Liberty's Torch

Monday, January 8, 2018

More on Fusion and Other Government Issues

Not nuclear, but GPS Fusion - the ones that attempted to throw the 2016 election by posting "Fake News" about Trump.

Here's a cry for Obama to "Let It Go". Your party lost - Get Over It.

Too many in government have been co-opted by the political part of it. I'm in agreement that it's time to Drain the Swamp - and, a large part of that is to reduce the size of these agencies. Trump has focused on a major reason the size of the bureaucracies have swelled - too many regulations. He's cut many of them, and should focus on reducing more.

If there is less work (in the form of enforcing regulations), there will be less need for many of the Swamp Creatures. When I refer to federal employees that way, I'm merely noting that some of them - not all - were hired as a way of paying off supporters with a cushy job.

As the President would say, "That's sad." And, it is. To place a person in a position that they, and everyone around them, know was meant primarily to provide what amounts to - in their case - as a type of welfare check (although, a gigantic one), undermines their dignity as a human being. They use their position, not to learn something useful, but to provide services for the person that put them there.

At this point, we have at least twice as many people as would be needed in the most optimistic appraisal - the number is likely 5 or more times the quantity necessary.

How can you get rid of them without pushback?

Reduce the regs - their position can then be eliminated outright.
Attrition - as people leave, don't replace their job.
If the position is necessary, hire from outside, with someone you can trust.
Eliminate the time off for union business - they can take care of it on their own time.
Outsource - use temps for jobs not having access to sensitive information or areas.

But, the biggest part of this is the first. Eliminate positions.

The Whole "Trump is Crazy" Thing - I've been hearing a lot of this lately (perhaps more as Trump's "Wins" start to accelerate). Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, a man who has some knowledge of dealing with political maneuvering in the workplace, and the War of Words that is part of it, adds in his perspective.

FWIW, I think this guy has a realistic viewpoint on Trump and how he operates.

And, now, Just for FUN, here's some good ones - From Single Dad Laughing. If you don't check him out, you're missing one of the funniest sites on the web.

For all my friends with more than 2 kids. Bless you.

And, why do I think of Meryl Streep when I see this?

Actually, NOT true for me, but - a WHOLE lot of people I know are in this situation.

Left-Wing Muscle Part 2: “Public Service” Organizations

It’s pathetically easy to discern the incentives and motivations that cause government agencies to fill up with left-wingers. They see themselves as smarter and more moral than the rest of us, and therefore our rightful rulers. Besides, they worship government.

What’s a little harder to unearth is how private sector organizations nominally dedicated to some form of “public service” are inevitably saturated with leftists. Yet these, too, conform to Robert Conquest’s Second Law. Indeed, they conform to such an extent that over time the supposed mission of the organization is discarded entirely, replaced by the twin objectives of gaining political power or influence, and perpetuating the organization’s billets for its workers.

The “public service” organization (PSO) usually arises around some seemingly noble ideal. It might be a specimen of moral uplift, or some form of material charity, or – in the most ironic case – a drive for improvement in government. In our time, all these directions are easily co-opted by governments...and governments make painful haste to do so.

In its earliest stage, the PSO is largely if not entirely guided by that noble ideal. Its workers are serious about it, and put a great deal of time and effort into it. Perhaps the Omnipotent State hasn’t yet noticed it, or perhaps the political elite regards it as too small to bother with. Either way, at its origin it’s small, entirely private, and sincerely oriented toward its overt goals.

In the usual case the first agency to take note of it isn’t a government but a media representative. Such persons and their employers are always on the lookout for topics to report on, and their inherent bent is toward the emotions. Any seemingly noble or charitable effort is good enough for a couple of column-inches in a regional paper or a three minute segment during a local newscast.

Such reportage gets the active, engaged attention of others who regard themselves as noble. Some fraction of those will either be government employees, or will be indirectly connected with some arm of the State.

Such persons see involvement with government as desirable. Governments can provide resources. They can also whip the hoi polloi into line. What’s not to like?

The organization is still private, in the sense that it’s not under the overt aegis of a government. Its workers don’t draw government paychecks; no legislative body sets its agenda or its operating conditions. It might succeed in remaining private, at least in appearance. But when it first brushes against the State, its deterioration has begun. It might be impossible to reverse it.

There are many examples of the downhill progression of a PSO into a covert arm of the State. My favorite, because it’s the most dramatic one I know, is the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

The WCTU grew out of the meliorist movements of the early Nineteenth Century. In the first century of the Republic, men’s heavy habitual consumption of spirits was a large contributor to social pathologies of various kinds. The physicians of the time might not have known about cirrhosis, but they could easily recognize that drinking whole pints or quarts of distillates each day had a bad effect on the human body, to say nothing of the coarsening effects on public conduct. Well before the formal organization of the WCTU there were many local and regional temperance societies that labored to discourage the excessive indulgence in “strong drink.” Some were explicitly religious. Others, such as the Friendly Societies and the Freemasons, had broader agendas.

Those various temperance-promoting groups did a lot of good work. Women were often their backbone, for wives and sisters had an obvious, strong interest in preserving the sobriety of the men in their lives. Well before the WCTU was organized, their efforts had caused a sharp decrease in the consumption of intoxicants. The problems of rampant drunkenness and liquor-induced illness had been greatly reduced before the WCTU was formed. (Here’s some enlightening reading on the subject.)

I found the following chart here:

...but the really illuminating thing is the trend in consumption per capita:

Decade	Liquor Consumption Per Capita, Gallons
1790s	27.7
1800s	34.9
1810s	59.4
1820s	58.8
1830s	37.5
1840s	22.4
1850s	24.5
1860s	19.5
1870s	16.0

Liquor consumption per decade per capita fell from its high of 59.4 gallons to only 16.0 gallons: a reduction of 73%. Plainly, the early local and regional efforts directed at reducing liquor consumption had scored huge successes well before the WCTU.

The WCTU was explicitly political. Its charter advocated “the entire prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage.” Forty-four years later it succeeded in getting the Eighteenth (Prohibition) Amendment ratified. Ironically, the consumption of liquors promptly started to increase. The WCTU’s directors had steadily broadened its agenda, and continued to do so:

The WCTU also agitated against tobacco. The American WCTU formed a "Department for the Overthrow of the Tobacco Habit" as early as 1885 and frequently published anti-tobacco articles in the 1880s. Agitation against tobacco continued through to the 1950s.
As a consequence of its stated purposes, the WCTU was also very interested in a number of social reform issues, including labor, prostitution, public health, sanitation, and international peace. As the movement grew in numbers and strength, members of the WCTU also focused on suffrage. The WCTU was instrumental in organizing woman's suffrage leaders and in helping more women become involved in American politics. Local chapters, known as “unions”, were largely autonomous, though linked to state and national headquarters. Willard pushed for the "Home Protection" ballot, arguing that women, being the morally superior sex, needed the vote in order to act as "citizen-mothers" and protect their homes and cure society's ills. At a time when suffragists were viewed as radicals and alienated most American women, the WCTU offered a more traditionally feminine and "appropriate" organization for women to join.

If you’ve ever wondered about the strange combination of “authorities” under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, there’s your explanation.

Left-wingers are innately busybodies, determined to run others’ lives. They believe themselves entitled to do so by virtue of their “superior” wisdom and morality. That they’re often found to violate in private the norms they espouse in public should come as no surprise, for persons who claim higher wisdom are prone to regard themselves as “above the rules.” The psychological commonality with bureaucrats and moralizers of all stripes requires no further explication.

