Success or Failure?

“I think I fear success more than failure,” he said absently, sitting at a conference table with his business partner.

“What?” his business partner asked, looking up from a pile of bills spread out in front of him. “What’s so scary about success?”

“Success can change a person, totally change their life.”

“That’s right, Einstein. Success can transform a starving, hopeless and disgusting business failure into a rich, well-fed entrepreneur practically overnight. Man, you beat everything…worrying about impending success while everyone else, including me is busy worrying about bankruptcy.”

“No, I’m serious. Have you ever thought about what you would do if you won the lottery, say 20 million or so?”

“The first thing I would do is buy you out so I wouldn’t have to have these idiotic conversations.”

“I mean after you paid your house off, cleared up the business debt, then maybe bought a vacation home somewhere, couple of new cars, new golf clubs and all, you would still have millions left over.”

“Yeah, I can definitely see how that would suck.”

“Then the trouble would start. Everyone you ever knew back in high school and college, all of your distant relatives would start hitting you up for money. If you turned them down they would end up hating you for it. Then, the do-gooders would come calling…the Red Cross, March of Dimes, the preacher, they would all come out of the woodwork and unless you gave them money, they would end up hating you too.”

“And then you would take comfort in that new car smell as you drive to your vacation home with your new golf clubs in the trunk. It’s like the circle of life. All of your old friends from the poor old days would get replaced with shiny new ones.”

“You know what the worst part about too much money, too fast?”

“Oh, I don’t know…if you spend it less than an hour after you get it you get cramps?”

“The worst part is that everything would be finished. You would be done. No more reason to care about things, nothing more to worry about, nothing to get you out of bed in the morning.”

“Dude, you are so weird.”

“Listen, right now the business is doing ok but we still struggle month to month, right?”

“Yes. Which is something that I’m counting on your 20 million dollar lottery windfall to fix.”

“No, don’t you see? We’re just like everyone else! We have common cause with our fellow man. We’re all in the same boat, we’re all struggling to make a go of it. If I win 20 million, I’m out of the club and I can never be like everyone else ever again.”

“That club you’re talking about? It’s called the sucker’s club and yes, 20 million gets you kicked out. But then you get kicked up into the millionaires club, which has way better food. That’s the American Dream my friend…the American Dream.”

“I guess so…”

“That’s right partner…the American Dream. So, get your upwardly mobile ass up and get me a Dr. Pepper out of the fridge while I figure out a way to balance our checkbook.”

He walked into the kitchen and brought a cold can back to the conference room. It made a sharp metallic sound as he sat it in the glass table top. He went to the window and stared down at the air conditioner unit with its big fan blades turning slowly. After a few minutes he walked back to his office.

“Maybe we should buy a lottery ticket,” he said as he disappeared down the hall.

Net Neutrality, My Son, and Me

I have a very smart son. He and I discuss things political on occasion and often we disagree. We recently had a long back and forth about the “net neutrality” issue. With yesterday’s vote, his side of the argument has prevailed, so I will have to take his word for it that this is a very good thing.

Like I said, he is very bright (he takes after his mother), and also very opinionated and argumentative (he takes after me). He paints the net neutrality business as narrow corporate interests vs. the greater public good and the interests of the little guy. He accuses NN’s opponents of appealing to the public’s distrust of government with overblown rhetoric about higher taxes and a government takeover of future content. The decision came down on a strict party line vote, which should come as a surprise to no one. Is there any other kind of vote anymore that isn’t straight party line, where Republicans are in the back pocket of business and Democrats always favoring anything that empowers the regulative state?

Anyway, now that the deal is done, I will have to take my son’s word for it that everything is going to be alright, that the heavy hand of government bureaucrats aren’t going to screw up the most vibrant, creative industry in the world. I’ll have to banish visions of DMV incompetence, Postal Service inefficiency, and IRS complexity from my mind. I will have to move on from my fear that this whole NN thing is nothing more than a government money grab.

My son knows much more about the internet and technology in general than I do, so perhaps I should give his views on this subject the benefit of the doubt. However, there is a very good reason why NN’s opponents appealed to the American distrust of government. There is an awful lot to distrust. When he complains that the current system leaves too many people at the mercy of too few giant monopolistic enterprises, I counter with the observation that I would rather be at the mercy of giant companies who are at least ultimately accountable to their share-holders, than to be at the mercy of some future Department of the Internet monolith who will be accountable to absolutely no one.

Five or ten years from now, thanks to this very internet miracle, my son’s views and my fears will be a matter of public record. We will both be able to look back on this blog and decide who was right and who was wrong. Somebody will owe somebody else a beer.

 

I sincerely hope I’m the one buying.

Trash Talk Time

As a graduate of and fan of Richmond Spiders athletics, I have had to swallow hard over the past few years watching the ascendency of VCU basketball and their talented coach Shaka Smart. My Facebook feed has been bombarded with the ubiquitous, “havoc!!!” refrain. I have had to sit back and listen to VCU fan brag about their team, even watch them go to the final four. It has been a miserable few years.

