The Way Home

"Home becomes a foreign land."

Scott DeSalvo verges on The Shattering.

Before I invited them to throw me out of that place, I used to tell him, "You're going to come to me." This is part of what I had in mind. It involves realization of reality. I cannot imagine the mental anemia that must be required to countenance the run of politics fully toward the collective in this country, now. I do understand, however, what it takes to see it for what it is. Every American now finds himself an exile in this land: the principal necessary element of the definition is a reverence for freedom. It is again, as Thomas Paine observed in 1776, "hunted round the globe," and the heart of an American patriot is doubly wounded in realizing that this is where the fugitive was first taken in, with results that will ring through world history forever.

Nothing about this government is about freedom, now. That includes the biennial auto da fe at polls which is held out as the hope and duty of the dismal creatures who have fallen to this state of politics in this country. Just look at it: you get to wait two years before you're allowed to roll up your little prayer in a vote-bottle to be cast off on tides of insanity and treachery. Meanwhile, the tides rage. In six months, Obama has wreaked more havoc on freedom than whole generations in the future should have to bear, with every sign of intent to make the job as complete as possible. Have your say if you want: he is having his way. And the damage that he can do before the next prayer round-up is incalculable, and you know it, if you're capable of one moment's thought.

"Hope". The thing carries two sets of connotations: one suffused in florid tones ample to blotting out necessary facts, and the other actively cast in clear daylight apprehension of reality in order to look for "hope".

I'm not sure where it is, either, but I know it will not be found in subscription to the politics that have brought us to all this. Every single one of these worms now crawling through the American idea must be instantly fired: put on notice that they have no authority, and every responsibility for the holes in this once noble house. This only happens one heart and mind at a time, and if it is true, then that's the end of it. It is a radically -- drastically -- individualist proclamation to the whole world, even if no one ever hears it.

It lives alone, now.

When I told this man, several times, that he would "come to me", he finally called it "creepy", if I recall right. When he finds himself and sees that that's what I was talking about, then in the words attributed to Gen. George S. Patton, he will know what to do.

DeathCare

"Once Buffalo enjoys the benefits of Hamilton-level health care, I wonder where Ontario will be shipping the preemies to. Costa Rica?"

Pretty funny, Steyn.

Now that we've had our laugh over it, let's think about it again. It will come to a point where they won't get shipped anywhere until after they're dead. Scooter has taken to calling the thing "DeathCare", which I will promptly steal every chance I get.

Sooner or later, the facts of medical production will have their ways. Medicine is an economic good which must be produced just like anything else, no matter anyone's protestation of "rights". It is being regulated out of production (the basic problem in Canada) right in front of your eyes. The implications will be profound for everyone's general quality and length of life, and acute for specialized cases. The dynamic flexibility of free production will not avail in cases like this, and they will eventually be allowed to discreetly -- and then not so discreetly -- die.

How soon all this becomes real-life fact depends on the alacrity and severity with which DeathCare is imposed in this country. It should be noted that every "deployment" (there's a fnord for you) necessarily demands its own successors. This is rationale for curing the ills that it inflicts. Coercive interventions, the essential nature of government, instigate demand for coercive interventions. This makes it extremely difficult or impossible to foresee every logical extension of principles in action. The degree and rate of advance into actionable tyranny by any reasonable measure are more logarithmic than linear, and all is subject to swerves of short-range political emphasis.

(e.g., in the current context: picture a maddened national campaign mounted, for various reasons in and given conditions, in order to establish Crisis Posts in every hamlet across the land, that preemies may live... which would also naturally serve the existence of the patrons of their political authority. Consider that the mindless hysteria of the herds surrounding the cannibal-pot of U.S. ethics, now, will intensify as the values in the pot become more rare -- a necessary economic consequence of diktat -- and more explicitly political. This will make these herds ever more subject to the rally-cries of anglers playing for power. "Representative democracy" is a good term for all this, although the reality of it is very far from the hearts of most of its street-level proponents. To be represented at this democracy -- this mass-grasp in which success depends solely on numbers -- is to be taken in bag as weight to be swung by a champion at the lip of the pot. It is to be used. Because mass, not ideas, is the only utility to the "representative" in all this, every possible ethical principle is open to political alliance with any other, should the need of power call for it.)