What’s most striking, and most germane, about PSOs is how the flag of superior morality they wave nearly always goes unquestioned. Seldom is the question “at what price?” posed to them even by those most ardent to resist them:

There is no half-baked ecclesiastic, bawling in his galvanized-iron temple on a suburban lot, who doesn’t know precisely how it ought to be dealt with. There is no fantoddish old suffragette, sworn to get her revenge on man, who hasn’t a sovereign remedy for it. There is not a shyster of a district attorney, ambitious for higher office, who doesn’t offer to dispose of it in a few weeks, given only enough help from the city editors. And yet, by the same token, there is not a man who has honestly studied it and pondered it, bringing sound information to the business, and understanding of its inner difficulties and a clean and analytical mind, who doesn’t believe and hasn’t stated publicly that it is intrinsically and eternally insoluble. For example, Havelock Ellis. His remedy is simply a denial of all remedies. He admits that the disease is bad, but he shows that the medicine is infinitely worse, and so he proposes going back to the plain disease, and advocates bearing it with philosophy, as we bear colds in the head, marriage, the noises of the city, bad cooking and the certainty of death. Man is inherently vile—but he is never so vile as when he is trying to disguise and deny his vileness. No prostitute was ever so costly to a community as a prowling and obscene vice crusader, or as the dubious legislator or prosecuting officer who jumps at such swine pipe. – H. L. Mencken

I leave it to my Gentle Readers to draw the moral.

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Epiphany: A Brief Rumination

Time was, Catholics celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany, which our Eastern and Orthodox cousins call the Theophany, on January 6. However, as virtually every secular observance on the calendar except for Independence Day and Thanksgiving Day gets relocated for the sake of a three day weekend, I suppose I should take comfort that we celebrate any of our great feasts on their original dates.

Epiphany is special for more than one reason. Saint Paul tells us that:

It was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit that the Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body, and co-partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. [Ephesians 3:5-6]

But we didn’t have to wait for him to say so. The three Magi of the Epiphany, three Persian Zoroastrians, had paid homage to the infant Jesus. Clearly, the significance and promise of His mission was not meant for the Jews alone.

     They recognized His kingship with a gift of gold.
     They recognized His priesthood with a gift of frankincense.
     They foreshadowed and honored His sacrifice with a gift of myrrh.
     They protected Him from Herod’s murderous intent by not returning to Jerusalem.

Two thousand years later, we still thrill to their journey and their gestures of homage and fealty to the child Jesus.

May God bless and keep you all.

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Assorted

I’m a bit weary this morning – we got 14 inches of snow on Thursday, and my 1500 square foot driveway always gets drifted in – so have a few links to interesting and relevant items from other observers.

First up is a Roger Kimball essay I managed to overlook when it was fresh. Kimball explores a lot of the same material I wrote about in this piece. Please read it all; it’s eminently worth the time.

Next, we have newsman Will Rahn’s nostra culpa about press smugness. Rahn is a respected “insider,” but “journalists” are one of the most resistant of all trades to criticism – and Rahn’s criticism is piercing:

     The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.
     It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.
     This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.

Once again, please read it all. Though I question whether Rahn’s statement will have any practical consequences, I’m cheered that at least one press figure has seen the error of his ways.

Third, we have an angry, biting emission from SF writer Michael Z. Williamson about cops’ priority for “going home safe.” The gut punch:

     If you want to tangle with bad guys and blow them away, fair enough. But understand: That means they get to shoot first to prove their intent, just as happens with the military these days. Our ROE these days are usually "only if fired upon and no civilians are at risk."
     If your plan is "shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more, then if anyone is still alive try to ask questions," and bleat, "But I was afeard fer mah lahf!" you're absolutely no better than the thugs you claim to oppose. All you are is another combatant in a turf war I don't care about.
     Since I know your primary concern is "being safe," then I'll do you the favor of not calling. Cash your welfare check, and try not to shoot me at a "courtesy" sobriety checkpoint for twitching my eye "in a way that suggested range estimation."
     If you're one of the vanishingly few cops who isn't like that, then what the hell are you doing about it? If there's going to be a lawsuit costing the city millions, isn't it better that it be a labor suit from the union over the clown you fired, than a wrongful death suit over the poor bastard the clown shot? Both are expensive, but one has a dead victim you enabled. So how much do you actually care about that life?

Compound Williamson’s sentiments with the recent police-shootings scandals from Wichita, Kansas and ask yourself: “Were I to suspect some sort of intrusion onto my property, would I be better advised to call the police or to deal with it myself?”

Finally for this morning, a piece I read nearly a month ago and have been “sitting on:” Matt Walsh’s proclamation about the respect wives owe their husbands. It’s a stunner:

     There is more than one way to cheat on your spouse — or, I should say, cheat your spouse. And it seems that many husbands are being cheated by their wives in a way that is no less damaging and no more justified than being cheated on. This form of "cheating" is all the more common because our culture tells women that men aren’t owed anything in the first place. You can’t cheat them out of something you were never supposed to give them, after all.
     But a husband is owed something, and his wife is obliged to provide it. He is not only owed it; he needs it.
     That is: respect.

Another please-read-it-all. One of the signal ironies of our time is that this should need to be pointed out to women who claim to deserve more respect than they receive:

Learning more about the traditional methods witches used to make covens work hadn’t done much to set my mind at ease. Back home it would be just about impossible to find five people who could maintain that kind of relationship for long. Inevitably attention wouldn’t be shared equally, someone would get their feelings hurt, and things would go rapidly downhill from there. Especially considering how poisonous modern relationship advice is. Teaching men to subserviently kowtow to a woman’s every whim, while the women are taught to harshly scrutinize their partners for any possible fault, is not a recipe for happy relationships. [E. William Brown, Black Coven]

Respect isn’t a currency one doles out to one’s spouse as payment for this or that. Indeed, that modern marriages so often lack any trace of respect is all that’s required to explain why they’re so fragile. Yet even the most sincere and earnest spouses, sincerely determined to “make it work,” can feel great reluctance to introduce so painful a subject:

When my wife and I teach the remarriage class for the Diocese, we talk about the elephant in the living room. That's where a couple avoids discussing a major issue and it gets bigger and bigger until it's like having an elephant in your living room that you pretend you don't see. You never bring it up because you're afraid of the argument that will result.

Indeed.

That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. I’ll be back tomorrow, God willin’ an’ the creek don’t rise. And as “the creek” in these parts is the Long Island Sound, let’s pray that the Almighty will keep it right where it is.

Pearls of expression.

THAT - was no fucking tweet storm.
More like a tweet breeze, tweet shower, or tweet sleet.
A true tweet storm is like a Gotterdammerung thunder and lightning Sharknado fucking laser beam killfest. ^[1]

Now we know.

I find the whole concept of the “tweet” repellent. National life as mediated by “So’s your mother” mind blurts. It’s much better to craft lengthy articles that reveal the full depth of your imbecility. It is cool that the president can stir the pot without having to go through the lying MSM but here I’m thinking there ought to be something like a cheerleader or cooking show host to raise some red flags before the president can hit the “send” button. Something like, "Mr. President, people don’t often come right out and say publicly that they are genius-level intellects." Not good.

Posh.

Well, give me a pres with some quirks and idiosyncrasies who keeps things friendly with Russia, kicks out every last illegal alien (?), and dumps the stupid American lusting after a “unipolar world” and war, war, war. There are a lot more circumspect and suave types out there that run the European Union, for example, and they busy themselves with the destruction of their own kind. Call me crazy but that just doesn't seem to be on the Trump agenda.

The lies of Hillary Rodham about Benghazi and her bathroom server for classified emails are a lot more disturbing than Mr. Trump’s quirkiness. But it’s the last the MSM will go nuts over and not Hillary and her pay-to-play operation run through the Clinton Foundation.

Notes
^[1] Comment by Silvergeddon on "In Tweetstorm, Trump Defends His Sanity: 'I Am A Very Stable Genius.'" By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 1/6/18.

