In a Reuters report, it’s said Wolfowitz recommended the US sign on to drastic reduction if not complete elimination of farm subsidies. Wolfowitz sees that as an important compromise for the success of the G-8 and a way to break the deadlock in the Doha trade talks.

As we’ve learned from recent history, our leaders listen when Wolfowitz talks. Chances are, when he speaks, somebody, somewhere is losing money and somebody else is laughing all the way to the bank. He’s a scary guy. He’s so scary to some people that US Senator Charles Grassley, Republican from Iowa, boldly responded that Wolfowitz should “keep his nose out of trade issues", as quoted in the Toronto Star.

While he’s at it, Grassley should tell the Heritage Group, the Cato Institute, and practically every other privately financed organization which has any political influence in this country to keep their noses somewhere else, too. It seems nearly everyone is on the “stop subsidies” bandwagon.

So, here we have a situation. US Cabinet executives, leadership of the World Bank and the major propaganda tanks of the filthy rich are all in line with eliminating US farm subsidies. It’s gonna happen, they’ve already decided, it’s only a matter of time. Like the anxious citizens gathered in the Agora in ancient Athens, we’re all just waiting for the next soothing road-side speech delivered from Crawford Palace to fill us in on the details.

Meanwhile, guys like Senator Grassley, hired guns who make their living by defending government subsidies for their constituents, are out on the edge.

Should make for an interesting debate, don’t you think? If nothing else, it might get our troubled minds off of illegal immigration.

But the question is, I hear ya, what does all this have to do with the price of rice?

Grassley isn’t on the rice diet like I am. Based on what I read, he’s more into pork, beef and corn. But the subject of subsidies is common to us both.

http://www.ewg.org/farm/findings.php

A quick check of the fact-filled Environmental Working Group’s database linked above tells us the following:

“American taxpayers spent a staggering $143.8 billion on farm subsidies over the past ten years, more than $104 billion of which (72 percent) went to the top 10 percent of recipients--some 312,000 large farming operations, cooperatives, partnerships and corporations that collected, on average, more than $33,000 every year.”

Staggering is a good description, I think, and that’s a long sentence, even for me.

Adding to my concern, the report shows that the top US farm subsidy recipient in 2004 was Riceland Foods Inc of Stuttgart, AR. Salute! Between 1995-2004, Riceland received more than $505 million in rice subsidies.

I will spell that more precisely because I think we all are numb to these huge, rounded numbers. For all you accounting nerds out there, that’s $505,552,720 in total rice subsidies over a ten year period for Riceland Foods Inc alone.

And this report confirms another thing we already know. The largest handouts don’t find their way to the front doors of the mom and pop farms. Those farms were co-opted long ago, my friends. So, word to the wise, when the debate heats up later on, don’t go thinking that most of these subsidies go to help the little folks in Iowa. They don’t.

Hear ya go, three of the top five subsidy recipients made the list due to rice subsidies.

Producers Rice Mill Inc of Stuttgart AR collected $295,006,553 and Farmers Rice Corp of Sacramento CA cashed in their ticket for $143,546,738 during this same time frame.

Total rice subsidies paid over ten years to these top three is a whopping $944,103,011.

And there’s the point, for those who may be now desperately searching for one, if $94 million a year in subsidies doesn’t alter the global price of rice, I don’t know what will.

On the outside, if, I mean, when these subsidies are eliminated, rice farmers around the world will finally be able to sell rice for a profit instead of a loss. According to the EWG report, while the US will see a modest gain by saving those subsidies, Europe and Asia will be poised to profit to the tune of tens of millions of dollars every year.

Closer to home, if, I mean, when those subsidies are turned off, you know what will happen. Some mom and pops in the US who haven’t caved in already will sell the farm. There are poor farmhands, all legally working in Stuttgart, AR, of course, who will then be looking for employment elsewhere. The unfortunate corporate executives of large co-ops will be forced to sell some stock options and diversify their impressive management skills with a different enterprise, perhaps internet marketing, military contracting or politics.

That’s chaos, baby, mass confusion, and the price of rice will go up.

What to do?

Well, don’t worry. I’m unusually intimate with this kind of danger. Like the unpredictable rise and fall of volatile commodity prices, my own personal whims regularly take their own perilous ride on the roller coaster of life. I can tell you, it may be thrilling but there’s nothing good to come from this depressing catastrophe, nothing good at all, so you must steel yourself for that outcome and seek sympathy immediately.

When my fears heightened most recently, when my own mood took a violent upsurge while the price of rice threatened to do the same, when my mouse pointer hovered precariously over the “Delete Blog” button one too many times in the past week or so, I finally broke down and placed a call to my friend the Doctor, looking for sympathy wherever I might find it. He usually knows what to do.

Unfortunately, to make matters worse, now it seems he won’t even return my calls. Maybe I prodded him too much or too urgently. Forget global turmoil and calamity, the painful truth is that I can be a real pest.

He’s not happy with me and I can understand why. He gave me one chance and I blew it. It’s my fault and if I could just get to him through his damned answering service, I would admit that.

But, having no other recourse, I will review for you some of his overdue prescriptions from our past encounters.

I have this one here, sorta hard to read, but it says something about manic depression, with a side note about all the excellent new drugs now available for remedy. That’s promising.

