Monthly Archives: September 2014

War?

Posted on by

For a long time, war in Europe has been unthinkable. In the Cold War, conflict meant nuclear exchange and the end of the human race. Therefore, war with the Soviets was to be avoided at all costs. It was also assumed, correctly, that the Russians were not interested in war with the West, at least not a shooting war. Proxies such as Vietnam or various civil wars in the third world were as far as it could be allowed to go.

Once the Cold War ended, war was looking like a thing of the past. Hammering a crap hole from time to time was as far as it would go. Europe was into the end of history stuff and racing toward one worldism. If you talked about the Russian threat ten years ago, you were considered a nut. Heck, in the 2012 election, Obama mocked Romney for talking up the threat of Russia. The liberal media roared with laughter when Obama said “The 80’s called and they want their foreign policy back” in one of the debates.

Now, here we are with the very liberal Slate posting article about the looming war with Russia.

Over and over again—throughout the entirety of my adult life, or so it feels—I have been shown Polish photographs from the beautiful summer of 1939: The children playing in the sunshine, the fashionable women on Krakow streets. I have even seen a picture of a family wedding that took place in June 1939, in the garden of a Polish country house I now own. All of these pictures convey a sense of doom, for we know what happened next. September 1939 brought invasion from both east and west, occupation, chaos, destruction, genocide. Most of the people who attended that June wedding were soon dead or in exile. None of them ever returned to the house.

When you start with a reference to the looming Nazi onslaught, you know the rest of the article is going to be seriously grim.

In retrospect, all of them now look naive. Instead of celebrating weddings, they should have dropped everything, mobilized, prepared for total war while it was still possible. And now I have to ask: Should Ukrainians, in the summer of 2014, do the same? Should central Europeans join them?

I realize that this question sounds hysterical, and foolishly apocalyptic, to American or Western European readers. But hear me out, if only because this is a conversation many people in the eastern half of Europe are having right now. In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine. The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow. Some include Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk, cities that are still hundreds of miles away from the fighting. Some place Novorossiya along the coast, so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian-occupied province of Moldova. Even if it starts out as an unrecognized rump state—Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “states” that Russia carved out of Georgia, are the models here—Novorossiya can grow larger over time.

The thing about American politicians and strategists is they always assume the other guys think like they think. That’s been the problem with Ukraine. Close to zero people in the American foreign policy bubble have heard of “Novorossiya” or what the “Wild Fields” means to Russian nationalists. Anne Applebaum is clever and super connected to the neocon network, yet this is the first time she has written about this. This suggests that the Western foreign policy elite knows next to nothing about what’s going on in Russia today and they assume no one else does either.

That’s the scary part about this situation. It looks like the West is not just clueless about Russia, but almost in disbelief every time Putin makes a move. This story about Igor Strelkov is a good example. That part of the word has forever been dominated by out-sized and outlandish personalities. Just look at how the collapse of the Soviet Union unfolded. Boris Yeltsin was not a sober and cautious man, by any stretch of the imagination. Look at some of the characters in the “stans” or even in the Russian parliament.

Wars start for one of two reasons. One is the combatants don’t know what’s coming and blunder into war. The other is the combatants know exactly what is coming, but the stronger side will not be deterred. The American Civil War and the First World War are example of the former. If the participants had the benefit of foresight, they would have made different choices. The bloodbath may have happened under different conditions, I don’t know, but there’s no way people voluntarily submit to a mass kill-off.

That’s what’s scary about what’s unfolding with Russia and the West. The West has no idea what they are dealing with in Ukraine or with Putin. They think they can wage technological and financial war to force their preferred solution on Putin. On the other hand, Putin seems convinced the West is paralyzed by a lack of confidence. He can impose his preferred solution on the West with the force of arms. History says he is probably right in the short run, but the West is right in the long run.

What happens in between is the scary part.

The Madhouse

Posted on by

The internet brings word that a middle school teacher has been hauled off to the nuthouse before he could cause any harm to children.

He’s a man with many names, and the books he has written have raised the concerns of the Dorchester County Board of Education and the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office.

Early last week the school board was alerted that one of its eighth grade language arts teachers at Mace’s Lane Middle School had several aliases.  Police said that under those names, he wrote two fictional books about the largest school shooting in the country’s history set in the future.  Now, Patrick McLaw is placed on leave.