Friday, January 5, 2018

This is a Little New Years-y

Americans are strange. We come from people who walked away from what they had been, and focused on the future, not the past. I once read that America is the Land of 2nd Chances, and I think, for the most part, that's true. We're a big country, and when someone new comes to town, we are likely to hold off on judgement, and allow that person to get a fresh start. Some of that willingness to renew was bolstered by two traditions:

The Great Awakening, a time when a good portion of the settled parts of the country became "born again", or, for some, baptised for the first time. I'm referring to the 1st Awakening, at which time many people became connected to religion for the first time. Some of those people were African Americans, new to Christianity. An excellent series that details this period is here.
The ongoing renewal of man that is part of the Catholic sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance, for those of the Old School).

Do you want to see Change?

Zen Habits - I've been reading this, off and on, for years. He (obviously) leans to the East in his philosophy, but, it's a fresh perspective on changing parts of your life.

A separate topic - but important. In another blog, I wrote about Gardasil, the vaccine that protects against several of the HPV strains. It's long been suspected that the testing process ignored some rare symptoms, mostly related to immune system problems. Finally, someone is taking the reports seriously.

Should parents still vaccinate? I"m on the fence about that.

Cervical cancer is most often seen in women with early sexual activity, or multiple partners (or, both). The vaccine is actually for HPV, a virus that is correlated with cervical cancer. What seems to be responsible is that the immune system becomes overwhelmed by repeated assaults by foreign bodies (essentially, what sperm is), and developed damaged cells that mutate into cancers.

There are several issues with the HPV vaccine:

It's expensive - somewhere between $600-$800 for the series
It will provide protection for several years - however, just when a young woman is ready to go off to college, she will need a booster treatment. Many kids don't get that, leading them to feel protected when they are not.
There have been reactions to the vaccine, some of them fatal.

Read the facts and make up your own mind.

Left-Wing Muscle Part 1: The American Corporation

There’s a lot of bewilderment over how a minuscule fraction of the politically engaged – the hardcore, no standards / no norms / no objective reality / no prisoners Left – can have such disproportionate influence over ordinary people’s behavior. Well disproportionate leverage is like that; it always demands investigation and explanation. I provided a large slug of the explanation in this essay. However, certain pieces of the puzzle have proved more puzzling than others to ordinary Americans.

Which is part of the reason I nearly always find something to write about, each and every morning.

It’s become quite clear that America’s corporations are important targets to the Left. This follows naturally from my “Don’t Be A Joiner!” thesis. A corporation has no political power – i.e., no power to take from anyone something that’s his by right – but it does have great influence over the lives of those who work for it and those whose well-being depends in part on it. That gives Leftist activists a strong incentive to pursue authority positions within corporations.

The Left’s targeting is quite narrow. Leftist activists don’t actually want to produce anything; that’s left to us grubby groundlings. What they want is the ability to raise up political allies and crush political opponents. The Human Resources department is the ideal perch from which to pursue those purposes.

Nearly a year ago, I wrote:

From the heavy emphasis on politics among American left-liberals – remember that one of their maxims is that “The personal is political” – we might expect that when they gain a foothold in an institution of another sort, they will begin to inject political postures and activity into its mission. Note in this connection the behavior of Human Resources departments, which are a favored target of the Left-inclined. The larger the company, the more emphasis its HR department will put on “political correctness,” and the more reliably and severely it will penalize deviations from it. Such an orientation needn’t be overt to be gruesomely effective in twisting the company’s mission in a left-wing direction, especially if it’s reinforced by pressures from outside.

I’ve meant to return to that thread ever since. It implies the answer to an unasked question. The question has proved to be as important as the answer:

How did HR departments acquire so much muscle?

On the subject of “human resources” departments generally, the great Robert C. Townsend is definite and negative:

Unless your company is too large (in which case break it up into autonomous parts), have a one-person people department (not a personnel department). Records can be kept in the payroll section of the accounting department, and your one-person people department acts as personnel assistant to anybody who is recruiting—lines up applicants, checks references, and keeps your pay ranges competitive by checking other companies. [From Further Up The Organization]

Clearly, American corporations have elected not to follow Townsend’s advice. But why? The terrible perversities that have emerged from the cancerous growth of HR departments are plain for any business-oriented person to see. Their malign influence on workers’ morale and the tensions among them have been documented innumerable times. And it should go without saying that an HR department is not a profit center but a pure cost: it produces nothing the company can sell to its customers, actual or potential. So why are they so ubiquitous and so malevolently powerful?

Grab a fresh cuppa and hold on to it tightly, Gentle Reader; the ride’s about to get bumpy.

More than twenty years ago, I wrote:

     Large organizations have inherent deficiencies that conduce toward a generalized condition of incoherence and failure. Why, then, is the world's commerce completely dominated by two or three thousand giant corporations?
     Simply, because governments systematically tilt the field in their favor.
     Ignore the propaganda about "monopoly" and "antitrust." Nothing favors Big Business like Big Government. The occasional forays against specific targets in the private sector -- mostly, companies that have been slow to bend the knee when the State commanded it -- are mere flea bites, compared to the many ways the legal environment has been biased toward giant businesses.

This remains the case. Moreover, it incorporates secondary dynamics that give rise to the Human Resources plague:

The proliferation of regulations affecting hiring, firing, benefits, and general employment policy.
The mushrooming of reporting requirements and statistics generation that enable government monitoring.
Intimacy between the persons who work in HR and those who work in government.

While #1 and #2 make plain the incentive to create specialists responsible for keeping “the law” at bay, it’s possible that #3 is the most pernicious. It’s been multiply confirmed that persons who seek government employment tend to be “fans” of government and its intrusions. The same is true for those who must work intimately with them – and no category of corporate employee works more closely with governments than those in HR.

As it “matures,” an HR department tends to become ever less accountable in any fashion. Specialists are like that; indeed, it goes to the heart of why we patronize them. A specialist in our time is more likely to be the possessor of specialized knowledge than of a special skill. A specialist at dealing with governments will naturally need to possess detailed knowledge about the laws and regulations pertinent to his corporate employer. That produces a situation in which CEOs and vice presidents are ill-equipped to question or qualify the pronouncements of an HR department concerning government requirements. HR can thus get away with claims that such-and-such policy is “required” regardless of the legal and regulatory facts.

Given the left-wing inclinations and avidity for power of persons who work in HR, the consequences are easily foreseen.

When I wrote, in Love In The Time Of Cinema:

     “The country was deep in the grip of the ‘diversity and inclusion’ fad. It started before you were born, and was pretty much a bad memory by the time you were old enough to notice. Noisy minorities were at their noisiest—and since a history of oppression was the legal and social coin of the realm, every one of them claimed to be ‘oppressed.’ The one getting the most attention at the time was ‘trans.’”
     I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “A transportation company?”
     She chuckled. “No, biological men who wanted to be women, or to be treated as women. A very few biological women who wanted to be men, or treated as men. They called themselves ‘transwomen’ or ‘transmen.’”
     I barked a laugh. I couldn’t help it. I caught hold of it quickly, and forced myself back to seriousness.
     She smirked. “You can laugh because you have no idea how bad it was. But there was nothing funny about it. Even though there were only a few thousand of them all together, they were unbelievably successful at bending governments and institutions to their whim. They won privileges that very few people can imagine today.
     “Tim’s employer’s Human Resources department was run by a gaggle of vicious women—real ones, not ‘trans’—who’d already succeeded in enacting weird ‘sexual harassment’ rules and rules about how to treat persons of differing sexual orientations. You could get fired for daring to defy the company line...so naturally the company’s vicious women and vindictive homosexuals used the rules like a club to subjugate or flat get rid of anyone they pleased.
     “Well, these insane HR harpies needed new worlds to conquer, so they decided to make ‘trans tolerance’ their next campaign. But they didn’t mean ‘show tolerance for the deluded.’ They meant to make differing with a delusional person—calling a ‘trans’ person by his birth name, or referring to him as ‘he’ when he claimed to be a ‘she’—a hangin’ offense.
     “They rewrote the personnel policies for the company for the umpteenth time. Corporate management gave in without a fight. The new policies included mandatory ‘sensitivity training’ seminars for the entire company. Until Tim was herded into one, he had no idea what was coming.
     “He sat through about twenty minutes of their harangue before he couldn’t take any more of it. He felt someone had to take a stand against the lunacy. And Tim being...well, Tim, he wasn’t going to wait for someone else to do it. So he stood up.
     “He told them their nonsense had gone far enough. He said the ‘trans’ types are obviously detached from reality. That they need therapy to help them accept themselves as they are, not reinforcement for their delusions. That we should treat the mentally ill with compassion but that it’s wrong to cooperate in their lunacy. And he said he wouldn’t bow to any rule, from HR or anyone else, that compelled him to think or speak or act otherwise. And he walked out.
     “His supervisor fired him immediately after the seminar. He didn’t have anything against Tim. In fact, he agreed with him. He just didn’t want to tangle with HR.”