Then, there’s this other one that suggests a hint of anxiety and obsessive compulsions, mixed with an unhelpful passive-aggressive nature, all leading to a diagnosis of narcissistic tendencies. I think this is the part where he told me we like to think we own the world and how everyone else owes us something, even if it is just some special attention or sympathy alone.

Fortunately, he said these symptoms are all self-induced and treatable, not the manifestations of incurable diseases. These days, it seems, everything has a cure.

And, I recall this one as the best advice I ever received, it says such abnormal thoughts will cease and change for the better when the patient “tires of his present behavior”.

Well, we should be tired of it and our behavior damned well better change. We have no choice but to bravely face a harsh cure of our own devices. Farm subsidies are going down in a ball of flames, $14 billion a year in handouts is ridiculous and prices for such staples as rice may go sky high overnight as a result of our own interference with the natural course of things.

Now that we are aware, though, I’m confident we all can handle this change without resorting to public protest or violence in the streets. We, on the whole, are better than that.

But as for the lonely space that lingers uneasily above my own thin neck, I suppose a coup d’Etat is still not out of the question.

Cheers,
Mb

The Quixote Solution

This is the first truly collaborative effort submitted on the GH. Don’t know if that’s good, bad or indifferent. But it most likely will not be the last…Mb

I forced myself to go back and read Solution #238 three times already. I didn’t understand it the first time I read it. Now, I think I do understand but then again …

My pal, Senor de la Mancha, escaped the forest of the Leviathan a long time ago and now makes his way in a place that, to me, looks like a jungle of petrified concrete and steel. Although now outside, he has grown tired of all the moaning and gnashing of teeth he hears coming from the inside. He’s fed up to here with complaints and he wants some action now.

The Don is a smart, charming man, a superb artist in his own right and a brilliant businessman. He knows what it takes and now I understand his predicament.

Curiously, he and I often reach similar conclusions although we follow different roads to get to the end. In this case, on the question of the failures of the US Intelligence Community (IC), we came to an astonishingly rapid agreement.

When we speak of the IC, for those of you who may be confused, we speak of the now 16 different major federal agencies, and their many sub-offices, involved with collecting, analyzing and reporting intelligence information to our nation’s decision makers. It is called a community because it is more like a network of neighbors, all working with similar rules and goals in mind, rather than a solitary unit, organization or company.

This is the complaint we face. The IC regularly fails in one way or another to do its intended function. While that function may be debatable, these failures are many and are well documented. I won’t list that all out here; you can read about that somewhere else just in case if you’ve been sleeping soundly the last five years or so. Here is a well supported explanation from Tom Englehardt:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=87452

Suffice it to say, as I told The Don in our letters, if we were to spin a globe and stop it at any unexpected point on this earth, we would most likely find an area or one just across the river where our IC infamously missed the mark at some point in time.

Numerous attempts to reform this beast have been enacted. Most recently, the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) among other neat things. The Don and I have noted in our correspondence that few if any experts really expect this reform to be “good”. You may read that many think it just adds another layer of bureaucracy to a monster that is already horribly diseased by that very same characteristic.

Ever since Truman, our Presidents have relied on the IC to tell them what’s what around the world. As noted, the IC often fails to deliver. Meanwhile, the IC gathers more money, more power and more influence with each new administration but never, ever seems to learn from its mistakes.

After a quick review of the larger points, The Don feels that a comprehensive education program pointed squarely at the repeated mistakes of the IC would go farther to eliminate those mistakes than any previously accepted reform. Thus, falling from this uneven dust he sees a desperate need for an independent National Intelligence College or Institute of some sort.

It makes sense to me and I agree with him. As The Don says, that’s precisely the style of “repair” that many major industries accomplish all the time and do so with excellent results.

Once that marvelously over-simplified agreement is stated, this is where our paths, only momentarily merged, immediately separate and take different trajectories.

On the whole, it’s hard to even discuss or describe the IC (as you, uh, probably figured out). There’s so much that is left unsaid. Every time the subject comes up, each shoulder must be overlooked twice to ensure sources and methods remain hidden. There is such a humongous amount of crap we don’t know about and probably don’t want to know about.

Based on my experience, I immediately began to worry who would be in charge of such a College. Would it be outsourced? Would the academics be managed by the same fools who screwed up the real-world stuff? Whoa, I would expect a huge political battle over money and control of The Institute!

Add to this messy situation, I gotta tell ya, I have no great expectation of seeing the IC’s problems resolved in my lifetime. Maybe like The Don says I am being the self-defeatist, maybe I’m numb to it, I don’t know. Maybe I’m being an overt realist, noting that no previous administration has ever laid any accountability at the IC’s doorstep. This is the President’s baby and he rarely does what I want him to do with it

I do believe my original intent on bringing this crap up with him was to better define the word “failure” in IC terms. I sensed some confusion among the ingnorant masses on that often-used word. I wanted to really drive the point home that failure in the IC world is often relative and misleading. Sometimes, for example, I know negative and empty reports are expected.

I’m sorta good at weaving endless mind tapestries about that junk. It’s the exactly kind of nerdy semantics and self-defeatist stuff that I am accustomed to dealing with.