The road is being opened.

The extremities await, and they will not be very far away.

('twas John Venlet linked Steyn)

"Let That Boy Boogie"

The country goes to hell, and I just fiddle with guitars. I might post-up yesterday's viddie of the phone call with Mike Amdur (me high-flame homo keyboard monster mate of old) in the middle of the front porch session with the Fender Vibrolux. I've burned through about eight hours with that amplifier this week since Malaysia: high-gain testing with the Behringer V-amp managing sounds on the front end. I actually have the V-amp pedal out now and I'm switching between three different gain settings, from a basic clean rhythm sound, to a mid-gain rock crunch, on up to a high-scream overdrive that really comes off pretty naturally through those to ten-inch speakers.

I've always been a mainliner: drive a wire straight from the guitar to the amp and turn it up. There is no denying, though, the appeal of the versatility of a rig like this. For instance: final volume can be kept consistent in the switch from one drive level to another. I'm getting the effect of higher volume in a different tone, but without having to make that adjustment because I've already edited that level into the sound.

So, anyway, I was blasting right along yesterday when I heard Michael talking to the phone machine during a brief mute. He'd called while I was playing and I only happened to hear that. I picked up the phone and started a viddie camera, so there I sit on the porch with the ES-355, listening to Mike on the phone speaker while he's playing keyboards down in Tampa, and we're blocking out rock song parts on the phone. I could YouTube that, but I don't know if I'll get around to it. It was a good time, though, and I can't wait until he comes home in October, with his gear. I hope we get to raise hell together.

Coots rehearsal this afternoon. I sit smoking cigarettes and coolly surveying this week at the Endarkenment. Here is a helpful glance at the speedometer.

"Is it any wonder I'm not crazy?

Is it any wonder I'm sane at all?"

(Styx -- "Too Much Time On My Hands")

Really: I just wanna go play for a while.

When The Light's Gone

So, I was e'splainin' in e-mail...

"To paraphrase from Jimmy Buffet: 'wasting away, these days, in Resignationville.'

They're just fucking doing it to us, man. Yesterday, I had an AM radio in reach all day. I listened to Glen Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity, in turn, screaming about that Waxman-Markey abomination; 'Call your representatives!' they exhorted. Had guests on, explaining how all the calls were running three or four-to-one against this thing, and how it'll 'make a difference!'

Some difference. Another stroke of murder coming down, that nobody understands in detail.

I watch for some sign of action in response to manifest tyranny coming right straight at us, knowing that it's just nowhere in sight. I idly wonder how far this will go. I see no constraints.

I am just transfixed."

If the Obamids were completely thrown out of office in the next election, it would do nothing to relieve the destructive corrosions already at work on American life for generations. (Helpful hint: government has been effectively designing our automobiles for a long time. Been designing health care, too.) What do you think it would take to start dismantling the welfare state that we already live with? How about the regulatory/administrative state?

The fact is that if the socialist initiative were stopped in its tracks this very day, we would still face a government that is impossible to bear over the long run. It's that destructive, already.

All this is what has me distractedly considering what American life might be like in ten or twenty years' time. It heaves my soul to think that I will see a generation come to age in the shadows developing now, who will consider them to be an ordinary run of affairs. I wonder how they might resolve the dissonant noises that would clash if they might somehow see reference to original American principles of freedom, contrast with what they will inevitably come to live with.

I just wonder where an aware person might find hope in the future that is being prescribed, right now, once that future is up to speed and doing its grind.

On The Devolution Tip

Ed Rasimus minutes:

"But, my point…(drum roll, please)…'devolution.'

I don’t equate it as Smith does with societal reversion or decline. The classic definition in political science of devolution is one of a reversal of the 20th century dismantling of the Constitutional federal system. It is a rediscovery of the 9th and 10th amendments and the basic principle of delegated and reserved power. It is emphasis on enumerated and aversion to implied powers for the feds.

In short, it is relinquishing of federal power and intervention and return of discretional authority over a wide range of local issues to the local governments for local solutions, approved and funded by locals. In short, not a bad thing.

And, therein lies my problem with Smith. Exactly the opposite of classic devolution is what is occurring. The 'State' is becoming the monolithic, Hannah Arendt totalitarian system and the state/local governments reduced to mere functionaries and enforcers. And, the states, obedient to their citizens are begging for the privilege.

