Wisdom from the Street

Experts have their place, of course.  I used to be one, a professor, and so I know a good deal about them, about all sorts of experts.  Indeed, I was once a professor of geography and so one might think I would know my way around the world that I would understand how it works.  That would be a mistake.  From time to time I do get some insights into such things, and sometimes from experts, but not always.  Sometimes these insights come from what would seem unexpected sources.  Take, for example, my dentist, who is from Bulgaria.  Sometimes, when she has my mouth incapacitated and helpless to protest, she lectures me on how the Balkans work.  She is an expert in dentistry, but to my knowledge not trained in any way in any field having to do with political geography.  And yet she nailed it.  In very simple form, where most significant wisdom resides, not in incomprehensible complexity but in quite simple paradigms.  It has to do with tribes, she says, with small tribes of people who hate one another and have done so for millennia, and for very good reasons, like what the other tribe did to grandmother.  Once she had put her finger on it, I then recalled all the rest of it, the various horrors of Balkan history, which now I understood as never before.   All this from my dentist, by no means an expert but who knows the country and its people.  Enough so to get out the first chance she had to do so.  And join the rest of us in Southern California.

And so here we sit, people from everywhere, breathing free and enjoying the good life.  This is a place to which people from everywhere gravitate, and so it is a good place to listen to people, not just the experts, but people who know things because they have been there, because they grew up in all those other nasty places.  Why, just this week I found out why Syria is such a mess, I mean really found out, not the stuff you see on the news, not the stuff we all know or think we know, but the real stuff, the driving force behind it all.  I got it from my cardiologist, who was born in Lebanon.  Again very simple stuff and much like the wisdom of my dentist, also about tribes.  It is Bashir al-Assad’s tribe, the Alawites, who are at the root of it, the Alawites, and all the rest of the Syria’s tribes.  It is tribal warfare and ugly as all tribal warfare is.  According to my cardiologist, an Armenian, Assad cannot let go of power.  If he does, he knows that not only will he be slaughtered so too will all of his tribe, a minority who have imposed their will on the other tribes for decades.  And done so quite brutally.  They have nowhere to go.  And if they fall, the people they have tormented for so long will do horrible things to them, both for revenge and for the fun of it.   So now I have the key to it, and with that key all the rest of it comes together.   All this from someone whose expertise lies elsewhere.  Speaking of which, my heart, by the way is fine.

This, incidentally, accounts for the Assad’s foreign support, from countries where one tribe dominates all the rest, where should those other tribes gain power, the tribe now with power would suffer terribly, as always happens in tribal societies.  Both for revenge and for the fun of it.  It is never pretty. 

California is hugely rich, not from its resources, but from the people who gravitate here.  Yesterday I sold one of my motorcycles to two lads from Czech Republic, who were just passing through, having just arrived from New Zealand and about to depart for Tierra del Fuego.  Although well traveled, with recent returns to Europe, neither had before been in the States.  And they were hugely impressed, not by the usual stuff, but by the people.  In all of their travels they had never before encountered people who were so polite and so nice to them.  But that is another story, why America is what it is and so different from everyplace else.  What I wanted from these lads was their take on what is happening in Europe.  And they kindly provided it.  First of all, they feel they cannot go back, that Europe is history.  These are sharp young men, by the way, and keen observers.  For reasons I will not bore you with here, neither of these young Czechs saw any hope for Europe.  In their view it was too far gone to recover, that gravity was against it, that from now on it would just be a continuous and painful slide into the abyss.   That was the simple point they made, and from it, I thought of all the reasons they were right.  And, as I did with Syria, shuddered at those thoughts, at the root of each being these simple observations and conclusions drawn by people looking at things not from ivory towers nor seats of power but from the streets they know all too well.    

Karl E. Francis, Ph.D.