But trying to make some honest sense of it while staying away from the “collection” area, I noted that federal policies and the IC product are often closely related in terms of analysis and dissemination.

To help prove this, I relayed Powell’s quote on what he always asked of his intelligence advisors. I thought Powell’s words would, with little revision, make a great outline for a paper.

Those words go like this:

“Tell me what you know; tell me what you don’t know; and, then, based on that tell me what you think is most likely to happen.”

Right on queue, The Don quoted the stark words of Admiral Stansfield Turner and protested as soon as I injected any undesirable confusion. Policy, as The Don knows it, should not influence an honest, credible intelligence product. That is his reality and this Powell fluff was not in line with the common goal.

The Don misunderstood my take on Powell’s words but that’s not the point.

Sensing he might really be serious, I started telling him off-color war stories, loudly pondering pointless questions and making high sounding suggestions that maybe the ODNI should really be a Cabinet post. And why wasn’t it, I asked needlessly? Perhaps, I meandered, if the IC were more like the State Department then maybe something, err-umm, nice and, uh, happy might happen.

In an attempt to get me back on track, he lured me with dreams of presenting our findings in a stealthy but acknowledged way. He suggested we contact a respected team of experts and urge them to jointly reach our common-sense finding.

In a moment of passion, caught up with The Don’s enticing description of a promising future where people openly act on their convictions, I even humored him by penning a syrupy letter to a prominent editor, begging for sponsorship of our grand undertaking, a letter that The Don knew damn well I never had any intention of sending.

Playing his part, he even red-inked this non-letter, suggesting we should each include a short bio, so that the editor would have “some idea that we are not Bob and Bubba who came up with some half-cocked idea down at the local watering hole."

Oh, The Don is a wily opponent! He can see through my smoke. He always could.

No matter how well I might have tried to hide it, The Don could tell I was beginning to slowly dance around in a fast moving river, muddying and swirling the waters, merely pushing the common objective further from our reach. And, I expect, he was laughing to himself the whole time.

He probably knows as well as I do that, even with our best intentions, somehow we had descended into a version of the tired old game. Without even trying, we were engaged in exactly the same game that’s been played in the silent halls of the IC ever since Give ‘Em Hell was boss.

For the first time in public (at least to my knowledge) I will describe to you how this game goes:

Person A meets Person B in the hallway. Person A utters something stupid and Person B mildly agrees but feigns ignorance, which in this case is really ignorance. That leaves the door open for Person A to defend his stupid remark with the attack, “Oh! You didn’t know that?” in a particularly snide tone, to which Person B nervously replies, “Of course, I was just joking! I helped write the CONOP for that. Let’s do lunch!” Then both persons walk down the hall in the direction they just came from, each wondering what the hell they were just talking about and how did the other person know so much about it.

It happens every day, my friends.

“Come on! Focus! Focus!” the Don kept telling me.

Finally, in one particular fit of momentary sobriety, I read his words and thought to myself, he wants me to focus … focus … focus on what?

Aha! Suddenly I got it. I was focused on the wrong thing. I didn’t realize that The Don wasn’t about to simply restate the obvious, paint fantastic word pictures of giant beasts with multiple heads or even ruminate endlessly on the philosophic concept of failure. He actually wanted to do something about this problem!

Unlike me, the cynical pessimist who is perfectly willing to let this antique dragon choke on its own fire and spit, The Don really wants to slay it!

I guess I forgot to tell The Don that I’m like a modern day Dutton Peabody, founder, owner, publisher and editor of the Shinbone Star. I should have admitted, like Peabody did on his political nomination, “…I beg of you; I'm your conscience, the small voice crying out in the wilderness, I, I'm your father confessor! I. I'm; what else am I?”

And if Tom Doniphon was around for me, he’d still answer, “Town drunk?”

But my friend, The Don, is a rare and obsessive advocate of Solution #238, a sly reference to his “stop the bitchin’, start the fixin’” slogan. He is convinced that if we clear the field for anything, whether it’s a National Intelligence Institute or a statuesque monument to federal failure, then it will be built. If we just sit around and complain about it, then nothing will ever get done.

He’s not dumb. He knows the limits but he also knows bitching alone won’t do any good.

At some point, people must listen to what The Don is saying. I have no doubt that The Institute may one day be a reality, thanks solely to him. His positive attitude is in part why he is so damn charming and successful. That’s why I listen to him, that’s why I admire him and that’s why I salute him. I wish I could be more like him.

But, as I’ve been repeatedly reminded, I can’t be something I’m not.

Many thanks to The Don for a wonderful lesson on that subject.

Cheers,
Mb

Idled Souls

My friend Captain Markos, Master of the White Water, is always up to speed and enjoys a good debate. With inspiration squeezed from a few bottles of gin to tide us over, he and I could stay up until the wee hours discussing the facts as we know them.

After these shared all-nighters, he would sometimes invite me for a sail around the island of Crete on his sleek racing ship, The After U.

He’s always had me sized me up fairly well. I know nothing about sailing but he would typically only call me out when he needed extra ballast, to keep his boat better trimmed while racing in the unpredictable wind common to that area.