Hence, my different but equal pessimism."

Yes. I can see this. I've had occasion to rend the word myself over the years, and always toward this definition (but always, of course, devolving past state and local governments down to individual humans). Ed's critique of Smith is a good one. Smith's "devolution" circumscribes a lot more than reductions of political power to more discrete entities. He's talking about broader social and economic breakdowns, with less exclusively political connotations than I have always taken with the word.

Ed hits on a crucial political point, which is that Smith's devolution, while accounting for reduced government "services" (we should call 'em that), is not doing justice to facts of consolidation and enlargement of power. Remember that victims of the great twentieth century tyrannies suffered terrible material conditions (definitely: "reduced services") under ruthlessly centralized regimes. (These regimes had finally resolved their raison d'etre: it's never about "services". It's always about power.) Whether the trash gets picked up on time is impertinent to the facts of government integration going on now in every dimension at unprecedented rates. If the former represents "devolution", the latter most certainly does not.

On Michael

I hadn't really missed Michael Jackson in many years. There had been a time when I had, beginning right around "Thriller". I was always ready to congratulate him on the monster success of that record. However, I didn't get "Billie Jean", and I still don't. It was the work of The Jackson 5 that had stamped me. In my experience, that project had come perfectly in trail of black American music threads like Jackie Wilson and Stax/Volt: this was a clean and logical extension of R&B into more electric domains, stroked-up with the sparks flying off of work like that from James Brown and Sly & The Family Stone. "The Love You Save" was seminal to me: after that, I was ready for Rare Earth; by the time "Celebrate" and "Big Brother" came along, I knew what I was listening to.

In my ear, Michael and The 5 preceded Stevie Wonder, and that's saying a lot. When Graham Parker and The Rumour covered "I Want You Back" (late 70's), I cheered: "It's about time someone paid attention to that again."

I never really paid attention to the fact that Michael had slowly gone right off his rocker. I simply hated to see it. What mattered to me is that he threw down some of the finest pop music in the time of my life. It's lasted me this long, on its own, and I think it will go the distance.

Michael, Don't Hurt 'Em! -- "I Want You Back", from their 1971 "Goin' Back To Indiana" TV special. This is just murder, to me. Goose-bump city. Bill Cosby opens this clip with 1:20 of his "Scoop Newsworthy" skit, trying to break into the J5 rehearsal. The piano glissando downbeat cracks a whip and the stars fall into order. Wotta rhythm track Tito is throwing down on that ES-345. He first did that in 1969, the year I first started playing, and I really wanted to be able to play that, with that kind of bang on it. It took me a long time to understand it, and I just have to say that the general lapse of that quality of melody and harmony in electric pop music -- especially guitar tracks -- is heartbreaking to me. This is a world the way it should have been.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Laterer: it might be a revelation to some to realize that these guys were a real live rock band. Go dig the bottom end of "Rockin' Robin" from TV in 1972. Jermaine is every bit as phat as McCartney was in his early days. Tito comes on with guitar parts straight down from Chuck Berry. (ES-335 in Burgundy Mist, with the trapeze tailpiece.) Don't let the flutey bits in the arrangement fool you. This is a rock song and they know the groove.

Devolution

"While some see a collapse of society in our future, right now I see devolution, not revolution. Devolution is both the process of degeneration and the surrender of governmental powers from central authorities to local authorities.

Devolution will take many forms. The key driver behind devolution is simple: there's not enough money to fund the status quo, so something has to be cut, axed, trimmed or devolved. Examples already abound: the number of school days in the year are reduced to shave expenses, two-times-a-week trash pickup is cut to once a week, etc.

The key constraint on devolution is also simple: the status quo power structure must be left intact. Nobody will willingly surrender their power, so devolution means services and front-end expenses will be cut in order to protect back-end administrative powers."

Charles Hugh Smith holds forth on "devolution" as the machine breaks down. This is as near as I can find, there, to a definition of the term:

"Devolution is both the process of degeneration and the surrender of governmental powers from central authorities to local authorities."