They are still a terrific team and Shaka Smart is still talented. But finally, I have been given reason to do what I do best…talk smack. Last night my Spiders completed a season sweep of the Rams in thrilling fashion with a double overtime victory. And while VCU may end up winning the Atlantic 10, we won the city, baby!

So, this morning I get to the my empty office, and after clearing a path from the parking lot to the front door, I had some time on my hands…never a good thing when flush with the thrill of victory. My buddy and business partner, Doug Greenwood has become a huge band-wagon jumping Ram fan over the past few years, a season ticket holding carpet bagger of sorts. I have had to endure an endless stream of Ram-bragging from him for quite a while now. Well…I just couldn’t help myself…

The Oscar's Show

Ok, here's how I do the Oscar's thing. I walk through the den from time to time while the red carpet show is on and ask Pam how it's going. She gives me the highlights. Then I come downstairs on my way to the fridge for a snack later and sometimes stop for a few minutes to watch an acceptance speech. Then, the next morning I read all about it on the Internet, watching selected clips of highlights if I find myself interested.

I'm not anti-Hollywood. I enjoy good movies, always have. This year, Pam and I saw four of the best picture nominees and will probably catch a couple more of them soon. But a team of black ops interrogators from Guantanamo Bay couldn't force me to watch the Academy Awards show. Three and a half hours of self-congratulatory claptrap and left wing advocacy is as close to hell as Earth gets.

However, watching the highlights, I did learn a few things...

1. Lady Gaga can actually sing. Who knew? 

2. To judge from their responses to Patricia Arquette's speech, J-Lo and Merrill Streep are apparently vastly underpaid.

3. Neil Patrick Harris has been spending some time at the gym, and isn't at all concerned with preserving his dignity.

4. In order for a movie to win an award at the Oscars, it's essential that nobody has actually bought a ticket to see it.

5. An essential part of every acceptance speech is the obligatory pitch for a cause, to include, but not be limited to...equal pay for women, immigration, the environment, racial injustice, and gay rights.

But what I really learned from this year's festivities is what I already knew. When presented with films about such weighty matters as, A. The war in Iraq and America's deadliest warrior, B. The brave Enigma code breaker, C. A Martin Luther King biopic, and D. The story of famed physicist and thinker Stephen Hawking...the Academy gives the award to a movie about...Hollywood.

They just can't help themselves.

Does Obama Love America?

Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, made headlines recently by questioning whether or not President Obama loves America. The mayor's question has hung in the air like three day old fish, stinking up our political discourse from the salons of Manhattan to the dinner parties in Georgetown. I'm sure the Sunday shows will talk about little else. What to think...

It is generally bad form to cast about impugning the patriotic commitments of politicians. For one thing, patriotism is so difficult to define. Love of country is hard to quantify. For instance, I certainly love America, but I don't love everything about it. I hate the political dysfunction that has produced 18 trillion dollars in debt. I hate the career political class from both parties who have, House-of-Cards-style, made a mockery of the democratic process. So my love is selective. I'm generally suspicious of those who claim to love their country "right or wrong," in much the same way as I am suspicious of a parent who loves their kids so much that it renders them blind to their faults. There is such a thing as loving something too much, after all.

But, generally speaking, my default emotion towards my country is something close to love. In the President's case, as with most Progressives, it seems more complicated. He is a product of a political philosophy which views America, from its founding, as a deeply flawed place. Progressives have always viewed America's successes with suspicion. The Declaration of Independance? Just a document designed to preserve white privilege. The Constitution? Simply a straight jacket designed to encumber the power and benevolence of the central government. The industrial Revolution? Ill-gotten gains accrued on the backs of slave labor. In the Progressive view of history, America isn't a shining city on a hill or even a beacon for freedom for the oppressed, but rather a racist, misogynistic, greedy collection of rubes and hicks who need to be controlled by the enlightened from each coast. America is something which needs to be constantly and continually radically transformed from something base to something better, and the only people capable of this redemption all happen to be...Progressive.

So, when the President tells us to get off of our moral high horse over ISIS because of Jim Crow laws from fifty years ago, it feeds into the suspicion that he is much more comfortable criticizing our sins than he is criticizing the sins of our enemies. He is the only President in my lifetime who's rhetoric always seems to soar highest when he is taking us to task for our national sins.

Still, I have no doubt that the President loves America. I am equally confident that President Obama knew that George Bush also loved America in 2008 when he accused him of being "unpatriotic" for piling up 4 trillion dollars onto the national debt. It was a Presidential campaign and people get riled up and say things that they wish they could take back. Mayor Giuliani was wrong for making such an accusation about a sitting President.