On one particularly sunny and beautiful morning many moons ago, I signed on as his mate for a highly anticipated competition. As I recall, the winner of this event would earn the respect of all the old sailors in the harbor, a race that was tailor-made for a seasoned seaman with the honed skills of Captain Markos.

But on that day, before that race had even started, just after we had escaped the harbor and reached the open sea, Captain Markos called it quits when we were caught off guard by winds which suddenly gusted over 30 knots. Even the heavy weight of my extra balance could not keep the ship from swaying violently, the top mast sometimes tipping dangerously close towards the water.

Several attempts failed to sail us back into the safety of the harbor when the intense breath of a greatly disturbed Poseidon blew against us each time, forcing us to constantly turn away at the last moment, and the Captain bravely faced an undesired alternative.

Quickly and calmly changing our tack, we would sneak behind one of the hat-like islands off the coast, take down our sail, and motor in. It was the only safe way to go, he said.

As described, he made this decision expeditiously, calling on his years of sailing experience to instantly alter our course. He had witnessed his fair share of tragedy in these waters. I had heard curious stories about an unexplained scuttling or two near Pyraeus, perhaps an odd recollection of men once overboard.

Yet, even if weighing an obscure fear of near catastrophe, I could tell his decision was reluctant. The last thing he wanted was to have his fellow sailors in the harbor seeing him coming in on engine. This would surely disparage his reputation as Master of the White Water.

In preparation for such a confrontation, I suppose, he began cursing Poseidon, the seas and the winds in such a comprehensive manner which I have only rarely heard. His colorful description of the “Force 5 gale” which placed us squarely on the nose of the dragon seemed repetitive in nature and pointed for the ears of someone other than myself.

But I soaked it all up and after we made the short trip to the protected leeward side of the hat-like island off the coast, we stowed the sails and unfouled the lines. With a loudly audible amount of disgust regarding his predicament, the Captain then beckoned the small diesel engine which reported instantly with a shutter, a black poof of exhaust, and a monotonous putt-putt noise to push us on home.

Assuming our fate, we settled down. Captain Markos reclined in his spot near the tiller and I found an open spot on the top deck near the mast. With the sudden life-threatening danger now all but resolved, with only the solitude of a leisurely return across a vicious sea to keep us company, we resumed one of our previous discussions regarding the mysteries of our soul …

So, then, I think we agree that Plato’s tripartite soul is a bunch of ancient rot, right?

I’m afraid so. I can’t buy it.

Well, you can throw that old book away, then. We have no use for it.

Assuming it is still something, I mean, do we all have a soul? If we sense it, surely we can describe it.

Exactly, I think it’s more of a sense, really. It’s that inside thing that tells us what’s right or wrong sometimes. Does that help?

Nope. I want to know if it is created of the same stuff as everything else. Does it have a mass like all things? Is it so small, invisible or just out of our grasp? That doesn’t seem right and I detest the hint of odd spirits without any tangible definition.

Hell, we sense all this stuff. I mean, we see the sky, hear the birds, smell the ocean, feel the ship we’re sitting on, and taste the salt in the air. That’s the five things. At least I still sense all that. Your vices probably destroyed one or more of your faculties by now.

… we both laughed at that …

But we weren’t always able to feel this, were we? When we were young, little babies, we didn’t have a proper sense of things, did we? Who is to say we do now?

Hmmm … assuming those things aren’t all illusions. How would you know?

If we don’t trust our own minds and our perceptions, my friend, what will we trust? Funny, it seems all these perceptions are only memories. And you’re right, those memories are rarely accurate.

Think back to your first memory, ever. What was it?

I think I recall falling down a stairwell at the age of about 3 or so.

Yeah, same for me, it’s like my first memories are all some sort of local calamity, you know? It has to do with pain.

That may be our fist lesson in life but that doesn’t mean the soul has a physical property, that it must have some body to it. I think that’s just your mind at work, locking in and recalling those horrible things that hurt you. I don’t believe the mind and the soul are the same thing.

People think about things, fantasize and so on, but that’s not the soul. The soul makes you aware of your own existence. To me, that’s what separates us from all the apes. They don’t know what they are because they have no soul. They don’t even know they exist.

They have no soul or they don’t recognize it? If our first memories are clouded, if we can’t even say for sure when these things came about or what the fog clearly surrounds, then, even with our knowledge now, can we firmly say when we first became aware of our own existence? Weren’t we just like apes once? And why can’t we remember that?

Perhaps the mind of the ape just hasn’t matured to that point yet. You know, I’ve always been struck by that look in a baby’s face when it sees its hands, like it’s the first time that he realizes he has hands. There must be some point in our life when we have that same experience about our soul, if it exists, which I’m not saying it does.

So, the question is when do we become aware of our existence? Is that the point when our soul becomes real to us? Then, are we just aware that our mind becomes aware or are we aware of our true soul? Which is it?

Couldn’t the soul just be that, a matured awareness of the mind itself? Couldn’t it be that a mind, as it grows in ability to think and process ideas, takes in all the sensual clues and eventually comes to understand that it exists within a living being and identifies with everything else that surrounds it? Couldn’t the soul just be defined by that awareness, just like a physical sense?

You mean, not a real thing but just a sense of something that is real.