Dr. K.S. Voltaer is better known by some in Dorchester County as Patrick McLaw, or even Patrick Beale.  Not only was he a teacher at Mace’s Lane Middle School in Cambridge, but according to Dorchester Sheriff James Phillips, McLaw is also the author of two books: “The Insurrectionist” and its sequel, “Lillith’s Heir.”

Those books are what caught the attention of police and school board officials in Dorchester County.  “The Insurrectionist” is about two school shootings set in the future, the largest in the country’s history.

Phillips said McLaw was taken in for an emergency medical evaluation. The sheriff would not disclose where McLaw is now, but he did say that he is not on the Eastern Shore. The same day that McLaw was taken in for an evaluation, police swept Mace’s Lane Middle School for bombs and guns, coming up empty.

The Atlantic, the source of this story, has this to say about the report.

Imagine that—a novelist who didn’t store bombs and guns at the school at which he taught. How improbable! Especially considering that he uses an “alias,” which is apparently the law-enforcement term for “nom de plume.” (Here is the Amazon page for The Insurrectionist, by the way. Please note that the book was published in 2011, before McLaw was hired.)

According to an equally credulous and breathless report in the Star-Democrat, which is published in Easton, Md., the combined efforts of multiple law-enforcement agencies have made area children safe from fiction. Sheriff Phillips told the newspaper that, in addition to a K-9 sweep of the school (!), investigators also raided McLaw’s home. “The residence of the teacher in Wicomico County was searched by personnel,” Phillips said, with no weapons found. “A further check of Maryland State Police databases also proved to be negative as to any weapons registered to him. McLaw was suspended by the Dorchester County Board of Education pending an investigation and is no longer in the area. He is currently at a location known to law enforcement and does not currently have the ability to travel anywhere.”

I’ve tried to reach the sheriff, so far unsuccessfully, to learn whether McLaw’s “inability to travel anywhere” means that he is under arrest. It is somewhat amazing that local news reports on this case don’t make clear whether McLaw is under arrest, and if so, on what charge. It is equally astonishing that the reporters on this story don’t seem to have used the words “First Amendment” in their questioning of law-enforcement officials, and also astonishing they don’t question the Soviet-sounding practice of ordering an apparently sane person who has been deemed unacceptable by state authorities to undergo a psychological evaluation.

It would be useful to know if McLaw is under investigation for behavior other than writing two novels—and perhaps he will be shown to be a miscreant of some sort—but so far, there is no indication that he is guilty of anything other than having an imagination, although on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, as news reports make clear, his imagination is considered an active threat.

The problem with the militarization of the cops, along with the proliferation of laws, is it erodes the trust between the citizens. The cops marching around in their Star Wars outfits, in addition to looking ridiculous, make people feel like prisoners. When you give these ridiculous blockheads carte blanche to hassle the people, everyone assumes the worst when the cops are involved. A lot of suburbanites still shrug and assume it is just the poor getting jammed up, but it is happening everywhere.

There could very well be much more going on here than has been reported. You would like to think there has to be some evidence before the cops can drag a man off to the nuthouse. But that’s the thing. There has been so much of this crap going on there’s no reason to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. When “swatting” is an everyday occurrence now, it is safe to assume everyone has figured out what’s going on with the cops and is normalizing it.

There has to be a balance for ordered liberty to work. Too much order and you get the chaos of tyranny. Too much liberty and you get the chaos of the mob. Stories like this one look like a strange blend of mob rule (fear of the weirdo) and law-abusing cops who think they are game keepers. What should have been a meeting between the man and his supervisor to make sure his side job was not a bigger problem is suddenly the run up to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Redlining

Posted on by

One of the great benefits of old age is accepting the fact we never learn from our mistakes. Those of us who do learn are not important enough to matter. All the important people have the memory of a kitten. Thus we see stories like this over and over, despite allegedly having learned our lesson.

Drawn in thick marker along the map of upstate New York, the line snaked down the Niagara River and zigzagged east to outline a swath of Buffalo and its surrounding neighborhoods.

But one area of the city — neighborhoods in east Buffalo, where more than 75 percent of the city’s African-American population lives — was explicitly excluded, cut off from access to mortgage credit.

