The History of the World, Part Eight

Since it's been (accidentally, sorry) awhile since part seven gentlereaders, a quick review would seem to be called for. According to the lopsided way King Crank looks at world history: H. sapiens won the real hunger games, rose to the top of the food chain, and established various and sundry civilizations.

Let's jump in the WAYBAC machine and return to part two.

Next, depending on how you look at it, an awful lot of history happened, or, a few things happened over and over again and once in a great, great while something really cool happened. Kind of like the life of the modern day average Joe/Joan Bagadonuts, but much more violent.

They attacked us or we attacked them in the name of cash, conquest, revenge, God, the gods, hunger, honor, slaves et cetera. Fortunately, God was on our side or it would have been even worse. As Thomas Hobbes pointed out, life is indeed, “...solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  Mr. H. was arguing that this is the natural state of man (he was right) and that’s why we need an all-powerful ruler to keep us on the straight and narrow (he was wrong, but we do need some form of gubmint). That way we can direct our energies to defend our playground and/or slaughtering them instead of each other.  

Once in awhile, peace would break out but Mother Nature provides us with a way to stave off boredom and complacency, natural disasters and disease.

This is how things rolled most days in most places. Why? Well, it’s either because we’re naked apes living in a dangerous world, or, someone screwed up the paradise we were provided with by God and he’s still mad (details depend on which creation myth you subscribe to). It wasn’t all bad though. Once in awhile Joe or Joan B. was fortunate enough to have an actual boring day. Also, as mentioned above, once in a great, great while, something truly cool happened."

Next, we jump ahead to part three.

... . In 1776 the world caught a major break.

In Great Britain's North American colonies a bunch of folks got together and invented the United States of America. In Scotland, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, invented modern economics, and taught the world how free markets would eventually lead to the need for a weight loss industry. These two events occurred while the industrial revolution was picking up steam.  A trifecta!  

And then, everyone lived happily ever after.

The End

Well, not exactly. Naked apes will be naked apes after all. Mother Nature loves all her children equally, from deadly pathogens to would be Mother Theresas. Thomas Hobbes famous observation about the nature of life on Earth -- that it tends to be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short -- continued, and continues, to be true.

For example, the same America that often claims to be the world's oldest democracy (if you go a-googling you will find this factoid disputed by many) didn't get around to outlawing slavery until nearly a hundred years after formally declaring that it was obvious that all men, well, white males anyway, are created equal. It took even longer to acknowledge that the ladies aren't chattel.

Even then, we had to go to war with each other to make it happen. Even then, Jim Crow laws, literally or figuratively, remained in effect for another 100 years. Even now, we still have a handful (relatively speaking) of maroons in this country that think race predetermines an individual's character.

[Gentlereaders, an aside, 'cause that's how I roll. Not so fun fact: According to this PBS website (1) if the American Civil War was fought today and the same percentage of the population (2.5%) were killed, 7,000,000 people would be deleated.]

Even then... (insert your favorite crappy thing that someone, or several someones, did to someone else, or several someone elses in the last couple of hundred years, here).

Now, no matter what you believe, or who you blame, or what you think should be done, life on Earth is, as they say, is what it is -- always has been, and probably always will be. As to potential utopias, or heaven, or advanced civilizations from other planets, etc. -- I have little interest, less knowledge. My focus is on what's best for the most during the blink of an eye we call a lifetime.

Deidre McCloskey figured it out. About two hundred years ago, certain people in certain places discovered that free people + free markets + "Humanomics" (2) = unprecedented prosperity. The modern era was born. The old normal, thousands of years of a handful of kings and clerics in charge and almost everyone else a virtual or actual slave, began to die off.

The American and the Industrial Revolutions, combined with the economic revolution embodied in the concept of free trade will, long after we're all dead, be considered as important as the invention of agriculture.