"Degeneration" of what is not specified, and it interests me because, although I can ferret out a general concept for the word, there are nonetheless valuable and important categorical distinctions to be drawn. The word appears in a sentence that leaves open the prospect that it refers to "government powers" (as in: devolution of). I would naturally cheer that right along, but it would also seem redundant in light of that "surrender of" clause. If it's not a redundancy, then "degeneration" refers to something else, and it would be important to note that degeneration of, say, ethics, is not a good thing, even while government power is degenerating.

It becomes clear that "degeneration" is a broad designation as the discussion of middle class living standards comes into view. Smith posits more or less conscious efforts by bureaubots to "manage the degeneration of their services" in order that people accept straitened government output by acclimatic degree. ("Boiled frog" analogy.) I'm not so sure how conscious (my word, in all this) their efforts will be, but it is a truism that the administratum will always move to protect the core* central hustle. Outputs will always diminish more rapidly than drones. This is the normal reflex of the power-hive.

See his twenty observations of trends/predictions. This is a generally good lookout, I think.


(* I hate that word, these days.)

Hardware Goofs

Well, I always hate it when the power supply to the main desktop system blows up. Dammit. That's usually a big cramp in operations around here.

Fortunately, my hardware go-to guy, Garry, had one to spare, so the dual-core rig is back up now.

(I also took the time to disassemble and thoroughly clean this Honeywell 63S-1E keyboard. Scrubbed every key with a toothbrush, I did, and it was worth it. This is a Cadillac of a word-sabre, and now it looks as good as it feels. Love that.)

A Premise Jot

A jot on the daily tour so far:

*** Warren Meyer --

"Certainly one driver of statism is arrogance — the technocratic belief that one’s intellectual capacity and decision-making ability is superior to that of the masses, and therefore should be substituted (via authoritarian control) for that of the masses."

Here, "the masses" is a metaphysical equivocation of two radically different things: "one's" mind -- that of a single individual -- and a "mass" of individual minds taken as if they were a single mind. In this frame, the technocrats fight on irrational ground conceded in the equivocation. The tactical implication for rhetoric is to condition debate to irrationality: very few will ever challenge the premise and reject this blind variable of "the masses", which is therefore all the more usefully posed as antagonist against technocratic regime.

I hasten to add that Meyer is correct that this is "certainly one driver": this arrogance. Precisely analyzing its constituents is important to refuting it.

"Endarkenment" (A Local Etiology)

(enquired in e-mail)

"One question: did you invent the term 'Endarkenment'? If so, I'll unhappily congratulate you on naming a concept that perfectly describes what's going on right now."

No. I cannot take credit for an original flash of brain which raised that percept (the word) in my consciousness. What happened when I first saw it is that the concept -- the counter-Enlightenment -- was instantly tagged with the word as a perfect distillation of everything I saw in various histories of philosophy (principally; Marxism, and pretty much everything downstream of Pragmatism) and politics, both theoretical (myriad rationalizations against freedom) and applied (Bolsheviks, Nazis, etc.), all currently at work in the west at large and in America in particular. The sum of all of it represented an enormous shadow falling over the time of my life, where the light of freedom had once informed world aspirations and built what had never been built before.

That word stated that sum.

I first saw it at the hand of a Usenet snipeshoot artist who blew a small whirlwind through AC-ECW in 1998:

"the ends justify the means, and
der fuhrer's own ends require
means which may have, in the remote
primitive past of peon evolution,
been considered unethical. however,
in the new age of endarkenment, it
is essential to destroy the donut
part of society in order to save
the hole. this is the courageous
path to clixegrity and inner dark
which our visionary fuhrer is boldly
following us to. a peaceful void
will soon bring equality to perfection.
-- "

(joel parrill -- "clixegrity")

He was an odd thing. I thought he was pretty funny, and sometimes hilarious, just in his facility of phrase and at such slashing economy, too. I watched for about a month before I nodded out-loud in front of everybody. He was a pure spouter, without inclination to discussion, but simply paint-splashing these cold bare-concrete chunks at the group. The look of his posts almost brought to mind something out of "THX 1138" -- the idea of a self-aware species, slipping-under. He established a "Clixon" image early in his posts, and then ran-off on it completely without elucidation or expoundment. Instantly as I saw it, I figured a contraction of Clinton and Nixon. In any case, this character played an almost strangely onomatopoeiac/alliterative/echo-chamber effect with daily posts there for some time: the "clix" prefix evolving to condition various mauling swipes at the times. (e.g.; "clixty minutes", and "clixophants" -- in which he validates my Nixon connection.)