Egypt

Great, prescient note from Karl regarding the goings on in Egypt:

Historical note. There has been only one popular revolution in the history of the world which upon its success was not immediately taken over by either a dictator of a radical mob or both. Read French, Russian, Cuban, Iranian and a host of others. The process summarized nicely in Orwell’s Animal Farm. The exception, of course, is the American Revolution, the one exception. So now let’s see what becomes of Egypt. They seem like such nice people. I wish them well and suggest they look at the one revolution that has long remained in the hands of the people. It is admittedly a hard act to follow, the script written by a remarkable assembly of genius. It is a script for chaos, of course, and that made it work. Whoops, maybe I missed Poland. But that is a work in progress.

Gordon (1990) by Karl Francis

Following is one of Karl's publications called Gordon.

The rest of his work will periodically be posted on this site or may be found or purchased at his Scribd site: http://www.scribd.com/karl5466

GORDON

The Morning After

From time to time this odd nation gives birth to what in other places might be called a leader or a prince or a king, a goddess-like thing; an odd human being, one that encourages us to be more than just human but to be what only Americans can be. We have just given birth to one. These are very precious and very vulnerable creatures. Let us not just go back to work today as if nothing had happened. We have a new President to make into a great President, for none has ever done it themselves and none ever will. It is what they awaken in us that make them great, if they are to be great.

Let us wrap ourselves around this frail young man, all of us. Let us protect him and lead him, for we Americans need no leaders. It is not in our nature to be led. But it is in our nature to be great. In the end, that is why we selected him, those of us with the vision and skill to do that. We saw in him that rare sense of knowing who we really are and asking us to be just that. Today we have a new job ahead of us. Let’s get right on it. We have a new President to lead, he has asked us to do that, that is his gift, and we must respond. That is the job before us, and it is a job for us all, for each and every one of us, to take this opportunity to be as great as we really are.

Today we can leave smallness behind us. And, as the world has noticed and feared, we have been very small indeed. It was not George Bush who was small; it was us. We could have saved him from himself and the world from him, but, to our great shame, we failed both him and ourselves. Let us never do that again. We have a strange nation here, one that is, by careful design, precisely what we, its people, make of it. Nowhere else and never before has there been such a thing.

-Karl Francis-
The California High Desert
5 November, 2008

Next

Noting that the Alaska Permanent Fund just took a ten billion dollar hit, with more to come, I am motivated to consider once again the ramifications of the world financial woes. What we are looking at is the collapse of a very large and very diverse bubble and the return to reasonable evaluations. The Alaska Permanent Fund was never worth what it seemed. It was just so much paper, invested in things not worth what they were priced at. So we are reaching from some semblance of proper evaluation. And we are not there yet. A large part of this comes from the fact that the United States in particular has gone from a productive economy, i.e, an economy that produces real things like beets and bulldozers to an economy that produces very little but instead appears to gain wealth by inflating the value of everything, from real estate to corporate executives. Our gross national product has been largely smoke and mirrors. The mirrors are now being shattered and the smoke blown away and we are for the first time in a long time looking reality straight in the face. The good news? This is happening while there is still a chance for recovery. The bad news? It will be a brutal one, especially for those whose perspective has long been clouded, who have come to think that their homes were worth more than they are, their pension plans worth more than they are, and their work worth more than it is. This is especially true for those who produce nothing, like investment firms or HMO's, the middle men who have taken the bulk of the false profits to themselves. It is less true for those who actually produce. Indeed, their part in this has been undervalued, and so they may well be on the rise. They are in a position to rise. They actually offer something of real value, their productive capability. I trust the unions will find some relief and with that relief the ability help see to that.

Now add to this the evidence that the presumptive next President will be a centrist. Barak Obama is hardly the screaming socialist the right has labeled him, nor is Nancy Pelosi nor Harry Reed. Indeed, there are few leftists in the government. The government is about where the American people are, center right to center left and never far from the center. It is the leftists and progressives who will be disappointed in the next administration. We are not going very far to the left. That is the beauty of American government, it is anchored by division. Nobody has enough power to go anywhere weird, the notable exception being the present administration, which took so much power to itself that it drowned in it. That is more typical of parliamentary systems. Except that the parties in most parliamentary systems are not so stupid or arrogant as this one. They know they will suffer for it if they are. So for any who thought we might be entering an era of progressive government, I am sad to report, you will have a long wait. For one thing, the Republicans, as they always do, have bankrupted the country. We have no means by which to progress and will not have for a very long time. The best we can do is repair a few bridges and pave a few roads, maybe even fix some schools.