...I was describing an actual occurrence that had been narrated to me by the person to whom it happened. In his case, the HR department had claimed to corporate management that their fresh edict had been dictated by the laws of their state, which was false. The CEO bought it wholesale. It’s possible he never even thought to question it. Why would he? That’s what he had an HR department for!

When I wrote in Statesman:

     The founder and CEO of Onteora Aviation grimaced and muttered “Shut the door.” Sumner did so and seated himself in one of the two leather guest chairs before Forslund’s desk.
     He looks anxious.
     “Have you gotten to know Irv Grutstein?” Forslund said.
     “The HR director?” Sumner shook his head. “I don’t think we’ve even exchanged hellos.”
     Forslund nodded. “I’m not surprised. He’s not much for socializing, at least not outside his department. I’ve tried to stay well away from it.” He smirked ruefully. “Sometimes I wish I’d never created it in the first place.”
     “I don’t think we’d be able to contract with the Pentagon without one,” Sumner said. “With all the rules the Labor Department has about equal opportunity hiring—”
     “And a lot of other things.” Forslund opened a manila folder, paged briefly through its contents, and closed it. “As you don’t know him,” he said, “it falls to me to inform you. Grutstein loves rules. The vaguer and broader, the better. All empire builders do.” He slid the folder across the desk to Sumner.
     Sumner opened the folder, glanced at the first page, and felt all the strength leave his body. He looked up at Forslund, hoping that his boss would assure him that it was all in fun, some sort of interdepartmental joke. Forslund shook his head.
     “It’s no gag, Steve. It’s an official intracompany complaint by a software engineer named Violet Hochberg, alleging sexual harassment and sexual discrimination—”
     “By Louis Redmond,” Sumner breathed.
     “Exactly. Grutstein brought it and the complainant to me about an hour ago.” Forslund sat back in his chair, looking exhausted.
     “Anders,” Sumner said, “there is no one in this company with better morals or ethics than Louis. You can’t—”
     “Believe it? Not for an instant,” Forslund said. “However, OA’s HR director does. At least he’s pretending that he does. Shall I tell you what he said to me when he presented it?”
     Sumner braced himself. “Go ahead.”
     “He said,” Forslund measured out the words, “that if Louis would agree to resign without contesting the charges, he’d refrain from instituting a criminal case against him. Oh, and that he’d have no objection to my recommending Louis for a job with one of our competitors.” An incredulous laugh. “As if I wouldn’t slit both wrists to prevent that very thing.”
     “With a rusty bottle opener,” Sumner murmured.
     “Hm?”
     “Nothing, nothing.”

...I was once again describing a real occurrence that had been related to me by a friend. HR departments are like that. They want power, they have an agenda, and they’re unabashed about driving for what they want. Unless corporate management is willing to defy HR, there is little defense...and owing to HR’s intimacy with regulatory authorities, that willingness is a rare jewel.

One other influence deserves mention. The larger a corporation becomes, the more sensitive it becomes toward public-relations considerations. Every Fortune 100 company expends significant money and effort at PR. Its advertising is more intended to influence persons who are not and will never be its customers than those who will be involved in purchasing from it.

That’s a second string to HR’s bow. HR departments with external connections can rally support for their agenda from entirely uninvolved persons and groups. Threats of boycotts and public protests can ratchet up the pressure on an organization to the point where the boldest CEO might decide to “live to fight another day.” It hardly matters that the activists involved in mounting the pressure represent a tiny fraction of public opinion and essentially none of the company’s customer base.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other left-wing organizers have used this approach several times. I can’t remember reading about a failure on their part.

There’s more to this subject, of course, but I believe I’ve covered the meat of the American corporation’s “HR problem.” It arises from conditions and influences inherent in a Big Government milieu. It cannot be undone without first undoing those conditions and influences. It can only be countered in particular instances, by extremely clever tactics backed up by unshakable determination.

Bear always in mind Robert Conquest’s Three Laws:

Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

More anon.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

More Fun With Hugo Part 2: Infiltration Tactics

I am endlessly fascinated by how long it took for Mankind to unearth certain key discoveries. Most illuminating of all are the conceptual breakthroughs: the discoveries that pointed toward new methods of analysis and the structuring of information.

A student of warfare can get a lot of mileage out of World War I in particular. The wealth of discoveries and developments that emerged from that conflict could keep a scholar occupied lifelong. The Entente Powers concentrated on new weaponry. The Triple Alliance, in which the German Empire was the senior partner, produced new military tactics and techniques. Among the latter group, most intriguing to me was the development of infiltration tactics.

To many who “grew up” with more recent warfare, infiltration tactics seem a “but of course” matter, a minor aspect of pure ground warfare that “should have been obvious” and is no longer really important in the three-dimensional wars of today. Yet the utility and potency of infiltration wasn’t obvious until the German General Staff hit upon it. Until then, the prevailing method of ground warfare was to hurl one’s main force against the enemy’s main force in pursuit of a unitary, hopefully decisive battle. Even in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, a period in which the West invested great intellectual energy in virtually every field, that pattern of tactical thought held sway among the majority of military planners. It took the special trials of World War I, whose lineaments were drawn by the trench, the pillbox, the barbed wire fence, and the medium machine gun, to jolt military thinkers out of that rut.

Infiltration tactics have become equally important to our sociopolitical milieu.

     “Of all the musts and must-nots of warfare, this one is paramount: you must conceal your motives. Unless he is insignificant in comparison to you, once your opponent knows your motives, he’ll be able to defeat you. He’ll probably even have a choice of ways to do it.
     “You must move heaven and earth, if necessary, to discover your opponent’s motives. His tactics will be determined by them. If his motives change, his tactics will follow. There lies your opportunity, if you can get him to adopt tactics unsuitable to the conflict. Of course, he could try to do the same to you.”
     “What’s the countermeasure?”
     “Constancy. Refusal to let yourself be diverted. Of course, that can be a trap, too. Motive is partly determined by objectives. If your adversary’s situation changes but his objectives remain the same, he could find himself committed to paying an exorbitant price for something that’s become worthless.”
     “And that’s the time to stop playing with his head?”
     His grin was ice-cold. “You have a gift.”
     [From On Broken Wings.]

The late Florence King wrote scathingly on several occasions that the typical American’s paramount motive is to be thought of as “a nice guy.” Miss King was anything but “nice.” She reveled in causticity; it was her signature trait. And whether you liked it or not, she maintained that attitude unflinchingly. It protected her from what she most disliked: insincere and unwelcome attempts at intimacy.

Miss King had had an important insight:

If your paramount motive is that others should think of you as “a nice guy,”
anyone who wants them has got you by the balls.

Your priority on his good opinion of you gives him an infiltration point by which he can steer your decision making. That insight shines a blinding light upon our sociopolitical and cultural milieu.

Consider just one current political contretemps in this light: the “DREAMers.” The “conventional” Right is having a terrible time dealing with these illegal aliens for a single reason: Being thought of as nice guys is our highest priority. We want that even more than we want to solve our problems with illegal immigration. But nice guys don’t hurl poor helpless children and teens, here illegally but through no fault of their own, out into the cold, dark Mexican night. That’s not nice. And that’s what the Left and its media handmaidens have hammered us on. They’ve succeeded to the point that even President Trump, for whom illegal immigration was the campaign issue, is now willing to consider amnesty for the “DREAMers” if in exchange Congress will fund the construction of the border wall.