While I love America for what it is and has been, a force for good in the world, an intrinsic love...the President loves America for what it has the potential to become if it adopts his policies. Perhaps that is a different kind of love, but it is love nonetheless. America's past and present sins do nothing to alter my love of country, primarily because I know that every nation in the history of mankind has closets filled with skeletons. But simple love of country does not blind me to criticism of it or a desire to fix what ails her. In this way, I suppose, the President and I agree.

Dinner and a Movie Review

We don't call them date-nights anymore. But last night was one. It started with dinner at Firebirds with my two sisters and their husbands. We would have been easy to find...the loud table of six arguing about politics and bragging about our kids, ironically placed adjacent to a table of deaf people. We stayed entirely too long, the poor waitress stopping by every five minutes refilling the sweet tea, her eyes practically screaming, "How can we miss you if you never leave?" It was great fun. 

The topics of conversation were varied and included such classics as the deplorably incoherent state of American foreign policy, the trials and tribulations of directing children's choirs, the adorableness of my sister's new grandchild, our unanimous conclusion that my daughter hit the jackpot with the selection of her husband, my son's love life, how horrible this past week must have been for our brother in Maryland having to deliver mail in 10 degree weather, and how great it is that Christina's gynecologist is running for the State Senate. Bon apetite!

When we finally got back home, Pam and I settled down to watch a movie that had been on my "must see" list ever since its release...The Judge. Holy cow, what a movie. Any film which features the great Robert Duvall and the sensational Robert Downey Jr. would have to be good, but The Judge was great. Watching these two heavyweights on screen felt like watching a greatest hits compilation. The story was rich, the characters believable, and the performances nothing short of brilliant. Duvall is getting old and may not be with us too much longer. But when he passes, the title of greatest living American actor will pass easily and smoothly to Downey Jr. This was the kind of film that made you believe that it didn't actually have a script, it was just two geniuses making it up as they went along, going with the power of the emotional moment, and luckily for us there were a million of them. Everything about The Judge is utterly believable with the possible exception of one overly personal exchange between Downey the lawyer, and Duvall, his father/defendant on the witness stand. Other than that brief departure, the picture was nearly perfect for my taste. Do yourself a favor and rent The Judge.

So now it's Saturday and we wait for the snow and whatever else might be in store for us on this perfectly awful February day. Only twenty eight more days until spring.

I Hate The Middle East

Somebody's needs to say it, might as well be me. I really, truly hate the Middle East. The entire region is like an enormous infected boil on the backside of civilization. It's a dusty, dirty, violent cess pool of dysfunction. The place has been giving the world a headache for my entire lifetime, and centuries before I ever came along. It's like a thousand year old Hatfield v. McCoy feud only instead of horses and muzzleloader rifles, they have camels and nuclear weapons. Throw in religious extremists, ritual beheadings, wailling walls, temple mounts and beat up Toyota pick up trucks and you've got the Geo-political version of a hit reality television blockbuster...Survivor Tel Aviv.

Yes, I know about the cultural and historical significance of the place...cradle of civilization and all. And yes, I'm aware that Israel is there, the birthplace of our Lord. I'm reminded of this salient point roughly 50 times a month at my church, where it seems they are rounding up volunteers to go tour the Holy Land every week. We are shown slides of barren hillsides, each indistinguishable from the next..."and this is the Mount of Olives," intones the speaker, "an indescribably moving experience!" I'll take his word for it since the only way you're getting me on a tour bus full of Christians touring the countryside of Israel in 2015 is at room temperature.

Every day of my life there has been some sort of "Middle East Peace Initiative" going on, usually with the United States hip deep in the middle of the thing. And every day of my life, there has been no peace of any kind in the Middle East. This despite the heroic and tireless efforts of two generations of would be peacemakers. Several of them have won Nobels, but still no peace. In the past, what happened in this vast wasteland was of huge strategic importance to us since we desperately needed the region's oil. Now, not so much, (thank you, fracking!). 

Now we have ISIS, the latest and most convincing argument against Evolution. This group of anonymous barbarians has brought back Middle Ages style savagery and combined it with 21st century technological innovation. This unholy alliance has resulted in a series of slickly produced snuff videos depicting the gruesome deaths of a parade of alleged "enemies of Islam." Watching them is to be reminded that while all men may be created equal, they don't stay equal for long.

Our President seems uniquely ill-equipped to be a wartime executive. His heart doesn't seem to be in the effort to confront ISIS. I watched him give his speech yesterday at yet another conference at the White House decrying something called "violent extremism." He tried his best, but to hear him talk you could be persuaded that ISIS would go away if only they had better job opportunities. It was all very strange, the kind of speech you would expect him to give at the Urban League or something. 

Part of me is glad that he is so reticent. Part of me thinks that the Middle East deserves what it gets. Despite the best efforts of generations of diplomats, if they insist on killing each other with box cutters, then have at it. That may sound cold and uncaring, and perhaps on some level it is. But at some point the people of the Middle East will have to become responsible for the dysfunction of the Middle East. 

The sooner, the better.