What we can do though, and must do, is economize, which is to say reduce the excesses to non-producers and create a safe environment for both entrepreneurs and workers. Among other things, it is essential that we fix the health care system by sharing the burden. Our companies can not compete with companies whose health care is provided by the state, which is to say all of the people. That has killed or nearly killed General Motors. I never understood why anyone would expect corporations to bear social burdens. All I want from them is profits for their share holders and obediance to the law. That is why we have government, to bear social burdens.

Economy will also take us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We can not and never could afford such useless and/or senseless adventures.

The long and short of it is that I am pretty optimistic, at least for the longer term. It will be hell for awhile though, hell few of us have ever seen.

Also grateful for the gift of the Bush Administration, the lessons it taught the country about the costs of foolishness. I trust eveyone is now smarter about politics and perhaps more careful with their votes. I am especially encouraged by what I am hearing from the right. They seem to be looking forward to working with President Obama. After all their silly rhetoric about his radical nature, they have suddenly seen him for what he is, a rather mild and well considered moderate, and a blessed relief from the radicalism we are soon to leave in the past. Should anyone still ask why Bush's ratings are so low, it is because he is a radical and the country is not. That he is also stupid probably helped, but that is not what turned people away. It was his craziness.

Oh, should John McCain come from out of the dust to surprise everyone? Well, he is also a moderate. Except for not being as mild, smart and attractive as Obama, and infuriating the entire universe if he were to pull it off, that would do this Democrat's heart good, to see a sort of Republican have to clean up this mess, and get blamed for failing. I am entirely ready for that kind of irony. And just mean enough to enjoy it. O.K., John, here is the manure pile, and here is the pitch fork, two of them. You can put the lady on the south side of it. When she is done, she might just be up to the job. She might also want to change her clothes. But even that would not advance her career. She would be dead meat. Left standing, God only knows where she will go. Surely not back to Alaska, which will be a blessing for them.

Don't forget, vote early and vote often. As I have done. I too once lived on the south side of Chicago.

Next week we can find something else to do.

Bad News

You can read bad news in different ways. One way is to think of it as a call to action, things that need fixing, interesting jobs, as it were. And there are lots of those this morning. We live in a pretty good but imperfect nation in a world of hurt. So there is much to do. One simple and easy job is to fix the American electoral system. It is simple and easy because all the solutions are in plain sight, many of them tried and proven elsewhere. I am not the one to do that, but I could lay out the plan for fixing it right here, in under 800 words. I would not be surprised to learn that someone is already at it, that we shall see their plan will be on the Sunday op-ed pages. Let’s hope so.

We could also fix American racism, which does intrigue me. It is not as simple a task, but it is surely do-able. I would start in western Pennsylvania or maybe Idaho, where it lurks in dark corners and moldy wood piles. Flush it out of there, and you can flush it out of anywhere.

The economy, of course, needs fixing, The main reason it has not been fixed, the same as the reason it is broken, is that we assign the task to experts, in this case economists, none of whom, by virtue of educational brain damage, have any sense of it. Perhaps I should explain that. On the farms where I grew up we understood and saw a great deal of that kind of brain damage. We even had a name for it; we called it book learning, which we held in great disdain. We would send a kid off to college, to agricultural school say, and he would come back brain damaged, knowing nothing about how to run a farm but full of stuff we once loaded into manure spreaders. It was a terrible thing we did, taking a perfectly fine kid and making him useless if not dangerous. What we had done, of course, was remove him from any reality having to do with making a living on a farm and instead filled his head with the odd notions of professors who had never come close to a real farm, let alone shoveled manure or pulled teats, cow teats that is, as we used to do.