An overriding need to be thought of as a nice guy has provided the Left with inroads into many institutions. Nice guys, they tell us, wouldn’t deny women membership in all-male clubs. They wouldn’t deny scruffy welfare families, HUD-facilitated loan in hand, membership in their cooperatives. They wouldn’t deny homosexuals the privilege of becoming Cub Scout troop leaders. They wouldn’t deny atheists entrance into Bible study groups. They wouldn’t deny left-liberals admission to conservatives’ associations.

Herein lies a great part of the reason for Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics: The Right wants much too badly to be thought of as “nice guys” by its mortal enemies. It’s the infiltration route of the Left’s wettest wet dreams, and they’ve used it to the hilt.

In a recent piece on Facebook about “integration” and “white flight,” SF / military writer Tom Kratman makes some pointed observations:

     To a comment on Dave Nalle's page, to the effect that:
     Leslie McClinton Don’t forget black people bring crime and white flight.
     I answer:
     What actually seems to happen is more complex, begins far more hopefully and innocently, but is not much different in its effects.
     It begins with high quality black family X. The patriarch of the clan looks around his neighborhood - let us call it "Neighborhood A" - and sees liberalism, liberalism in all its drug peddling, street corner prostituting, crack house rotting, gang banging, and underperforming school glory - a place also replete with feral teens who need a good dose of hanging - and says something to the effect of, "Mama, we need to get the kids out of here." Unfortunately, he very rarely understands that it is liberalism he's seeing, a blind spot largely arising from his perception that liberalism and liberals have helped him and his.
     So they look around and try to find a place with no gang bangers, no street whores, no crack houses, no drug peddling (at least not out in the open), and better schools. And better still, the teens are relatively civilized. The place they find is almost invariably lily white. Yeah, life's not fair.
     So they find an address for sale they like and can afford in Neighborhood B and they move to it. Unfortunately, the address is all they will ever have in more than an extremely transitory way.
     As we continue, keep the following in mind: Integration is the name of the phenomenon we observe in the very brief interval between the first black family moving into a neighborhood and the last white family moving out.
     Now let us consider the plight of White Family Y. They are aware of several incontrovertible facts. 1) The neighborhood - A - the Xs came from is a hell hole. 2) This whole integration things been tried hundreds - maybe thousands - of times over the last fifty years and it always works out the same: White families run, progressively lower quality black families move into the empty spaces, house's prices drop to what people are willing to pay, and they're not willing to pay much for a piece of what the future surely holds in store, and, at breakneck speed, all the Bs come to look like As. 3) He cannot trust his white neighbors not to run.
     3 is important for two reasons. One is that it is not necessarily or even obviously true that he's running from the black Xs, but that he cannot trust whites. The other is that it is hard to accuse him of racism when what he's fleeing is precisely what patriarch X was fleeing. If X isn't a racist for fleeing it, neither is Y for fleeing the same thing. They're both fleeing liberalism, actually, though Y is likely more conscious of it. Indeed, if Y is showing any racism, it's in judging the other whites, though since he is judging them accurately...
     Note that X is going to lose his investment just as much as Y will, if Y can't escape early enough, but that escape for X is tougher for several reasons.
     The sad part, the really sad part, was that it wasn't necessary, could we have simply rid ourselves of the unbefuckinglievably stupid and doctrinaire liberals who started things and set the pattern that Y, quite correctly, sees. Three things were necessary to successful integration in housing. One is distasteful, to be sure, but still necessary. This was to not only legislate to open up housing, but also to legislate a maximum percentage of integrated housing. In other words, "Relax, Y, the law mandates this percentage of blacks will be allowed into B, and as soon as that is reached no more will be permitted." Sounds racist, I am sure, but can it be as racist as suckering X into buying a house at top dollar that will become nearly worthless within a few years?
     The second part was to guarantee to Y and all the other whites, "You will not lose money. We will assess your homes and guarantee to buy them from you for at least that much, adjusted for inflation, when you are ready to sell. So relax, you don't need to get into a race with the neighbors."
     The third was to guarantee much better police protection and general law enforcement in Neighborhood B for at least 25 years, even to include street patrolmen.
     Of course it's too late now. That's the really remarkable thing about liberalism, it not only turns every bit of gold it touches to shit, the change is permanent.
     [Emphases in the above added by FWP.]

Now, Tom is not your humble Curmudgeon. He’s not a racist; I am. And where he sees liberalism as the driver, I see room for a hefty admixture of racial differences and black racial solidarity:

American blacks are considerably less inclined toward law-abiding behavior than are whites.
American blacks are more inclined than whites to shield their youngsters from the consequences of their actions.
Teenage American blacks have been steeped in potent cultural pathologies:
- A carefully nurtured sense of “oppression” by “whitey;”
- Resentment of their white peers;
- “Thug culture:” Rap, hip-hop, the “gangsta” ethic.

Blend those things with the terrible, ravening desire of so many whites to be thought of as “nice guys” even by those who hate them, and with the gleeful willingness of the Left to use the pathological behaviors it encourages among young blacks as weapons against American norms and standards, and you have a perfect set of drivers and predictors for the phenomenon Henry Davenport has termed “chasing down the last white person.”

That infiltration route is fifty miles wide...and we built and paved it ourselves.

In case you’re been wondering, I started off on this course because of lingering thoughts from yesterday and a related emission from writer Larry Correia:

     If you are an author with the wrong politics, and you are at a con surrounded by social justice warriors who love to make up accusations, you would be a fool not to keep witnesses around.
     Is Jon [Del Arroz] annoying? Eh, I’ve talked to him about his tactics for activism. We’ve got some disagreements. Different strokes for different folks.
     But banning a guy for being annoying? Have you ever been to a scifi convention? But they can’t come out and say he has the wrong politics and his activism bothers them, so instead, as usual they make up some crap about feeling “unsafe” and “harassment”. Which is funny, because with SJWs harassment is a one way street. And they can harass the shit out of anyone who disagrees with them. And if you don’t like it here is your official WorldCon wooden anus.

The sense I get from what I’ve read about this is that Jon Del Arroz would like to do to Worldcon what SJW infiltrators started doing to it long ago: i.e., he’d like to counter-infiltrate in the hope that he could start a process that would restore it to its original fun-and-entertainment roots. If I’m correct about that, it’s a laudable motive. It’s also doomed, for a simple reason:

The Left feels no need to have us in the Right think of them as “nice guys.”

They would never allow us the infiltration route we’ve allowed them.

It’s becoming ever more important that we in the Right admit to ourselves that “traditional” political interchange and interplay, in which one grants the benevolence and sincerity of one’s opponent, are deader than Carthage. It was already moribund in the Sixties, when “Point/Counterpoint’s” Jack Kilpatrick would offer a reasoned argument for some conservative position and the hysterical Shana Alexander would reply with denunciations and slanders. The first step is allowing ourselves to see and think of the Left as our mortal enemies and the mortal enemies of what we hold dear: to take at face value their most strident condemnations of whites, of capitalism, of Christianity, and of America, and to infer their motives accurately and without flinching. From that, all else will follow.

Truer word was never spoke.

The European Union is ignoring this [anti-EU electoral] trend and soldiering on with what Brussels calls “more Europe”, which often means more interventionism and central planning. And citizens are not happy with this. Instead of seeing Brexit as a warning sign and an opportunity to improve the European Union strengthening freedom, openness and diversity, the separation of the UK has been taken as an opportunity to advance in an incorrect model that mirrors the French “dirigisme”, a central-planned, heavily intervened model.