That map, ringed by a line, is at the center of a sweeping investigation by the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, into whether banks are “redlining” — deliberately choking off mortgage lending to predominantly minority communities — people briefed on the matter said.

The investigation was expected to reach its first target as early as Tuesday, the people said, with Mr. Schneiderman’s office taking aim at Evans Bank, a regional lender whose business in the Buffalo area dates to 1920, accusing it of denying mortgages to African-Americans regardless of their credit.

The case, expected to accuse Evans Bank of violating the Fair Housing Act — a federal law intended to ensure equal access to credit — is a harbinger of other lawsuits that could be brought against some of the nation’s largest banks, several people briefed on the investigations said.

We nearly blew up civilization with insane lending rules in the last decade. That stampede to the cliff’s edge began with lawsuits claiming the banks were not lending to black people. Here we are again, doing the same thing expecting a different result.

In the suit, expected to be filed in state court, prosecutors were to outline how, since 2009, Evans Bancorp has created a map that defined the “trade area,” places in the Buffalo metropolitan region where the bank would make mortgages and other loans. The bank, prosecutors contend, deliberately excised much of Buffalo’s East Side.

Rival banks, the authorities said, lent to neighborhoods on the East Side at a far higher rate than Evans Bank, suggesting that the lending patterns did not stem from a dearth of willing minority borrowers.

If the bank actually had a map with a red line around the black neighborhoods, then they deserve what they get. That’s just stupid. If they simply refused to market to poor neighborhoods based on credit bureau reports, then that’s their business. The fact that the other banks were charging “far higher rates” says this bank is not interested in high risk lending. That’s why banks charge high rates. The risk is high. That’s news to the NY Times, but not to people with an IQ above room temperature.

That unequal access to credit, the authorities say, threatens to exacerbate the country’s yawning wealth gap. Part of the problem is that the foreclosure crisis disproportionately affected black and Hispanic communities, wiping out billions of dollars of housing wealth, federal mortgage data shows.

Mortgage lending is critical, the authorities say, to bolster homeownership — a cornerstone of upward mobility — in minority communities still trying to dig out from the recession. Denied access to credit, state and federal authorities warn, minority communities are helpless to address problems like boarded-up homes, foreclosures and blight that have long ravaged neighborhoods.

You cannot help but wonder if the writer is mildly retarded. People with high default rates should not be getting loans. The reason is they have no money. That’s why they defaulted on the loans.

As far as those boarded up homes, that’s the fault of the same “authorities” whining about inequality. Those homes should be condemned and bulldozed. But, the rich guys who own them give generously to those authorities complaining about the wealth gap. Alternatively, the homes can be condemned and taken by eminent domain and then sold off to developers. But then the prices would go up and the poor would be moved out so the children of rich white liberals can live in crime free hipster-villes.

Racial Politics

Posted on by

In the 1970’s, Nixon began to win over southern whites to the GOP by appealing to middle-class, suburban voters. The Left called the “Southern Strategy” racist because that’s what they do, but it was really just a strong defense of whites. In the face of the liberal onslaught on whites, those southern whites out in the burbs started to reconsider their long relationship with the Democrat Party. The Left squealed about “code words” and racism, as they just assume all whites in the South are racists. The fact is those early converts to the GOP were the southern whites looking to close the books on segregation and racial strife.

This argument carried on through the 80’s as the transformation of the South from Democrat to Republican was completed. If you know your Faulkner, Nixon converted the Compsons, while Reagan brought over the Snopes clan.

In fairness, race did play a role. After the 60’s, urban blacks rioting and looting became the face of disorder, the great enemy of the suburban burghers who fled the city for the suburbs. In the 1970’s, many of those people living in suburbia were there because their city neighborhoods collapsed in the 1960’s. The liberal enthusiasm for mayhem was amplified when they backed groups like the Panthers and the Nation of Islam. Nixon’s appeals to law and order naturally carried with them the image of the black rioter. He did not have to mention any of this. It was simply understood.

The thing about the Left is they tend to go craziest when applying their faults to their enemies. No one has cynically used race as a political weapon like the American Left. LBJ built his career long before the Civil Rights Movement on the back of race. He would appeal to blacks for votes and then use that support to lever support from the Texas elite. His cynical use of race as President still casts a shadow over the nation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was as much about funneling tax money into the Democratic Party as anything else. It also made blacks a reliable voting black that the party could take for granted.