But I'm not a nationalist, a little nationalism is necessary and healthy, a lot is tacky. I'm a gratitudalist. I believe that in spite of our many flaws and historical sins that the USA is (arguably, and at least for now) about as good as it gets. I'm grateful, as I did nothing to earn this, I just had the dumb luck to be born here.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the prosperity, freedom, and obesity epidemic that we take for granted in the USA, and that has taken hold to one degree or another elsewhere, will last. Some local version of Putin, or one of his Darth Vaderish ilk, might someday manage to take over the country and go all Orwellian on our pampered asses.

We live in gut-wrenching scary times. We live in a nation that has lost its cultural consensus in a world that's never had one. We're awash in information, good and bad. The digital revolutions daily disruptions are as likely to generate high anxiety as high expectations.

H. sapiens are what they are, and though they have, and continue, to evolve, all you and I actually have is this moment, now this one, now this one... Deep breath, savor what you have, stop fussing about what you don't. If your life sucks sweaty socks just now, know that it could be worse and that if you wait it out, it might get better. It always stops raining eventually.

Resolve to be kind. You don't have to like the other kids on the playground but you need to get along with them for everyone to get a chance on the swings.

Have an OK day.

(1) PBS -- The Civil War By the Numbers

(2) Humanomics

Dear (Eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (#3)

Dear (E) G & GG (#3),

As promised, Here is Poppa's take on the recent, unexpected triumph of the Donald.

The Donald won because he's an expert in what I call gut first/brain later. Scott Adams, semi-famous cartoonist, one of my virtual gurus and (like me a perpetual) student of human nature, would say that the Donald grasps that H. Sapiens are meat puppets that react emotionally/instinctively/intuitively to most everything, and then rationalize their behavior afterward.

As Martha Stewart used to say (still says?), it's a good thing, or at least it was. Because...

H. sapiens have spent a lot more time fighting their way to the top of the food chain than they have enjoying the benefits of having won the real hunger games. Visceral reactions are dramatically faster than rational ones. Effective visceral reactions became innate biases because sitting around a cozy fire with the gang and eating -- rather than being eaten -- rocks.


"The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."
-Salena Zito

The traditional approach for a dude/dudette seeking to be elected/reelected to a position in The Gubmint, or even just the gubmint, has been to tell enough people what they want to hear and then if elected/reelected doing/saying whatever will get 'em reelected to the same or an even better position. There's an entire industry devoted to helping politicians/would be politicians do this.

 BIG BUT.

The Donald, like the other Wizard of Oz, and who may be the best salesman the world has ever seen, understands that the quickest, most effective way to make the sale is by emotional/psychological manipulation. Capture the heart and the customer will invent a justification.

The word manipulation, to me at least, generally has a shady connotation. I use it here in a neutral sort of way. As my late wife, that sadly only one of you will remember, used to say, it's not what you do so much as why you do it. Example: Advertising that guilts you into donating to a worthy, legitimate charity v. advertising that manipulates you into buying a worthless piece of crap.

The customer, in this case, is the American people. The polls tell us that most of us think the country is on the wrong track, and they have for years. In my semi-humble opinion, this is true, because this is the attitude I encounter on a daily basis. What we're fighting over is what path to take and who should be the tour guide.

So, how does a politically (mostly) non-ideological, been there, done that gazillionaire with only one more prize left to win, one more achievement to add to his resume to obtain a sort of virtual/historical immortality become the CEO of the USA?

He turns himself into the political version of a TV wrestling superstar. Most TV wrestling fans over the age of 10 or so, understand it's not real, it's entertainment. They still enjoy it.

Most declared Trumpets understand, to one degree or another, that the Donald deliberately farts in church just to rattle the chains of the fat, smug, complacent church elders who run things primarily for their own benefit. They still enjoy it.

In TV wrestling, or soap operas for that matter, "good" guys persons become "bad" guys persons and back again at the flip of a switch. "Bad" guys persons are often quite popular characters.

