Check your default settings…

This is something each of us rarely do.   Why would we?  They’re default settings.  No muss, no fuss.  Doesn’t matter if they’re set by a software provider or our own prejudice.  The end’s the same.  No muss, no fuss.  Just the way we like it.  Don’t mess with what has worked in the past.  If it ain’t broke, no need to think about it.  Therein lies the rhubarb. 

We like it when we don’t have to think about things like our beliefs, our haircut, our diet, or our significant others.  But time and time again it is precisely these things that sink us because we ignore them in order to avoid the hard work of introspection.  A smarter man than me once said, “People don’t want to be edified, they want to be rallied.”

Too many of us fall into that latter category.  Preferring to let someone else do the thinking.  Let someone else lead so that all we have to do is follow.  Knowing this, Adolf Hitler was able to set Europe ablaze, murder millions and taint his people in the minds of the rest of the world—forever.  This is the singular burden of Germany, as well it should be.  We can never forget, lest they forget, and doom us all again to needless slaughter.

This is the single most important reason I can think of that we, as Americans, as human beings, must ALWAYS question authority.  To not ask questions, to go along with the flag wavers, to bury our heads in the sand because someone told us that doing so was the way of patriots, is to play into the hands of tyrants and worse—to be made willing accomplices in their crimes. 

Come, pick my lettuce, now go home!

I am lucky.  Lucky enough to be the umpteenth grandchild to a family with roots planted here over one hundred fifty years ago.  Lucky enough to qualify me as native.  But where’s the cutoff?  How much time in-country does one have to spend to be considered native?  Most of us were born here and that usually suffices.  Ask a real native American and you might get an education. 

Suffice to say, we all hail from somewhere.  Might as well be where we were born, right?  Nowadays some say that’s not enough.  Think: birthers and the funny-haired rich guy behind that particular bowel movement.  Fun fun.  Think: renewing your driver’s license even after living in your state for the past forty years.  More fun.

How many of us really believe that in order to quell the touted tsunami of undesirables into our fair land that all we have to do is build a barrier between us and the more southerly regions of our shared incontinence.  Really? 

France tried that after World War I.  The wisdom of the French was to plant a line of big guns in the ground and point them at Germany.  Quite an imposing sight, I imagine.  If you enjoy grand symbols of massive FAILURE!  When the time came, the little corporal and company ignored the Maginot Line altogether leaving the lonely Frenchmen to polish their big guns while they goose-stepped down the Champs-Élysées.  The Nazis simply reached around through Belgium to the north and through the Ardennes in the south.  What were the Frogs thinking?  That their language-in-common friends to the north could wave off Stukas with what—dark chocolate?  That trees wouldn’t yield to fifty-four ton Tiger tanks?

It took me five minutes on Bing to illuminate our situation.  We have over 82,835 miles of coastline guarded by satellite surveillance and the Coast Guard.  With only 41,000 members, that means every uniform in the service would have to patrol two miles of coastline each, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, with no smoke breaks.  This fact alone makes the über fence along the 1,869 mile border with Mexico a colossal example of American duplicity.  I mean, I really do enjoy my fruits and veggies on the cheap.

For many ‘Muricans, the complaint is, “They’re here to steal our jobs.”  Maybe a homegrown worker has been displaced by an illegal immigrant but I’ve never seen one.  But then again, I have never seen a unicorn either but my eight year old daughter assures me…

The self-righteous always pound the notion of legality but I wager no law ever filled an empty belly and no electrified razor wire topped fence will ever keep a good parent from trying to feed their hungry children.  The people that come here are not the bomb toting job stealing bad guys we imagine, but rather people who’ve heard of a place where they cannot only survive but thrive by the sweat of their brow if they will only make the crossing.  They don’t want state welfare, they want a chance, and who are we to deny them? 

Immigrants, that’s who.

… that’s not how we do it…

How many of us have, or at least heard, the forgoing phrase? When was the last time you heard it uttered? Was it in a public place? An online forum? Maybe somewhere in the Twitter-verse? Or maybe, just maybe, it leaked from your own gob like butter from a warm biscuit at the announcement of some new innovation at our workplace?

