Obama and Two-faced Mulattoes

I've come to know three mulattoes in my life. Two quite well and Barack Obama is the third. All three are dynamic - intelligent, with versatile personalities that make for good company, driven, and amoral to the core. - Not particularly immoral, just sharp at being able to rationalize any action.

Perhaps it's that it fundamentally roots in the fertilized plasticity of their personality - a personality that was born of necessity by having to shape and reshape its way through such different social landscapes (the white world and the black) - that such varying justifications, shifting mores, and smooth hypocrisy sync so effortlessly into expediency? Throughout their lives they had to turn on, then off, then on again different accents, cadences, senses of humor, sensibilities, the way they walked, their entire body language and posture. They are actors, all three.

You can see Obama talk one way in front of a white audience, another way in front of a black audience. You can see him look debonair though reserved at one moment, then fist-bumping and "dusting his shoulder off" alla Jay-Z the next. You can see how easily and (what is quintessentially Obama) how self-righteously he throws off public financing, though he just months earlier pledged to accept it. - He can convince you that he is black. Or he can convince you that he is white. This is the root of his talent. He's honed it his whole life. And now he's transmogrified this skill to convince you that he is presidential, despite having no experience and sometimes questionable positions. Talented, no doubt! But also shifting sand.

His talent is most remarkably on display when he slyly preempts potential criticisms against him by boldly holding them out in plain view, letting people see them and think about them, and thereby making such criticisms boring, "taking the sting out of it" as it were, or sometimes almost magically twisting such criticisms into just one more spice to his candidacy. Talk about "hanging a lantern on your problems!"

May this shtick be his downfall too? Will he hold out America's problems (as he holds out his own) to the public one too many times or too vociferously? America is a proud country. She does not take well to others holding her out. And McCain is a war hero. We are proud of him. We know he is American. And American plays in America. So if Obama is not careful, he could misstep by mistaking his talent for America's. And his name and background do not help his cause, it could onlt help to "other-ize" him. Only time will tell.

Hybrid Vigor

My grandpappy raised fighting cocks in southern Ohio. As a young boy growing up, he'd take me aside and teach me the virtues of the sport and the part which most intrigued him: breeding. He took great pride in breeding fighting cocks. He was most proud of tending three pure bloodlines: the butcher, the hulsey, and the hatch. Why tend three pure bloodlines you might ask? Why not just focus on "the best of breed" fighting cock? That's just it! None of the three were the best. The best fighters invariably came sparking from the colorful, brilliant crossing of any two of these bloodlines. Grandpappy's favorite was crossing the hatch with the hulsey. For whatever reason, such offspring got the piss from one line and the vinegar from the other. Such "kick-starting" of evolution is technically known as heterosis. Grandpappy called it by it's colloquial term: "hybrid vigor." "Son," he'd say, "you'll get the best of both... and a little something extra too!"

Tiger Woods, Jason Kid, Barack Obama, and the liger of Napoleon Dynamite fame... all mixed breeds. Do they have a leg-up? Do they exemplify hybrid vigor? Not necessarily. There is also a tendency in nature that countermands hybrid vigor, namely, "outbreeding depression." For example, a liger (although bigger and more power than either a pure bred lion or tiger) because of it's proportions relative to what a natural habitat demands, would not live long in the wild. Not to mention, it's also sterile. But with regard to Tiger Wood's, there can be no doubt I think, that with him, we indeed got a "little something extra too!"

The Best Reason for War is Oil!

Often in life one takes concerted action because of a confluence of reasons. Iraq is a prime example.

The U.S. authorization to use force cited many justifications, chief among those reasons of course was the belief that Saddam had WMD - but then there was the human rights premise, the assassination attempt of former president Bush, wanting to spread democracy, etc. The prima causa however was left loudly unsaid: oil! But then real reasons are generally better left unsaid.

Given that all of modernity (since the first oil well was drilled in 1859) is but an ever-ballooning lattice-work of operations and mechanisms cosmically demanded and specifically designed to evoke and dissipate this richest of gradients, there is not a better reason for war than, you guessed it, oil. One billion to 6.5 billion in population - fueled by fossil fuels. Indeed, the Cosmos don't give a shit about humanity. To it, we are a means. We are merely the most efficient "ball-bearing" and cycler of energy in all the web of life. And unfortunately, we are now stuck, stiched "over a barrel" as it were, having sewn every inch of our infrastructure from the carbon yarn of an ever dimishing spool of resources. We made a pack with the devil, a brilliant pack no doubt, but one that nevertheless is coming due.