Maybe. Or maybe just a sensory thing alone. Couldn’t it be just like our own nerves, as in the case where we sense physical pressure of some sort but not the nerve itself?

Well, it could be wrong. Our other senses are often wrong, if that’s true. But I don’t think they’ve detected a soul nerve yet.

Yeah, OK. But couldn’t the soul just be nothing more than that odd sixth sense? Is that what all the evidence suggests? It senses something inside the gut while detecting a connection with the all of everything outside the skin.

If so, what does it sense besides awareness?

Why must it sense anything else? But if it is, then it is the most enlightened sense because we don’t know right from wrong without it. That’s hard to explain. Still, at the point of awareness we may find that it was there all along, hiding just outside our understanding.

Then again, like you say, it might be illusion. It may mean that we just conjured it up, an odd mix of fantasy and experience in our own minds.

Aw, crap, we aren’t going anywhere with this. Aren’t we all saying the same damn things over and over, just in different ways? When will we learn?

What did you do with that book?

… The captain nodded his head and scratched his graying beard. I looked to the hat-like island off to our right. Then I noticed the small white house on the hill of the coast to our left. I quietly wondered what I would learn about myself by living in a quaint little cave like that, passing my carefree days so close to the ocean.

The boat rocked and swayed gently as the turbulent waters defied our slightest progress. The putt-putt sound of the little engine gradually muted and we both drifted off to contemplate our mad ideas alone and in our own ways.

I awoke a few hours later, my throat bone dry and my lips burnt from the unrelenting sun. I opened my eyes expecting to see the bustling harbor eagerly awaiting our arrival, a throng of fellow sailors anxiously pacing the docks, standing by for news of our safe return.

Instead, I saw the sun getting low over the nose of the dragon and the same hat-like island on the starboard and the same little white house on the hill to the port.

I called down to Captain Markos. He was still slouched near the tiller and when he heard me he jumped a bit, acting as though I may have startled him. Most likely, I presumed, he was tending to his complex captain duties or lulled by the sea into a momentary deep thought while I was napping.

Captain, I began, am I wrong or is that the same little house on the hill to our port, the same little house that I saw an hour or so ago?

Captain Markos slowly turned his head and, although his eyes were shielded by dark sunglasses which hung firmly over his beet red nose, I could tell he was spying that little house very keenly. He faced it for several moments and sized up the situation while our hollow boat bobbed in the empty sea, our engine still putt-putting away.

Then I saw him show his teeth in pain, white crusted slivers of spittle and beer breaking free from the corners of his mouth. Another of his bitter curses against the gods broke the serenity of the salty air. He rose in a lightening flash, a few empty beer cans collapsed and crashed on to the deck as he stood back from the tiller and kicked the engine’s gear handle with his bare foot. With a lurch and a few groans, the boat pushed ahead, suddenly propelled by an unexpected leap into the forward gear.

And then it dawned on me. We had been in idle the whole time.

Cheers,

Mb

Four Questions Answered

Dear Founding Fathers,

Please accept my following report with the humility that it is intended. Not being a member of the press or federal government, not subject to unique privilege nor wanting any of that, I remain a free man who truly enjoys the sweet fruit of your labor.

I will do my best to faithfully answer all your questions.

Obviously, the reply to your first inquiry is in the affirmative. I am free. Free to speak my mind, free to practice my beliefs and free to travel anywhere within our borders. And, yes, by all accounts, my freedom was bestowed upon my birth as was my citizenship in this great nation. Please rest easy in that regard.

I am also free to make my passage through this life as I see fit. For that, I have only you to thank. To the liberties and inalienable rights which you remarked, although occasionally twisted and employed by those with self-serving purpose, just as you often predicted, they are still as constant as you originally defined them.

I sense some lingering disagreement in your second question, but under the remarkable system which you established, a system which inherently prolonged certain social inequities, the slaves were emancipated nonetheless. Still I must report that although that unjust fire was sparked long ago, drenched with the blood of many of your descendents, its smoldering embers refuse to completely grow cold even today.

In truth, as to your second, there remains significant inequality among your children. Perhaps this result was not contained in your hopes nor in the manner which you predicted. But do not distress over this, you were men who gave birth to men who never, throughout the course of our history, have not had a proportion of their human souls corrupted by vanity and good fortune.

You see, it is the very freedom you demanded which often supports a stubborn sense of inequality. Ironically, it is the good fortune you bestowed upon us which allows us to flaunt our pride in that and take advantage of unforeseen and perhaps unjust opportunities as they make themselves available to us. Any negative result is not your fault but often a result of our own free choice, the choice that you made possible for us.

No, as to your third, I’m afraid not. Unlike Cincinattus, our politicians do not return to the plow with any haste. Many have long careers in government, leaving enduring legacies of convenient influence, aged symbols of an aristocracy out of touch with its own humble ranks.

There are now, just as the Greeks knew, those few citizens who unfurl their flags of privilege in the shifting sands of wealth and property, some immediately upon birth, giving man-made authority to their right to govern by virtue of their riches and education. If not naturally assured of a position among the elite, then our magistrates and even members of our free press are often chosen as merely servants of the same.