That people fundamentally prefer inertia and tradition over movement and innovation is a given. Niccolo Machiavelli described the situation in The Prince over five centuries ago, “The innovator has as enemies, all those who have done well in the old order.” We believe that any innovation that threatens the norm is a full frontal assault on the common good, and to do so, is to invite responses that tend toward the Biblical. Remember how the powers-that-be in 1st century Jerusalem dealt with a certain Nazarene’s brand of innovation?

Innovation begins where old ways end. The Luddites failed. The machines replaced them and they, and their families, suffered for their unwillingness to change. Change is inevitable. Change is the juice of innovation—the perception by someone that a thing, a process or an institution can be made more efficient, more effective, and just plain better. Those things that need to be left alone are those that already represent a zenith of something. Like a Rembrandt or Pez dispenser. Moving on…

So what’s an innovator to do when there’s so much against them? Easy-peasy. Just know all the current stakeholders and understand what they’ll gain, and more importantly, what they’ll lose by embracing your innovation. Remember, they are not your friends until you are successful. So go and make the next big thing; the next Ipod, the next Nike, the next WalMart, or maybe just a better mouse trap. Preferably one that vaporizes them. That way, I won’t have to bag or bury the buggers.

Vouchers, vouchers, vowchurzzzzzzzz...

"The vouchers are coming, the vouchers are coming, the vouchers are coming..."

“School vouchers are evil.” 

“Why?”

“Because they take money out of the public school system.”

“I’m not so sure your math works out there, buddy.”

“Come on.  The money goes with the voucher.  Voucher out—money out.  Easy.”

“Mm-m, not really, no.  You’re leaving a whole bunch of money on the table there, sport.”

“What, are you using some sort of new math?”

 “Nope.  I’m just saying, you’re missing some key pieces of the puzzle.”

“Oh, do so enlighten me, master.”

“First, you know I sent my two to a private faith-based school, right?”

“That explains a lot.”

“Watch it, you!  Look, back in the 90's, it cost me $4500 for tuition per year to educate BOTH of my children at a time when the county had a recorded rate of $9000 per child to educate one in the public system.  Now, I didn’t get a break in my property taxes to offset my kids’ tuition, and I’m pretty sure you nor anyone else did either.  So where did that $18,000 per year that my children would have cost the system, go?  We might be surprised.”

“Wait a minute.  You spent $4500 for two and it cost $9000 per head in the county system?”

“You’re doing fine, drop your landing gear, but keep your nose up.”

“Smartass.  So, you’re saying that by taking your two out of the system, the system was $18,000 to the good, per year?”

“Ding, ding, ding.  We have a winnuh!  You just have to do the math to find the fallacy in arguing against vouchers by way of draining the system of supposed scarce funds.  Heck, if they offered vouchers to every kid, imagine all that leftover cash they’d have on hand.  Think the teachers might get a piece?”

“Doubt it.  Since the public schools would be empty.  Okay, so it’s not just about the money.  What about the education?  These faith based outfits don’t have to adhere to any state defined curricula or standards.”

“They meet standards.  Just not the standards defined by the state.  Now, for complete disclosure, I transferred my two to public high school from ninth grade on.  My daughter saw a classmate get his scalp laid open with a box cutter on the first day.  I told her, 'welcome to public school, pumpkin.'  She maintained an A average and earned a full scholarship to a top shelf private college.  So, I’m guessing that little unregulated school did something right, huh?”

“I don’t know, I’m still not convinced that’s the way we should go.  I mean, our schools are falling apart at the seams.  But if what you say is true, then there’s no way we can go wrong with vouchers.  Just issue a thousand and maybe a few schools can get new roofs.”

“Go now, grasshopper.  Go now, and tell the world what you have seen.”

“You know, there are days when I really… really hate you.”

What a wonderful world...

The Russians are coming the Russians are coming the Russians are… oh shizzle, they’re here!  Leave it to an ex-KGB agent to pine for the good ol’ days of the Cold War by rekindling old hatreds and fears.  It seems that we in the West need a reminder of how the world sucked back then and Putin is happy to oblige.  Perestroika this, bitches!  Bin-Laden’s feeding the fishes and his cronies have gone to ground.  Let’s leave the left-handed-ass-wipers to their own goat spoiling devices, we’ve got neo-Bolsheviks to contend with. 

What if we just pull a Saigon Shuffle and Huey the hell out of the Boneyard of the Misbegotten?  Who would miss us, besides the women and children and private contractors?  There’s a paranoid bi-polar poobah in charge of the place and who has, on more than one occasion, not been able to keep appointments with ambassadors and other dignitaries due to an inability to keep his ducks together long enough to harangue his guests over not understanding his needs.