America didn't just elect Donald J. Trump president, they elected a character he created, that I call (one of his wives thought it up) the Donald.

The Donald is what you get when the hyper-partisans of the left and right have managed to divide the nation into two roughly equal teams of bitter rivals.

The Donald is what you get when one out of every 15 jobs is a government job and the folks who have given up on finding a job aren't counted as part of the official unemployment rate. The Donald is what you get when millions of people who want full-time work can't get it.

The Donald is what you get when his opponent is a woman whose platform was "I'm a woman, and it's my turn, and I'm gonna' give you all sorts of free shtuff."

The Donald -- with his ever-shifting positions, the occasional lies, the hyperbole, the venom, the midnight tweeting -- is what you get when things are so screwed up America is prepared to take a chance on choosing a president based on the good show he put on.

For now, all we can do is wait and hope, because no one is sure exactly what he's going to do. In the meantime, we get to enjoy watching him torment the people that still take the bad guy/crazy person persona literally. I was one, I admit, for a minute or two.

I decided, no hoped, that it was a game prior to the election. But for the record, I didn't vote for him (or her), so if it turns out he is the Hitler of the new millennium, don't blame me.

Have an OK day.

Permanent Record Cards

[Gentlereaders, for those of you keeping track, this week was supposed to be the third letter to my (eventual) grandstickies and great-grandstickies. So far, I've been relaying my impressions of the recent presidential reality show and its subsequent aftershocks. I'd planned on discussing why I think the Donald, the Wizard of Oz of the new millennium, won in spite of the fact that most of the members of the infotainment industry who specialize in this sort of thing predicted otherwise.

I tried. But I'm up to here with the nonstop daily speculations, and the speculations about speculations, of the 24-hour news cycle. If George Washington found a way to be transported forward in time to our era I think he would want to know at what point we had decided to switch to an elected monarch, and why. Well, at least we get to pick our king or queen and can fire them in four years. 

The reason, of course, for the nonstop daily speculations, and the speculations about speculations, is because The Gubmint is so large, so powerful, and in hock up to Uncle Sam's nose. Not exactly what George and his homies had in mind. 

I'll return to the subject of how the Donald pulled it off next week. In the meantime, below is something I wrote a while back about The Gubmint, a business that lives off of The Gubmint, and my adventures in Catholic grade school. 

Spoiler: 2,700,000,000.

Begged question: If Mr. Peabody could perfect a WAYBAC machine, did he ever try his paw at going way forward?]



For reasons not worth bothering you with, I googled the phrase, "total number of civilian employees of the US federal government" which, I thought, was the sort of query that was so obvious and straightforward that the answer would not only be the very first hit, Google might even display the number within the first hit, obviating the need to even click on it.

Nope.

The very first hit was a page published by opm.gov. Clicking on it brought up a chart that displayed civilian and military employment numbers from 1962 to 2014. OPM? hmm, I wonder, what that might be? I went to the opm.gov home page and encountered a large and impressive blue and gold banner (that included a shield) for the NATIONAL BACKGROUND INVESTIGATIONS BUREAU.

What!?! Uh-oh, they've finally got me. Sister Mary McGillicuddy wasn't telling a little white lie in an effort to control/motivate the little heathens in her charge. I actually do have a Permanent Record Card, and the NBIC has caught up with me. Well, it was a good run, it took them almost six four decades to get around to me. They must really have a huge backlog.

I started thinking about all of the sins/transgressions/bad grades/etc. I had accumulated in my 39 years here on Earth. Wait a sec', that's just an ex-Catholic thing. Oh, sorry, those gentlereaders (and my G & G-Gs) that didn't go to an American Catholic grade school prior to when it became possible to be an American Catholic and still believe pretty much whatever you want, this must be confusing.