He left his integrations to implication, and so with "Endarkenment". I put it work on my own project.

Pings!

Greets to the Navy Network Information Center (NNIC) at Pensacola on their seventy-fourth visit yesterday afternoon.

"How I wonder what you are."

(Traditional)

"The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect"

Scooter knows.

"Sucking electrons." {hah!} I've said that it's like driving as fast as you can for ninety minutes on a set of flat tires.

Here's a note I've thought about: in my posted e-mail correspondance with Seah, I'd said, "I'm confident that I can make anything look good,..." Then, of course, I blog-up whinging about how it sucked. This might confuse some readers. It might help to understand that I never divorce value from valuer. (This is fundamental to my ethics.) Thus the question: "Look good to whom?" Well, not to me, not that night. It was okay, I suppose, and I have to admit to squeezing a couple of decent looks out of it here and there. It's just that it's hard to credit the thing when you don't really get out of it what you're bleeding for on the input.


(subject header nicked from Todd Rundgren)

Back To The Salt Mines

(morning e-mail out --)

C.,

Well, I'd been pretty busy there for several days and that's how I got behind on this note to you.

I'm glad the blog's working for you and I thank you for saying so. Just home for the first day, today, I'm running around to catch up on all the noise and sort out what stories to triage. Know what? I hate it that I have to do this. If not for our cultural/political straits, I would probably still write, but it would be in the nature of celebration, a world away from this desperate love that I keep for what's dying now.

Catching up is worse, in some ways, than keeping up. There is so much to say and it's easy to believe that it matters not a whit. That's the real fight, sometimes: realizing that the ideas require incessant play, and getting them out there on the field.

I appreciate your nod. It's something to try to live up to.

Onward, then.


B.

Home Notes File

Sitting at Upstate Medical Center with my friend Brian, who's here for a regular look at the damage from his crash a couple of months ago. Routine pain. He reeled me in at the airport at Syracuse, ninety minutes ago.

Notes on the KL jaunt, while I'm sitting here and sorting through my bag:

*** Today, I flew over Malaysia, Thailand, The Bay of Bengal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Estonia, The Baltic Sea, and landed at Stockholm, Sweden. Then -- still today -- I flew over Sweden, Norway, The North Atlantic, Iceland, Greenland, Canada, and landed at Newark, New Jersey, USA.

*** Continental Airlines was great on the back end of this thing. They have a fool working for them at KSYR and he tried hard to make a mess of the front end last Monday: the opening flight. He ended up calling the police at the gate and they all looked foolish before it was over and I walked away laughing at the lot of them. Made Malaysian Air #91 out of Newark with eight minutes to spare.

However, the rotund Hispanic fellow at Gate C99 at Newark, today (my last flight of the day) was everything you want out of someone doing his job, and more. Spying him up while he loaded Continental #8759 -- the 12:15pm shot to KSYR -- I figured he might be worth a try, because he was doing his work with crisp efficiency visible from across the room. Not too quickly upon the last passenger that he hustled out the gate toward the Dash-8, I let him take a breath before I hit him with the question: "Is this flight fully loaded?"

"This one was over-sold," he said.

I acknowledged the bad news with a respectful nod, and I can't recall exactly what he said, but it was something that obviously implied that he was interested in why I asked. I let him know that I'd been flying for about twenty-three hours already and it would be wonderful to be able to snag #8759 to KSYR instead of waiting three and a half hours for #8752. That's when he let on that he was still waiting for one passenger and he actually didn't think that one was going to make it.

He held my gear at that gate for me while I ran upstairs to the Customer Service desk to do a fifty-dollar cash deal to change the e-ticket. Off I ran. When I got back from about a seven-minute escapade, he saw me from the bottom of the escalator and waved out the door to hold that airplane. I snagged my Stratocaster in its gig-bag and my office shoulder-bag both in one hand, on the fly. Six strides later, I was at the door to observe the Dash-8 about eighty feet away, looking the pilot right in the eye: that airplane had both engines turning and the door was closed. My Gate Hero waved one forefinger at the pilot, who raised his forefinger and whirled it around: "Let's move it."