Sorry if I seem insensitive to the plight of paranoid bi-polar poobahs but well, I’m sick of the ancillary effects of job creators in the guise of nation builders dry-stroking the daylights out of us taxpayers.  Like marionettes, our elected officials dance cheek by jowl with the monied interests of the military whilst sending our young men and women to far off lands where we have little business other than having a place to wring the bugs out of our latest war toys.   

To that end, the Greenies some time ago started making little squeaky noises about environmental degradation and unnatural acts in the deserts of the Western U.S., once the home of bombing ranges, nuclear blast testing, Native Americans and that sort of thing.  I mean, dang, it’s just a damn desert!  Better we work out the spread pattern of bomblets dropped via sub launched cruise missiles over the New Jersey Pine Barrens?  I gather not.  But still… we are talking about Jersey.

Honestly, I'm not sure about blogging.  The world is already a precarious place in which to ply one's proclivities.  Knowing this, the internet is like a Pandora's Box blown open for anyone able to stab a button or finger swipe a smart phone.  And I like it!  Everyone has an opinion like they have a nose.  Some are big and beautiful while others, not so much.  These are the days of EVERYONE putting their two cents in whether it makes any sense or not.

If you think about the 140 character limit imposed on Twitter, after following it for ten minutes, you'll probably rejoice in that limitation!  I know I do.  Personally, I don't give two shits about what goes on in the Twitter-verse. My time is too precious.  But then, if it could make me money, I'd hire someone to do it for me.  But the newsies grouse that it hasn't turned a profit yet.  Even though the guys who started it are pretty well-off now.  How is that?  It's all about perception.  Face it, we're all drawn to shiny sparkly things.  We can't help it.  It's part and parcel to how we're coded.  Flight or fight stuff.  We in the West have hailed it as a liberator of thought, and as it turns out, thoughtlessness too.  Humanity in all it's "wired" forms manifests there.  Big beautiful noses, pierced and otherwise.

So my question is this, how can an otherwise educated populace deal substantively with it's own shortcomings?  Twitter?  Facebook?  Yelp?

Why not?

Where the stupid meet resistance...

You may ask why, Hissing Turban?  Because it goes to the point of just how messed up we are as a species.  That some madrasa fanboy can infiltrate a funeral in order to blow himself to kibble along with five or fifty of the deceased's closest friends and family and do it for the twisted notion of an almighty deity that rains virgins on males martyred thus.  That and wrapping the less than brightest in shrapnel vests and sending them down to the market for some baba ganoush. "Here, Habibi, take this cell phone with you and call me when you get there. Allahu Akbar."

Give me a break. If the Great and Powerful Oz were to send a bevy of munchkin virgins to me, I'm sure it would be because he wants me to indoctrinate them in the ways of pleasure.  Either that or just to piss me off.  Virgins?  I'll take a talented tart any day over an amateur.  But then again, we're talking about some of the most thoroughly mind-fucked souls known to man.  The kind with little learning other than that of war and warlords.  The kind steeped in the blood of friends and antecedents. The kind of hatred that can only be sustained through clinging beyond any fathomable reason to a religion and its perversion.

But that ain't all.  To pick on the whole of Islam for the misdeeds of a few thousand is misapplied derision.  There's plenty of corners for the cockroaches of mankind to hide in.  There's skinheads and members of GLAAD, PETA, NOW, the NRA, the Supreme Court, effing Super PACs, propagandists masquerading as documentarians, the Republican AND Democratic parties, Chicago politicians, Washington lobbyists, Tea Party chowderheads and the bored and disaffected of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Top it off with Palin, Bachmann and Oprah, the producers of gay amputee porn, anyone who co-ops their faith for monetary gain and elves.  Actually the elves are okay with me.  Especially that Arwen chick, mm-hmm.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream.  One that included everyone.  So let's be clear here.  What we need to talk about is what's going on in the world-at-large and hear what each of us thinks about it too.  If we can find some humor in it, so much the better.  That's what blogs are for.  Start some shit and see where it floats.  And if you find some words here to cling to so much the better.  Come back often.  Leave a sign of life.

Cheers,
J.C. [the younger]