In fact, the vast majority, those with whom you placed so much enduring trust and inspiration, remain the only true servants of the Republic. You were right on that point. They alone, it seems, are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to assure the seed matures. Most work, sometimes for honest work’s sake, to fund the interest of the nation and to underwrite your guarantees. Even if occasionally maligned by apathy or a sense of futility, the majority still rules. One can only hope an everlasting hope that stays true.

And to your fourth question, yes, as I’ve described, we remain students of your Democracy. Liberty and the freedom of individual pursuit still prevail. The lessons are difficult yet with each passing year the immunities you gave us earn more respect and we learn more about the inherent limitations you placed within these gifts. But my report would be incomplete if left at that lone point of summary.

Almost as soon as you put your pen and ink to paper, the description of equality which you wrestled from your own unkind environment began a gradual descent under the mixed Oligarchy that appears to remain strong today. If that was your intent and not just a natural result of man’s governance, then as to the fourth, your success has been secured.

I hope that answers your questions and makes your holiday a joyous one.

Cheers,
Mb

Hand Me Down Hell

What the hell is going on around this planet? And why is this hell such a depressing and bad place to be?

Every time the US team gets clobbered in the World Cup, that is to say every time the US team is in the World Cup, news commentaries describing what the hell is wrong with soccer and the American attitude all suddenly crop up like dandelions in my front yard. (Man, I gotta do something about those weeds!)

My friends who, like me, are prone to dissecting and over-analyzing every small hint that we are all doomed to hell, have recently joined this odd debate.

On one hand, there’s a sense that it’s good we are even talking about the World Cup. Although some of us don’t yet understand futbol, our debate shows we take some mild, fleeting interest in the sporting world outside our borders (during the down time between Super Bowls and the World Series, of course). On the other hand, there’s an apathy about anything that seems based too much on stuffy Old World values.

This game is honestly worth a look. I think it is exciting, especially when followed on Univision. I don’t know much about it but, if nothing else, I know there is a strong degree of hooliganism and friendly international binge drinking that goes along with a world-wide fiesta.

In terms of what alternatives lie hidden in the bushes out there, we should all salute that whenever possible.

I found this 6/25/06 article by Stephen M. Warshawsky on The American Thinker web site, “Why Americans Don’t Like Soccer”, to be typical of the modern complaint.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5613&search=World

Washawsky’s claim makes sense to me. He says that futbol is often a “zero sum” game, as indicated by low scores or regular nothing to nothing ties, and therefore just doesn’t sit well with the US high-scoring mentality. If you read through that piece, you’ll see at the end he also describes soccer as a “sisyphean” sport.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I first read that word I had stop and ask myself, “Did this guy just call the rest of the world a bunch of sissies?”

Aw, then I realized I still had my turkey hunting hat on. Had to take that off and scramble around for my Greek fisherman’s cap. Once that was straightened out, I understood what I had read.

Sisyphus (Sisyphos in the Greek) was that tragic figure of Greek mythology who was doomed to pushing a rock up a mountain in hell for eternity. See the allusion? The punishments of Sisyphos and World Cup Futbol may both seem endless, pointless exercises in the American mind. In other simpler words, dread of all dreads, the game is considered boring to many Americans.

So the insinuation not so finely hidden within this debate is the one that suggests Americans have no patience. Unlike the rest of the world, which is comparatively comfortable with zero sum results, Americans are not willing to wait any length of time for something good to happen. They want what they want now and if they don’t get it fast, then they go home depressed and sulking like little crybabies.

I think there is some truth to that point. Standing in line for anything is the ultimate hell for many Americans.

Having traveled around the world, I’ve seen how other citizens of this earth seem to have a different sense of time. At first, before I realized my own faults in this matter, I thought everyone languished about too much and I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t fathom why a Greek family would spend 10 years building a new home. Why didn’t they just go get a loan from the bank and get it over with like my people do? Why, when I tried to get my car out of the shop in Japan, did the Japanese mechanic give me that sucking sound? You know, when you ask a Japanese businessman for something that is obviously “over due” in American terms, the reply often begins with a hesitant “Ssphsss” as he sucks in air, battling with his inner self in attempt to relay the bad news and save face, before he cautiously stutters, “Ahh, maybe you, ahh, maybe you come back next week”.

Well, you can imagine how any trigger-happy American stopwatch could get fouled up by such apparently lackadaisical attitudes.

But I’m here to tell you that the American sense of time is out of sorts with the rest of the world. And, honestly, it is sometimes out of sorts with our own desires, as well. Our lack of patience is the Achilles Heel of all red-blooded Yankees.

How many of us are in therapy over this affliction? How many of us really listen to what our own doctors are telling us to do? We spend a lot time and money telling ourselves we need to slow down, smell the roses, and take it one step at a time. Of all the wonderful things we can do, this is one purposeful thing we often can’t do. And, probably the worst part of it all, we teach our kids to be like us all the time. We unknowingly tell our kids score, get it now, before it’s too late!

I wonder know how this condition came to us? I’m wondering if it doesn’t have something to do with our pace of industrialization and computerization, the ever increasing speed of Henry Ford’s assembly line, and so on. I wonder if those things are what drove us or if, like fast-food joints, they were just things driven by our own impatient appetites.

I’ll bet some college kid could make some points with a thorough paper on that subject.