Now I am going to leave Joe the plumber in the clutches of the media, where the silly fool belongs. I used to be a plumber, and real plumbers know to keep their mouths shut about things they don't understand. But I will turn to real plumbers and real farmers and real motorcycle dealers and real waitresses and real realtors and real doodlebuggers (something to do with finding oil in the ground), people on the cutting edge of our economy, people who feel it when something goes wrong, people whose intellect I know and respect. They saw this thing coming months if not years before it hit. And they told me why it was coming. Unlike economists, they got it right because they were right where it was happening. What they could not do is figure out how to stop it, or if they did, then nobody would listen to them. Instead we listened to people with book learning.

Mind you, I am not licensed to speak with much authority on this. I was one of those kids they sent off to college, which I did with such relish that I became a professor. What license I do have I got from being submerged in all that book learning and professing. I can tell you why the experts have gotten it wrong. I know all about experts. I was one. But I also worked in steel mills and slums and oil fields and logging towns and on farms and trap lines and trot lines and firing lines. And some of that got into me, at least the ability to hear what people in such places have to say. These are the people we should be listening to and listening carefully. These are the people who understand economies; they live in them.

So when we get ready to fix the economy, when someone gets to it, I hope they will look to some of that wisdom out there where it is happening. I trust we will not leave it to the bloody experts who got in this mess.

Let's see. What else needs fixing? Oh, yes, we have to fix the world or at least find our place in it, which is probably not in the sands of Arabia or the guts of Asia or the heart of Africa. Having once been a sort of spook I have long been of the persuasion that a sharp knife and a sharp mind do a far cleaner job of it than a plane load of bombs. So that too can be fixed. But not by the experts, who are much too taken with pyrotechnics. For this I would turn to butchers and farmers. That would also help fix the economy, knives being much less of a drain on it than fireworks.

So many neat things to do. With just one quick read of today's news, and I have not yet gotten to the funnies, where most of the wisdom lies. Such an exciting world we live in with so much fun yet to be had. Thank God I did not pick up the paper this morning to discover that everything was just fine. What a huge bore that would have been.

Process

Noting the dismal economic news this morning, I am reminded that this was set in motion early in the Bush administration, indeed even earlier by Ronald Reagan. It is a process that leads invariably to the results we are seeing now and the even more dismal circumstances ahead. Interesting too to watch the pundits fail to get it. They are not process people but fact followers. And so they are always after the fact, as they are today, seeing what has just happened but not before and not what is going to happen. For that you must understand process, or, if you will, theory. You can only predict from the abstract, not from any given realty. All this is contrary, of course, to the conventional wisdom, fixated, as it is, on the silly notion that theory and abstraction are somehow ethereal and irrelevant.

Keep in mind that we got to the moon and back on theory and very little fact (we had never been there). Obsolescent theory at that, at least so fools would suggest, Newtonian physics and a pre-Copernicus earth centered universe. The test of theory is not if it is true but if it works. And it worked to put the earth at the center of the universe.

But I stray. This morning the important thing is that what we theorticians saw some years ago, that we were then and remain in a crashing economic dynamic, fed not only by loss of any pilot or police but also by the sucking of energy from the producers, the people who work and the people who buy. Not to mention the squandering of our resources on the idle rich and in death and destruction abroad. Some (notably lately Fareed Zakaria) contend that the British Empire was felled by the Boer War, a small incident in itself, but critical by virtue of the timing. Let us hope the timing of the Iraq War is not such.

That aside though, we are heading into a very dark abyss. I trust you are all prepared. Christmas promises to be bleak and perhaps so for years to come. While electing John McCain will clearly make it worse, electing Barak Obama will not solve it, not for a very long time. The damage has been done. And it will take some time to repair it. Let's hope it only takes time.

Oh, for those of you of a conspiratorial bent, I'm sorry to disabuse you of that. Stupidity is the sole culprit here, stupidity coupled with mendacity and short-sighted greed. Conspiracies are just too demanding. This is the simple product of fools.

I was reminded of this as I watched the few parts of the Republican National Convention that I could stand. What a gathering of blind and self-congratulating sycophants. Swamped in evidence that utterly defied every word they had to say.

-Karl-