Look around you. All that you see is petro-based. Do you care for your family? Do you care that they get the medicine that they need, the food that they eat, the roof over their head? Petro-chemicals: the stuff of medicine, plastics, herbecides, pesdicides, not to mention fuel, raw material extraction and fabrication, and I could go on and on and on... Do you have any idea the degree to which your world is stitched together by the teased and drawn ends of oil? Do you? Oil, my firends, catalyzes and lubricates our entire way of life. Without it's flow, everything would come crashing down.

So I have disdain when people question the Iraq war because we did not find WMD. Not so much because every intelligence agency of every foreign government across the globe believed that Saddam had them; but because it should be obvious that WMD - though an absolutely justifiable reason in itself - was nonetheless meant to be stressed as a pretext (hyped up for public consumption) to overshadow the most important reason: oil.

And make no mistake about it; if you feel duped, it's not because Bush lied to you, but because you were too stupid to see and appreciate the truth. Educate yourself, my friends. It's easy. Truth is obvious. I knew it was about oil. I knew why Bush could not say it was about oil. And thus I knew why WMD (again, a solid and legitimate reason in it's own right) was so over-weighted in the administrations argument. The reality of the situation itself argues that Bush made an honorable and an incredibly responsible play going into Mesopotamia. But then again, I look to the world for what it is, accept it, and want it renewed. -- I mean, what healthy organism would not swallow what it most needed to survive?

As much as any president in history, Bush acted to protect our way of life. He stood hard and fast against world and public opinion. And while I don't agree with every policy position; regarding Iraq, he has shown to be one of our greatest leaders by stewarding one of the most brilliant geo-political strokes in history.

Olbermann: an insult to Tim Russert

How great an insult to the memory of Tim Russert... to have his untimely death covered by the likes of Keith Olbermann! And what irony! Could one watching possibly not sense Keith's squirming self-awareness of the smallness of his own soul in contrast to gravity and largess of Tim's?

It is said that one can measure the soul of a man by the company that he keeps. By that measure, need I say more? One merely need view the guest list of Meet the Press vis-a-vis Countdown.

Sickness and Health

Comfort is the objective of the sick. Mastery is the objective of the healthy.

Oh how sickness tempers even the heartiest ego. And see how elixirs can quicken the most struggling of souls.

It's too bright

Some logic and ideas need float in an amorphous matrix to make any sense. For the moment you try to sharpen their points, they sink into dull meaninglessness. Some things are clear only when they are blurred.

Lying Liberals vs. Convinced Conservatives

Liberals flatter. Conservatives condescend. Thus distilled is the ethos of both movements. While powerful when pure, either movement when donning the cap of the other becomes sheer folly. Picture the righteousness of Gore's "Truth;" or the patience of Pat Buchannan offering commentary on MSNBC. Hillarious!

Why Criminals are Weak

Every once in a while there are psychotic urges so strong that we would wish to tie ourselves down till they subside. These episodes represent the rawest challenges to our self-control. Criminals (not "accidental" criminals) are those who actually lost control - or had no vision of why to control.

Optimism is Noble

Butterfly effects amplify the weight and influence of even the smallest spark. To the extent that you may breathe good will and happy tonic into life, that is how high nobility fights. This is your duty. And it is not infrequent that this is no small challenge! There is enough pessimism cycling without that dark cloud needing be wound by our stronger souls.

Fatherhood

Fatherhood should set expectations. I, for instance, try to be just that much more malicious than life. To build their callouses (I have two young boys) so that their soul does not blister - that is my motto. People (friends and family) regularly question and chastise my seeming cold, hard hand. They miss the design, I think. Perhaps it will soon dawn on them that my boys are more self-sufficient than is typical of their age; and that they're funner to hang out with - more mature, with more wit, and wiser. Even parenthod should be designed and eyed non-linearly. Sometimes it's a hard hand that shapes a soft heart. - And by "soft," I mean resonant, in tune.