With a tip of the old fisherman’s cap towards college life, here’s a mildly interesting clip from the KC Star on 6/26/06, written by Mará Rose Williams, encouragingly titled “Mental Health Woes Rise”:

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/living/education/higher_learning/14902250.htm

The gist of that story is that today there are more American college kids checking themselves in for “depression” than ever before. And, I thought it sort of surprising, it’s not the freshman but the junior and the senior students making up most of these sad numbers. These kids are almost graduates, they should be excited about their future not depressed. But they are down. They are worried. They are feeling a bit impatient with their surroundings and they are stressed out.

Now, if you read that YOU might get depressed. I know I did. I instantly wondered, forget the World Cup, what kinda hell have we pushed onto these college kids? What have we done? Why are they so disturbed?

You know, when it comes to kids, we always blame ourselves first in these dire situations. It must have something to do with the way we were raised and the way we raised them.

Well, in my family, our gift for impatience started with the fellow sitting at the end of the dinner table. My dad was a member of the American generation that refused to be depressed or bored, our nation’s greatest generation.

Whoa! I almost wrote the nation’s “so-called” greatest generation. In truth, there ain’t nothing so-called about it. It’s a fact.

The way I figure it, you have to get your ticket punched twice to get your name on that roster. First, you have to survive the real Depression then you have to survive WWII.

Now, as wars go, to be honest WWII wasn’t like our Civil War in terms of a horrifying tragedy. But there’s no doubt it was not a good event. (… ah, shit … for the first time all day, these human words fail me … war is the most inhuman of all things, yet it is so naturally human, so ingrained within our consciousness that we can calmly compare one’s tragic result to another … it’s ironic and insane … I’ll say nothing more on this subject.)

Suffice it to say WWII and the Depression were two hellish times in our history. If you survived both of those things then bingo, you are in my party, everybody else back up, give the brother some room, front row seats for you, pal, hope you enjoy the show, thank you very much.

And to those who did survive, I must say to you, don’t feel guilty about that. I’ve talked to a lot of folks from this era who are prone to wondering, “Why me? Why did I make it?”

I’ll tell you why. So soft-bellied little babies like me can look at your beautiful face, listen to your thrilling stories, and remember that it wasn’t always so comfortable here in the Land of the Free.

Anyway, Daddy Bamboo did grow up during the official Depression on a hard scrabble farm in eastern Kansas. He ran away from home with barely an eighth-grade education and worked like a dog on a dairy farm in North Dakota. He was drafted and fought in a world war at a young age, later trained grown men to do the same, bitched and complained about a lot of stuff and put up with a lot of crap throughout his life, but in his mind he knew precisely what was depressing and what was not.

He had those stories for those who think they might have it a bit rough. Anyone who has a dad from that era knows these stories by heart.

These are the stories about never having proper shirts on your back or shoes on your feet. They remind us plumbing wasn’t always indoors and school houses once had only one room. In Dad’s story, there’s the part about if he was lucky he could bring a potato to school to be boiled in unsalted water on the wood stove in the center of the room so he could have something to eat for lunch. Yes, there’s even the part, made famous by Bill Cosby, about walking to school in the snow, up hill, “both ways”. All these depression-era guys told the same story of grief.

Do you know what my dad would have told some “stressed” modern day college kid? For those who don’t have an idea, he’d say something encouraging like this:

“You ain’t got it so bad. Now, I want you to wipe your snotty little noses, get your butts back to class, and shut the hell up!”

And that’s putting it mildly.

But, to be honest, Dad wasn’t heartless. He once confided in me a story about when he was drilling some raw Army recruits out in the hot sun one afternoon at Fort Leavenworth. Everyone was uncomfortable in the oppressive heat, he said, but one guy in the formation was constantly fidgeting and this sent Dad through the roof.

The rule says, when you’re at attention, you don’t move. This guy broke the rule. He had hell to pay for that and the bill was delivered on that day with a comprehensive ass chewing, another one of Dad’s specialties.

Later, Dad said, he learned that the poor guy was frantic because he had a pesky bee buzzing around his face. Dad told me this in the most solemn, sincere way. It bothered him a lot. He was truly sorry for giving that guy so much hell. Had he known the source of the fidgeting, he would have squashed the bee himself instead of chewing that guy out and felt a lot better about it.

So, what I’m saying here, kiddies, if the bee buzzing in your ear is real, not imaginary, then old Dad would understand completely. Then he would go out of his way to help you. But if it ain’t real, then you better hump on back to class real pronto-like if you know what’s good for you.

Here it is, now, the future. The future that Dad and his greatest generation gave to us all. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. Yet, because Dad and his generation were far from perfect, we suffer from some odd afflictions. One of those greatest afflictions is our impatience. This is why we have such a hard time sitting still. This is why we hate zero-sum games. This is why we can’t wait to get out of school.

The nation’s greatest generation taught us this affliction by the way they lived and my Dad was, if nothing else, a feverish representative of his class.

It comes to my mind that I have never met a man more dedicated or happily committed to a life of Sisyphean pursuit than my dad. Bad weather, national holidays, nothing would stop this guy from doing things especially if they didn’t need to be done. If things were all working well, he would anxiously tear them apart and rebuild them. He would clean things before they got dirty, knowing full well that if he did or didn’t, they would still get dirty. This endless, pointless labor was his way of life.