Steve Sailer links to and comments upon a story in the NYTimes about how the Left is trying to use the Ferguson riot as a get out the vote tool. It says something about our times when the Times can report on something like this without bothering to notice the evil of it. The banality of the report is what’s shocking.

With their Senate majority imperiled, Democrats are trying to mobilize African-Americans outraged by the shooting in Ferguson, Mo., to help them retain control of at least one chamber of Congress for President Obama’s final two years in office.

In black churches and on black talk radio, African-American civic leaders have begun invoking the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, along with conservative calls to impeach Mr. Obama, as they urge black voters to channel their anger by voting Democratic in the midterm elections, in which minority turnout is typically lower.

“Ferguson has made it crystal clear to the African-American community and others that we’ve got to go to the polls,” said Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and a civil-rights leader. “You participate and vote, and you can have some control over what happens to your child and your country.”

The push is an attempt to counter Republicans’ many advantages in this year’s races, including polls that show Republican voters are much more engaged in the elections at this point — an important predictor of turnout.

What the Left is doing is encouraging blacks to riot. Think about that for a second. Appealing to voters on the basis of civil order can be racist, but it is not racist in itself. Order is what you must have in a civil and sane society. The Left is turning this on its head and telling their constituents that only through mayhem can they attain a civil and sane society. “Burn baby, burn” is fine when you’re sacking the village. It’s madness when it is your village.

Mr. Lewis is headlining efforts to mobilize black voters in several states with competitive Senate races, including Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina. The drive is being organized by the Congressional Black Caucus, in coordination with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Other steps, such as recruiting N.B.A. players to help register more African-Americans, are also underway.

Anyone who has read and understands Invisible Man will be reminded of the scene where the narrator examines the paper doll Clifton is selling. The Sambo doll is a metaphor for the life of the narrator and for blacks in America, maybe even the world. Kwame Nkrumah was a fan of the book and the metaphor. Specifically, whites manipulate blacks in the same way a puppeteer manipulates the puppet. The point is to entertain the patrons of the puppeteer. Mr. Lewis has volunteered to be the puppet for this latest drive by SWPL-ville to keep their enemies at bay.

While Democrats always seek to increase African-American turnout, that they are taking such aggressive steps to rally their most loyal constituency reflects the increasingly difficult landscape they face. In recent weeks, seats in Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire, once expected to tilt toward the Democrats, have become more competitive. Mr. Obama’s approval rating has tumbled below 40 percent in states with some of the most competitive races, and Republicans already seem assured to win at least three of the six seats they need to take back the Senate.

And the terrain is tricky: Many of the states where the black vote could be most crucial are also those where Mr. Obama is deeply unpopular among many white voters. So Democratic senators in places like Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina must distance themselves from the nation’s first African-American president while trying to motivate the black voters who are his most loyal constituents.

One of the fascinating things about the Left is the urge to commit suicide. In the 1990’s, they looked at the Clinton model and rejected it. The Clinton model was an old fashioned blend of agrarian populism and high brow elitism. Clinton could mix it up with the ruling class, but also hang out with the servant class. Reagan had this same quality, but without the seedy grubbiness we got with the Clintons. Bubba was a dirtbag who cleaned up well. Reagan was an aristocrat with the common touch.

The Left hated this and worked to destroy it, even as it put the GOP in the majority from 1994 through 2006. Obama was dumb luck. His team was great at running two campaigns, but they got lucky with the perfect candidate for the moment. Hillary would have won in 2008, but would have lost in 2012. She would have been a better president than Obama, but she lacks the unique appeal of Obama. Obama motivated the black vote in ways no one else will do and he got the SWPL vote out writing checks.

The thing is, the Obama approach works once. It’s why his vote fell off in 2012. You can only be the first black President one time. You can only be the Progressive Messiah once. It’s not that the coalition that supported Obama is temporary. It’s that its natural size is not enough to win elections. Without some way to get these people infuriated enough to vote in bulk, it is a loser hand. 2010 was a GOP blowout, despite the fact even the most loyal Republican thinks the party is run by idiots. 2014 is looking like another blowout, even though the GOP is just a little more popular than cancer.