All through Catholic grade school (my parents couldn't afford the tuition so I don't know if this applied to Catholic high school at the time) we were warned that we had a Permanent Record Card and that it would follow us for the rest of our lives. Our PRC not only contained a detailed listing of all of our grades and such, any given nun or lay-teacher, any given year, had the power to write anything they wanted on our card.

I have an image in my head of a huge, shabby, nondescript warehouse located in a seedy, decayed neighborhood somewhere in inner city Pittsburgh. One of its many large, cavernous rooms contains thousands of dusty file cabinets filled with Permanent Record Cards.

The average potential employer doesn't even know that it exists, or that there are warehouses just like it scattered all over America. But The Gubmint, the gubmints, private detectives (legitimate and otherwise), and the world's espionage agencies know.

After my heart rate and breathing returned to normal and my more or less rational side reasserted itself, I thought, wait a minute, my computer hasn't locked up, powered down, or exploded. No one is crashing through the door screaming, "Get down, everybody down!" like they do on TV. Not so much as even a bogus warning message that terrible things were about to happen if I didn't do as instructed.

Phew! That was embarrassing. Dana, my imaginary gentlereader, and Marie-Louise, my beautiful muse, started giggling and high-fiving each other.

I ignored them and then set out to determine, what exactly is The National Background Investigations Bureau? So, I clicked on the about button of opm.gov and discovered the following.

Vision Statement: "The OPM will become America's model employer for the 21st century." Go big or go home! (or, be vague and relax, there's a lot of years left in the 21st century).

Mission: "Recruit, retain and honor a world-class workforce for the American people"

Ahh! It's The Gubmint's HR department. I'll bet OPM stands for Office of Personnel Management. Okey dokey. Wait a minute... this adventure began when I clicked on opm.gov and the big, scary National Backgrounds Investigation Bureau banner appeared on my screen.

I returned to opm.gov and discovered an < and a > at opposite ends of the big, scary banner. My bad. I started clicking on >s and discovered other banners. This agency must be huge. Well, considering the size of The Gubmint, I guess that makes sense. I went exploring. Oh yeah -- the web pages go on seemingly forever. Not exactly shocking -- been there, done that.

[Update. If you go to opm.gov you will most likely encounter a different first banner than the one I did, they change and rotate them.]

If you've never experienced the joy of wandering around any of the websites published by The Gubmint, pick any -- The Gubmint -- entity you can think of and go a-googling. Tabs will multiply faster than the interest and penalties on an IRS judgment.

Also, you might discover one or more private businesses that depend on The Gubmint teat. For example, on this particular journey, I discovered something called FCW (Federal Computer Week --  I'm not sure exactly how I landed there) which is a weekly magazine that "... provides federal technology executives with the information, ideas, and strategies necessary to successfully navigate the complex world of federal business."

Huh? Well, FCW is owned by the 1105 Government Information Group, and according to themselves, "... is the leading provider of integrated information and media to the government market." They do this via five different publications that specialize in keeping track of what up, in five different sectors of The Gubmint.

[Dana, my imaginary gentlereader speaks. What's yer point? Is there a point to any of this bonkercockie?  Oui, ze point please, chimes in Marie-Louise, my muse]

In case you're wondering if I have a point, of course I do, don't I always? -- eventually.

I set out to discover how many civilians work for The Gubmint and discovered that The Gubmint is so huge that a privately owned, for-profit firm exists that makes money by supplying information to employees of The Gubmint -- about The Gubmint.

Where does the money come from? They sell advertising to firms that sell goods and services to -- The Gubmint.

Insert background sounds of a busy bar (murmur, murmur -- clink, clink, etc.) here

"So, where do you work?"

"I write for a publication you've never heard of called Federal Computer Week, its..."

"You must be kidding! Everyone at work is passing around an article from FCW titled, "Government Needs Digital Transformation to Reverse Sliding Satisfaction."  

"You're kidding me! a friend of mine did that one. Where do you work?"

And they lived happily ever after.

Have an OK day.


©2016 Mark Mehlmauer