"The European Union Must Think Local To Address Global Challenges." By Daniel Lacalle, ZeroHedge, 1/4/18.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

More Fun With Hugo

The science fiction reading / writing community once agreed, albeit tacitly, that the point of our beloved genre was entertainment. You know: fun. Diversion. Scope for the imagination. Maybe, once or twice a year, a get-together with others who share our enthusiasm for this special landscape of the mind.

Things have changed. The colonization and conquest of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) and of the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) at which the once-coveted Hugo Awards are given, by Social Justice Warrior (SJW) snowflakes has permanently marred what was once a thing of pure enjoyment. In brief, they own Worldcon and the Hugos, and no one who differs with their crabbed, self-righteous ideology shall be permitted to participate meaningfully in them. Indeed, the SJWs will do their best to hound out of the Con anyone they regard as inimical to their hard-left / gender-war / race-and-ethnicity-war / homosexualist / anti-capitalist / anti-white / anti-freedom convictions.

Not everyone who still regards SF as entertainment and a place where the imagination can roam freely is willing to accept that:

     A lot of what I do is point out that so much of these little cliques of Science Fiction writers focus their entire lives on (they certainly don’t focus on selling books) is how they make FAKE OUTRAGE stories out of something that shouldn’t be a story at all. The last week exemplified this as, incredibly, the community of internet science fiction writers collectively lost their minds when:

     A professional Science Fiction writer with the qualifications joined SFWA. This is a writer’s guild. I am a professional writer. It’s that simple. Not liking me doesn’t have anything to do with it. The entire point of the club in theory is to protect writers like me from suffering undue hate or illegal discrimination from the industry. Yet that didn’t stop File 770’s nasty hate brigade from going off the rails over my joining. A lot of the anger must have been because it very uncomfortable about themselves, as it really points to a LOT of ugly truths about them with some of the nasty things they said.
     A professional Science Fiction writer is attending a Science Fiction convention. Like with Diversity & Comics earlier this year, I was immediately targeted by low-level professionals to try to preemptively get me kicked out of the con for my mere presence. This is exactly why I have to wear a body cam to go to the con to begin with, some of these folk will almost certainly try to frame me for a crime, and I will have evidence to the contrary. Worldcon needs to step it up and make sure I’m protected from these crazies so my friends and fans can have fun.

Now, I don’t know Jon Del Arroz. I haven’t read anything he’s written. My interest in this matter was piqued by a Facebook entry that came to my attention via fellow writer Marina Fontaine:

Worldcon 76 has chosen to reduce Jonathan Del Arroz's membership from attending to supporting. He will not be allowed to attend the convention in person. Mr. Del Arroz's supporting membership preserves his rights to participate in the Hugo Awards nomination and voting process. He was informed of our decision via email.
We have taken this step because he has made it clear that he fully intends to break our code of conduct. We take that seriously. Worldcon 76 strives to be an inclusive place in fandom, as difficult as that can be, and racist and bullying behavior is not acceptable at our Worldcon. This expulsion is one step towards eliminating such behavior and was not taken lightly. The senior staff and board are in agreement about the decision and it is final. If you have any questions or concerns feel free to share them here or in email at IRT@worldcon76.org

The supposed violation of the Worldcon “code of conduct?” Del Arroz’s intention to wear a body cam, as he stated in the previous post. As I haven’t read the Worldcon “code of conduct,” I have no idea whether that’s prohibited by it explicitly or implicitly. However, if we accept Del Arroz’s testimony about what befell him at the Diversity & Comics convention, he has sound reasons to want the protection of an objective record of any encounters with hostile attendees. And we know from experience how hostile SJWs can be toward us Normals...especially en masse.

Frankly, if I were involved in staging Worldcon, I’d be hurrying to distance myself from the idiocy of their decision to exclude Del Arroz. I’d be far more interested in getting the full scoop about what happened to Del Arroz at Diversity & Comics, with as many eyewitness confirmations as possible. But it appears that Worldcon is now “wholly owned” by the SJW snowflakes, who deem it their privilege to harass, threaten, vilify, and generally offend anyone they dislike without fear of any adverse consequence.

However, the first error belongs to Del Arroz: He shouldn’t have announced his intentions. He gave those who despise him a rationale under which to exclude him. That was stupid. He ought to have known from previous events that they would be watching his site for any such.

Of course, I could argue that joining SFWA and attending Worldcon are equally unforced errors. “Don’t be a joiner!” I cry once more. ("And stay away from crowds," choruses Ol' Remus.) Especially if the organization at issue is already as completely ruined as SFWA or Worldcon. But chacun a son gout.

A Little Late With This

But, I have a REALLY good reason.

I have a monster cold. Not just little sniffles, but the kind of respiratory infection where you can barely raise your head from your pillow for the better part of a week. This is the first time in a week that I've been vertical for more than an hour or so at a time.

Yeah, New Year's Eve was NOT exciting.

My plan is to publish three times a week - MWF, at 8 am. I'm working on getting some pieces ready to go. This is the best I can do until then.

Iran is in the headlines. The protests are smaller, but the regime seems to be more concerned about them (could it be that - unlike the previous president - Trump's response is not predictable?).

I'm on the fence about this one. I don't have a problem with SOME support for the Iranian rebels, but REALLY don't want US troops or advisors involved. I'm for keeping the CIA away from active participation in this, as well. I trust the CIA about as much as HRC - in other words, not at all.

It looks like CNN (and a LOT of Elites) have misjudged the prevailing ethos of Americans. Yeah, they're relatively tolerant of occasional use of pot, particularly among post-high school young people. They are less so, if the person has a responsible position, or their use crosses the line of once in a while to frequent.

The average American would not think this blatant promotion of marijuana to be appropriate, nor worthy of network time.

It's funny - the places where the Legalize Pot Movement is big are also those areas where everything else - alcohol, tobacco, trash, possibly non-PC words, water use, land use, and commercial activity - is HEAVILY regulated. The rest of the country is generally live-and-let-live about those other personal choices.

Yet, they are the "tolerant ones".

It's only a short time until this happens.

BTW, Ladies - you don't have balls. Unless you're a "Woman", who has not had the necessary surgery.

Prediction: By the year 2050, women are going to get a LOT more cranky. Entrepreneurs might want to build separate, heavily armed safe houses for men in danger of attack.

Just For Fun: Invent A Game

Now and then in my sojourns through that magical wonderland called Amazon, I’ll stumble upon a product that intrigues me for no logical reason. Yesterday was such an occasion:

That’s right, Gentle Reader: the product illustrated above is a bag of 140 polyhedral dice of the sort used in Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games. Twenty sets, seven dice per set. Dice and bag for only $29.99!

Now, I have no idea why anyone would want or need twenty sets of DnD / RPG dice. But the product listing mentioned above isn’t the only such; there are dozens of similar offerings. Therefore, there must be a market for them. That got me to thinking: What sort of game would need all the dice in the bag, plus the bag itself?

So here’s a fun challenge:

Invent a game that requires:
- The Wiz Dice Bag of Devouring with all its contents,
- A map of some portion of either our world or any well known fictional realm,
- And one other item of your choice.
Write rules for that game for two, three, or four players.
Propose a tournament around it.

I’ll publish the funniest and most imaginative entries here at Liberty’s Torch.

Generalism Versus Specialism: An Inclusive Approach

Some debates are destined to continue indefinitely. One that has stuck in my craw for many years arises from a famous Robert A. Heinlein / “Notebooks of Lazarus Long” entry:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

For all my admiration of Heinlein’s fiction and his overall philosophy, I find the above statement ludicrous...even offensive. It evoked two responses from me:

“Can you do all that? Show me.”
“At what cost to you and those you love?”