From painting the house to mowing the yard to washing the windows, this guy was a constant flurry of endless activity. I don’t know how he found time to actually go to work

If, God forbid, a solitary leaf spiraled its way down from a tall tree on a blustery autumn afternoon and silently made its way toward our front yard, at a time when I would much rather play football with my friends, Dad was there to make sure I was instantly organized, trained and equipped so that offending leaf would find its proper place.

And his generation invented the saying, if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself! To this day, this is why I know nothing about the inner workings of the combustion engine. Every time my car would make a little poof of an odd noise, Dad would run out with a bag of tools and holler for all the neighbors to hear, “Get out of the way, I will handle this!”

This is how he was raised, though. He believed he could do anything if he put his mind to it and if something was worth doing, it was worth doing right this very second. During his time, there was no other way of doing things. And, as a result, he thought sitting around watching the grass grow was evil procrastination.

Oh, boy, I wish I had a dollar for every time he tried to do complex things on his own, things that he had no business doing, instead of calling on a professional. Mom said, after hearing an odd sizzling noise in the house, she would regularly find him sprawled out underneath a ladder, sweat dripping from his brow, after he had zapped himself again with a heavy jolt while trying to wire up some new light fixture or electric thingy in the basement.

Daddy Bamboo once got his busy hands on a chain saw. I don’t remember where he got it. Something makes me think he found it in a garbage dumpster. He was famous for retrieving things other people threw away, tearing them apart, and bringing them back to life. I think he had secretly always wanted a new chain saw to play with but could never completely justify the expense. Another hand-me-down affliction!

All I remember was waking up way, way too early one Saturday morning to the rude sound of a loud chain saw outside my bedroom window. By the time I had dressed and got out of the house, Dad had trimmed every tree in our yard whether it needed trimming or not.

Actually, “trim” is a poor word in this case. The trees were hacked down to the nub, only their thick naked trunks remained standing proud in the cool morning wind, their heavy branches fallen like dead soldiers all around them. My little Sis, just emerging in her pajamas from the house, saw the violent damage and began to sob.

Before I could speak, he told me, “They’ll grow back better next year. You’ll see.”

Without taking a breath, he grabbed the saw and a bucket of gasoline and ran across the street to Mrs. Burke’s house.

Poor old Mrs. Burke was as kind and sweet as a kitten, the most generous Christian woman I have ever met. When Dad introduced her to his new chain saw and asked if she’d like her trees trimmed, she thanked him and said, why, yes, that would be lovely.

Little did she know.

When she returned from her house chores and hour or so later, she was muted by what she saw. There Dad stood, grinning ear to ear, a quiet but smoldering chain saw in his hand, pointing to what was left of her oak tree in the front yard.

The headless torso of the mighty trunk stood with two crudely amputated limbs on either side, pointing helplessly to the sky as if it was crying, “Why, Lord? Why me?”

Mrs. Burke held her hand to her open mouth, unable to speak.

“You’ll see,” Dad bubbled, “the shade will be much better next year!”

This is why we have no patience, people! The same tools, the same attitude, the same “get off your butt” mentality that made it possible for the greatest generation to be great made us crazy about doing stuff, and doing it now, even if it doesn’t need to be done. And it is this condition, which I’ve heard some call the “action imperative”, which naturally makes us unwilling to sit through a meandering, pointless and scoreless game.

When I was younger, I would try to tell him, hey, take it easy, the grass will grow, the leaves will fall, we don’t need to catch them all! Just watch the game, man! But he thought I was crazy. And slowly, over the years, I gave up and did become crazy. Crazy just like him.

But Dad escaped the depressing chains of hell on this earth almost 11 years ago, taking the cause of my craziness with him. Although a fervent worker, he was not a religious man. He never went to church as far as I know and I never heard him say anything about spiritual matters. His dog tags identified him as a Protestant which I expect was true since he spent his life protesting loudly about damn near everything. He was definitely a man of the earth, rigidly imperfect but set on dealing with coincidence, catastrophe and good fortune with equal and rapid preventive vengeance.

I have some friends who say that’s ok. His soul will be just fine. Some say he may have already been reincarnated, perhaps making up for what he lacked in his previous life.

I have other friends who suggest it’s not ok. These friends must believe that, well, his soul went somewhere else. I find that very hard to believe. But if that’s true, I can just imagine what’s going on down there.

One thing’s for sure, wherever he is, the workforce is well organized. I’ll bet the oil and the filters are changed regularly, the trees are trimmed neatly and the house is cleaned and shining from an everlasting new coat of paint.

In a few years, the US might field a team that is competitive in the World Cup, so it’s probably important that we get on board and up to speed on that game, even if it does seem like it’s in slow motion.

Around that time, the kids now in college will have graduated, overcoming their temporary set backs to take on the heavy responsibility of running our businesses and our nation. We probably need to help them when we can, making sure they are squared away as much as possible so they don’t ruin it all for their own kids.

And, if we just have some patience and let Dad do what he does best, hell, by then, it might not be such a bad place after all.

I think it will definitely be better next year.

You’ll see.

Cheers,
Mb