I ran out to a Pax hold-short line until the door cracked and stairs came down. Got the okay from the guy out there, and ran out to the stairs and aboard, to seat 7D. The last seat on the airplane, my favorite window-seat on the Dash-8. (Nice views of landing gear and flaps ops.) Off we went, number seven for takeoff.

I don't know the last time I saw anyone open a door that was already closed, and that guy did it for me.

I'm telling you: Continental Airlines can have all the business that I can run their way, after that one.

*** Landing at KUL, we got rides to the hotel in some kind of custom high-end BMW's. Have no idea what they were. Two of us to each car, in back seat buckets with ninety-five way adjustments and hot & cold running aloe-vera or what-ever-ya-want. These cars were crazy. The really crazy thing was running on a four-lane highway along commercial palm groves at over 220 KPH. These were speed-limited roads, but nobody paid attention and everyone went as fast as they wanted to, for maybe thirty miles. That was the fastest I've ever gone in a car. Same way leaving town: this adventure-film sequence of Beemers blowing through the sparse night traffic in close-convoy, faster than I've ever gone on four wheels.

*** The McDonald's near the Ritz-Carlton delivers, 24/7.

*** The 7-Eleven 'round the block isn't really the place to get those Nestle quart-sized yogurt drinks (black currant, strawberry, orange, etc.). The little Malay grocery right next to it, is. Walk out the Ritz-Carlton, take a left, and keep winding down and around to your left, until you get to the first four-way intersection, then take a right. It's right up on your left as you go. "168 Store" or something like that. Yellow sign.

~~~~~

All for now. More maybe when I'm back at my desk.

This Cross I Sometimes Bear

Holy Jesus: that sucked, last night. I appear to be the only person in the room who hated it, and I just hated that anyone had to see that. I got backstage immediately after the show, and people were talking about hitting the hotel bar for drinks. I cracked, "Oh, yeah? Well, don't go far, because we're going to tear it down, put it all back up and do it again, our way. It shouldn't take more than about six or eight hours."

Peabo-san looked up from the autograph he was signing and said with a crazy grin, "Billy? There's really something wrong with you."

The generally cool thing about it is that nobody in that ballroom -- from Prime Minister Abdullah Bin Ahmad Badawi down to the lowest bus-boy -- had any idea what I had in mind for that show. They all got to sit there in perfect innocence and have a good time, while I was calculating every single fader-throw like a breakout from jail. Second-to-second, for almost ninety minutes.

(Scooter, my brother-man: you know what I mean? I know that you know.)

Later, Seah and I talked about it. I was angry and frustrated, emphasizing the crucial principle that automated instruments are not an acceptable substitute for a solid palette of PAR-64's. They simply aren't. "I told you in e-mail that we would have a good time. Well, I didn't. And the next time we get together, we're going to move heaven and earth to hang my upstage truss the way I drew it." Bless his heart, he was very good about it. He understood my problem and made clear what I hadn't known before, which is that with about another six hours or so, we would have been able to circumvent venue restrictions on climbing trusses simply by planning the focus for the middle of the night, locking security out of the room and having our way with it.

There were redeeming graces in it. Eddie, my Master Electrician, had worked with us before (Jakarta, '04), and it was a major plus to have him in the house. A certified ace. He shot a big-league focus on the front truss, and aced my ACL's ("Aircraft Landing lights") on the upstage truss before it flew. They were perfect when I first walked in the room. That's not easy, and they turned out to be a lot more essential than a mere sixteen cans might otherwise seem. I told Seah, "Keep that boy handy. He knows all his shit."

Dammit. I'm not proud of it, but we got away with it. Everybody else had a good time, and that's the point, in the end.

I'll bear it. Onward.

~~~~~

I fly home late tomorrow evening, local time. Jid and I are going to bounce around town this afternoon. I'd like to hit the local Harley dealership for t-shirts. (Duck Burns and I started doing this about fifteen years ago with six hours off, once, in London. We didn't see Big Ben or The Changing of The Guard or anything: we went straight to Warr's in King's Road.) The shop here in KL is rather far away, though, and I'm not sure if it'll work out.

Don't worry: I'll be back on The Endarkenment beat soon enough.