Alma Boykin attempted to square the circle:

I think it comes down to the question of applying Heinlein’s idea to an individual or to society. For the individual, I firmly believe that having a broad range of knowledge and skills is beneficial, and possibly life saving if not for you than for someone else. Granted, the character in the book who is speaking is older than Methuselah, and has had time and the need to learn all those skills and more, but look at what Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts used to be required to learn before they aged out of the programs. If you have a wide knowledge base, and skill base, I think you are better prepared for when life knocks you sideways and you have to re-group and possibly head in a different career direction or life-path.
However, is that best for the economy and society as a whole? There is indeed value in specialization, both at the level of assembly work and manufacture (as Smith argues most famously in the pin-makers passage), and at the level of regional markets. Why should London not have more pin makers, and Scotland more sheep-raisers? Scotland had land and a declining population of people, with lots and lots of sheep (1760s-70s), while London had lots and lots of people who could do piece work and thus earn a living at a relatively unskilled task. It was far more efficient to send wool to London in exchange for mass-made pins and other goods, and far cheaper for all parties (so long as sea-trade remained viable), than for the Scots to try to make pins for themselves and for Londoners to raise sheep in the public parks. Today, in the 2010s, we see similar specialization from places with lots of people and intellectual capital as compared to places with natural resources and physical capital. Or we did, until the ‘Internet and other related forces threw a joker into the deck.

Miss Boykin makes some good points, as do some of her commenters. Yet there is little to no consideration of the costs attendant upon electing specialization versus attempting the Way of the Renaissance Man. Whereupon your humble Curmudgeon must leap to fill the gap.

The most impressive individual I know personally shall be used to represent Generalism. I’ll call him Joe, mostly because that’s his name.

Joe has been, at various points in his life, a soldier, an electrical engineer, an educator, a security specialist, a construction expert, a radio expert, a police officer and deputy sheriff, a husband and father, and more. He’s executed the duties of all those undertakings superbly. He and his wife live in a four-building compound he personally designed and built from the ground up. He maintains it almost entirely without assistance from specialists.

My admiration for Joe is unbounded. I can’t think of anyone whose general knowledge and overall competence is greater. If there’s anyone walking the Earth today who’d have a fair chance of rebuilding civilization after a world-shaking calamity, Joe’s the man.

But Joe is seventy years of age, and – to the extent possible for one who’s always available to help others with their problems – is retired from paid employment. He occasionally worries about money. He didn’t occupy any of his various niches long enough to accumulate a substantial “security stash.” Thus, he and his (also retired) wife must watch the pennies. Fortunately, they maintain a modest standard of living and have no debts whatsoever. Given the continuation of Social Security, they can make ends meet.

Generalism, which can be supremely emotionally satisfying, has that cost.

Now for a representative of Specialism to counterbalance Joe. Once again, I’ll make use of a specialist I know well: in this case, myself.

Early in life I chose software engineering as my trade. I’ve dabbled in a couple of other fields, but software has always been the main string to my occupational bow. Moreover, as I aged I became even more narrowly specialized: from programming generally to real-time programming, to real-time systems programming, to real-time systems simulation programming. As there was always a need for my specialty, and relatively few specialists in my sector at any given time, I was able to command a high salary, a large part of which I managed to save.

I can’t fix my own wiring or plumbing. I can’t do more with an automobile than change the oil and filter. I certainly can’t do architecture or command the skills required for construction. When things of that sort need doing, I must consult specialists who do them for money. But I have an ample pension, a large nest egg, and no debts. Barring the complete collapse of the dollar, I’m secure against financial hazards. I can indulge my and my wife’s pastimes. I can enjoy my retirement without worrying about the future. (I can also drink a lot of wine.)

Whereas Joe’s cost is a degree of financial uncertainty, my cost is a high degree of dependency upon paid specialists.

Most of us don’t consciously choose to become generalists or specialists. We tend to arrive at one of those poles by the implications of our priorities. He who opts to become a generalist will tend to place independence from outside assistance above other considerations. He who arrives at a specialty will tend to promote the financial advantages that accrue to a successful specialist. But each track has an associated cost that must be paid.

Part of the price specialists such as myself must pay is a (hopefully innocent) envy of generalists like Joe. Words could never capture how ardently I wish I had his all-around competence. But it was not to be, precisely because of what I valued most.

Societies don’t make conscious choices either. As I wrote in Freedom’s Scion:

     As they exited the tree-lined corridor from the commercial strip and turned onto the pathway to Morelon House, Althea halted her husband and turned to face him. “I can’t figure out what he’s planning, can you?”
     Martin gazed at her ruefully. “I’ve been thinking about that and nothing else, love. But I’m dead certain it’s nothing we’d enjoy.”
     “So what now?”
     He grimaced. “I don’t know. Postpone the trip, for sure. How to get our initial load up to Thule? Frankly, I don’t think we have much choice. Our clan had heavy-lift capacity at one point, didn’t it?”
     She nodded. “Yeah, but we sold the plane when Adam’s dad set up shop here. Charisse said she was happy to get rid of it. It made more sense to hire it out, so we wouldn’t have to maintain a plane and train pilots.”
     She glanced at the entrance to Morelon House. The old mansion looked as sturdy as ever. It presented an appearance of immutable strength to all who saw it. Yet it had begun to seem to her that the clan had undermined that strength in several ways, with several decisions. None of them had been fatal; indeed, when each was made, it had appeared to be the obvious choice. Yet in combination, they had rendered Clan Morelon massively dependent upon the wills and skills of a multitude of outsiders...persons who might not be as available or dependable as one would hope.
     —That’s the downside of the division of labor, Al.
     Yeah. I can see that, Grandpere. But how could we have avoided it?
     —By resisting all the temptations to specialize and to make use of specialists. By purchasing absolute self-sufficiency at the price of economic advantage. Which, incidentally, no clan or society known to history has ever managed to do.
     The incentives are too strong, aren’t they?
     —Judge for yourself, dear. Put yourself in Charisse’s place at the point when Jack Grenier moved into the area and started offering his services around. Would you have done as she did, knowing only what she did at the time?
     Probably. If there’s a lesson in this—
     —If there is, Al, no one has ever drawn it. The division of labor is the one and only path toward general prosperity. It can go to an incredible depth. A frightening depth. And it is utterly reliant upon the character and good will of the specialists. Let one critical specialty be corrupted by political forces, or conceive of a grudge against some other group, or even decide that it can rape its customers without fear of reprisal, and the destruction spreads faster than anyone can act to check it.

The choice may not be a conscious one for an individual, but it’s guaranteed not to be a conscious one for a free and prosperous society.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

That Didn’t Take Long

As of 7:30 PM on 12/31/2017, I had attained a condition I’d sought for the whole of the year:

I’d cleared my “To Do” list.

I was happy. I was proud. I was also pretty BLEEP!ing tired. But there it was: every box was checked. I could enter 2018 with nothing hanging over my head.

That state of grace lasted for exactly one day.

Please excuse me for the day, Gentle Reader. The list has mysteriously repopulated itself, and I’ve been pounding ‘em out nineteen to the dozen since 4:45 AM. I hope to be back tomorrow. Meanwhile, stay warm.

Monday, January 1, 2018

An Announcement: Free Fiction!

If you’re one of the few sentient creatures in the Universe who hasn’t yet read:

...please be aware that from December 25 through January 1, those FIVE books will be:

Free of Charge at Smashwords!

No matter which electronic format you prefer, you'll be able to get those books, for free, at the links above.

Whitman and Russell Stover Ain’t Got Nothin’ On Me!

Before and above all other things:

Happy New Year!

May 2018 bring you every imaginable good thing...especially a bit more warmth. Now let’s have some fun.

Sarah Hoyt is aware that the most reliable predictions are that ongoing trends will continue. Some choice snippets:

     The thing is, I’ve grown so tired of seeing quite obviously fatuous predictions that I felt the need to write this, with both my own predictions and an explanation of the process of making predictions. Which is not only my business but honestly, the business of every sane human being. If you can’t correctly predict the results of events or actions, you have no clue of the link between cause and effect. That leads to a lot of problems. In general, we call it “the Obama Administration” for easy shorthand — not that they had a monopoly on this behavior, unfortunately....
     As the attempt to drown out the legitimate cases of harassment – mostly by leftists, in leftist-dominated institutions – by claiming #metoo and that all men were essentially harassers became more frantic, it has become obvious that any man can be accused of harassment at any time by anyone. So, here is a genuine prediction: I predict that instead of giving HR more power, this will give companies pause before hiring women, which will lead to a lot of decent and qualified women being left unemployed.... In the same way, the people who are all happy that Google and Facebook will now be able to “counter fake news with information” seem to fail to understand that just because there is a link underneath some article I’m interested in, from say, NBC news or HuffPo, I’m no more likely to click on it than I am to run naked down the street....My prediction here is that we’ll continue to point and laugh.
     I also don’t believe that more and more people will join the #resistance — mostly because, seriously, what on Earth are they resisting? Weren’t we supposed to have camps by now? #worstHitlerever.
     I fully expect, also, that not being forced to pay a fine for not having Obamacare will NOT result in the deaths of millions on the street....
     The one thing I can predict for sure is that the left will continue to shriek with unhinged fury at everything that Trump does and fails to do.
     So the one solid bet I have for you is “Buy popcorn futures. You can’t go wrong.”

Allow me to add a prediction of my own: President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords will not cause the Earth to go into a rolling boil. Yeah, I know it’s daring, but I’m...just that way.

A nation 98% of whose citizens have internalized the universal precepts of right and wrong won’t need a lot of law enforcement. Andy Griffith’s Mayberry was a representation of such a community. However, the United States has an unfortunate number of regions where that’s not the case:

     For the third year in a row, Baltimore, Md., has had more than 300 murders, reaching a new record of murders per number of residents in 2017.
     Some residents attribute the high murder rate to relaxed police patrols in the city following high-profile cases of police brutality. Officers have backed off in neighborhoods, like the one where Freddie Gray was arrested.
     The Rev. Kinji Scott, a pastor in Baltimore who's held positions in local city government, says the opposite needs to happen.
     "We wanted the police there," Scott says. "We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn't want them beating the hell out of us, we didn't want that."
     He's among activists who are calling for police reform to reduce the violence in Baltimore and several other high-crime cities across the U.S. that he says haven't seen change. That change begins with a conversation between the communities directly involved, Scott says.

Every word of the above is either an evasion, a misdirection, or a more direct sort of lie:

Baltimore’s demographics are 63% Negro.
Baltimore’s Negro cops are least willing to patrol Negro neighborhoods, which leaves most of the city un-patrolled.
The very persons screaming for the return of the police to Negro neighborhoods were among those most vociferous in blaming the police for the disorder and violence in those neighborhoods.
Negro parents are extremely reluctant to discipline their children, especially their teenage sons. Some of their reasons are understandable, but the consequences are bad nevertheless.
There can be no “conversation” between the police and disorderly, violent Negro neighborhoods that doesn’t begin with “Obey the law, you sons of bitches, or we’ll come down hard on you, and you’ll deserve it. Admit it!”

But in our oh-so-politically-correct-and-racially-sensitive age, the “authorities” are largely unwilling to say so...especially the “authorities” of Baltimore, nearly all of whom are Negroes, put in office and kept there by Negro votes. Therefore, I have a prediction: For 2018, Matters in Baltimore will go on as they have these past three years.

Commentator Susan Gingrich has a New Year’s wish:

I’m starting this commentary with a confession. I’ve always liked men, and I still like them a lot. My husband is the best man I know. I like compliments from men, doors opened for me, harmless hugs, and other things some women don’t. Throughout my professional career, it was my male bosses who encouraged and promoted me, appreciating my independence, intelligence and abilities. The only problem bosses I ever had were women who felt threatened by those same qualities. I feel no sisterhood with women because we share a common body part, preferring to select those women I feel friendship with akin to sisterhood. My wish for 2018 is that all women participating in it, End the War on Men!

A beautiful wish...but it won’t happen. Just as with the black racialist hucksters, gender-war feminist hate-mongers know there’s money and prestige to be had from keeping the War on Men going. Therefore, they’ll continue. They might get a smidgen less respect and attention, but they won’t stop. Jesse Jackson didn’t. Al Sharpton didn’t. Louis Farrakhan didn’t. Those men all lost large fractions of their supporters after the various incidents that disgraced them came to light. Why expect the lunatics of the gender-war feminist fringe to act differently?

It seems that one of Sarah Hoyt’s predictions above has already acquired an exemplar:

WASHINGTON – Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) urged Congress before the holiday break to protect federal workers in the event of a government shutdown, adding that a “united” federal government under Republican leadership is “dangerous to all living creatures.”...
“I get so discouraged when Republicans get on the floor and talk about federal employees as nameless, faceless bureaucrats – when, in fact, the only reason we have the wonderful country we do, the great country we have, is because we have federal employees who are keeping us safe and well-organized and progressing in so many places from the environment to our defense,” [Rep. Don] Beyer (D, VA) responded.

Gentle Reader, words fail me – and when you hear a writer say that, you should mark your calendar. The above is so vivid albeit unconscious a self-parody that no words of mine could heighten its absurdity. Enjoy it with a glass of (spiked) egg nog and a hollow laugh.

I find the following statements to be uniquely insightful and accurate:

     As soon as the decepticons realized Donald Trump was actually intent on destroying their 30-year-built Potemkin village, the UniParty dropped all pretense and came screaming out of the shadows right behind us…. man, that was weird at first. It was like living amid the vampire pod-people as our neighbors and not knowing who was actually infected at the checkout line in the grocery store. Fortunately MAGA hats, or MAGA discussion, is like garlic to ’em.
     In 2017 their uncontrollable autonomic responses became known as “triggering”.
     Funny stuff.
     The funniest of all funny things is when you ‘trigger’ someone infected with TDS, their expressed world-view can change instantaneously. Their belief is whatever is opposite of Trump. The most recent example highlights Islamic Terrorists and Iranian Mullahs as the great defenders of institutions cherished by those with anti-Trump sensibilities. Weird people.
     He’s one guy, and he has them entirely surrounded.
     Perpetually triggered, consistently paranoid and surrounded.
     Damned funny, if you ask me.

I concur, and I applaud.

One closing thought, which you’re unlikely to get today from any but a dedicated Catholic website...or this one.

Today, once known as the Feast of the Circumcision, has been renamed the Solemnity of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. It’s an exceedingly special day for two reasons above all others:

It explicitly venerates Mary for her acceptance of the hardest, most hazardous, and cruelest duty any woman ever undertook;
It makes plain that Mary’s importance in Catholic teaching derives from the duty she accepted and not from “divinity,” which she has not.

“Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.” Think for a moment about the prospects of an unmarried Jewish girl in classical Judea who becomes pregnant and claims that she “knows not a man.” In that time and place the penalty for conceiving out of wedlock was to be stoned to death. Mary, who had received the Judaic equivalent of a “convent upbringing,” knew that full well. Yet she accepted God’s will as Gabriel had announced it.

It took an angelic intervention to keep Joseph, her betrothed, from casting Mary aside. There is no record of what public opprobrium she might have endured. The record we do have is of her maternal devotion to her Son...even unto His death on a cross.

Catholics call Mary of Nazareth the Queen of Heaven, queen over angels and men. I’d say she earned it – and a special commemoration, once a year.

That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Enjoy your ~~hangover~~ New Year’s Day, and try to stay warm. At 6 degrees Fahrenheit – the temperature here when I tumbled out of bed and ambled out to Mass; I haven’t checked it since then – it took some doing. Think warm thoughts.

Happy New Year! And, Here's a Link You'll Want to Read

It's a very comprehensive and well-sourced breakdown of just how the Obama administration and the Clinton forces worked together to create the Russia Collusion story, package it, and sell it to the media.

The best part, from their perspective, is that the people who who most culpable worked for a section of the Justice Dept. that is immune from oversight. So, Congress and the Executive Branches are unable to investigate their criminal actions - by law.