Black Armband Day

Posted on by

The sporting press and liberal America is in mourning today. Gay gay person Gay Gayington was cut by the Rams.

Michael Sam, who is seeking to become the NFL’s first openly gay player, was passed over by 31 teams Sunday just one day after being cut by St. Louis, USA Today reported.

The rookie defensive end cleared waivers and is now free to try and sign with the Rams’ practice squad.

Sam was cut by St. Louis on Saturday as the Rams tried to get their roster down to 53 players for the first game of the season.

Sam thanked the Rams on Saturday for the opportunity and said he would continue to try and land a position on an NFL team.

It was a bad move by his agent to turn Michael Sam into a gay action hero. The NFL is a heartless racket where tiny differences in talent can make the difference between success and failure. Coaches are paranoid control freaks because of it. Anything that distracts from their focus and the team’s focus on the tasks at hand is rooted out of the organization. They have no choice. Otherwise they get fired. Jeff Fischer knows the pressure was on to make a spot for Sam, but he has to win and Sam is an extra he does not need. End of story.

On the other hand, no team will roll the dice on a marginal rookie because the crazies in the press will not stop yapping about the gay stuff. High draft picks get a longer leash than late picks, but there’s not a lot of patience with any of the rookies. Once a guy proves he can help you win, then it swings the other way. The NFL will tolerate a child molester who can help a team win. Right now, Sam is not a guy that can help a team win so the media circus following him around is a major liability.

Sincerity Versus Piety

Posted on by

A fact of the human condition that baffles most people is that humans are believing machines. Belief is a vital part of human existence. In fact, you can’t have human society without the human trait of belief. It allows for the building of cultural institutions, which are the storehouse of human knowledge.

The natural tendency of humans to accept, on faith, what is told to them by their parents, other adults and even their peers is what allows us to advance in a material and evolve in a cultural sense. If everything your parents told you, for example, had to be proved to you before you would accept it, humans would not have got past hunter gatherer stage. We would never have climbed down from the trees.

Norse mythology developed over a long period of time, probably a 1000 years before the runic alphabet. Throughout human settlement, there is a similarity of belief. You have a pantheon of gods, creation myths, codes, explanations of the natural world and so on. It’s easy to see why these people believed in this stuff, but it is hard to figure why they settled on this specific stuff. Yet, they did and did so just about everywhere.

In modern times, belief is most on display when it comes to politics and culture. For example, Liberals believe the Red Team is evil. So much so, they oppose everything the Red Team supports. Liberals believe Christians and Southerners are evil too. That’s why they refuse to go to Chick-fil-A and WalMart. Lefty women were visibly spooked by images of Sarah Palin.

You see some of this on the Right, but it is less clear. Lots of non-Liberals watch ESPN and 60 minutes, despite the fact these outfits are run by lunatics. Still, you have a lot of non-Liberals convinced the GOP is the only answer, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Americans outside the liberal hive tend to be into conventional religions so maybe that’s why their political intensity is much lower.

Anyway, this was posted on MR  the other day. This bit from Thomas Sowell is is the inspiration for this post.

Sincerity is so central to the unconstrained vision that it is not readily conceded to adversaries, who are often depicted as apologists, if not venal. It is not uncommon in this tradition to find references to their adversaries’ “real” reasons, which must be “unmasked.” Even where sincerity is conceded to adversaries, it is often accompanied by references to those adversaries’ “blindness,” “prejudice,” or narrow inability to transcend the status quo. Within the unconstrained vision, sincerity is a great concession to make, while those with the constrained vision can more readily make that concession, since it means so much less to them. Nor need adversaries be depicted as stupid by those with the constrained vision, for they conceive of the social process as so complex that it is easy, even for wise and moral individuals, to be mistaken — and dangerously so. They ‘may do the worst of things without being the worst of man,’ according to Burke. (pg 59-60)

This is why it is best to look at our political tribes in terms of religion, rather than conscious philosophical outlook. What Sowell sees as a ranking of character traits, is best viewed as in-group/out-group signaling. The hive minded always assign the worst imaginable traits to those outside the hive or anyone they see as a threat. Paul Krugman’s hive puts purity of faith above all us, therefore those outside the hive lack faith or sincerity.

It’s why the concept of indifference is alien to the Left. Everyone is either inside or outside the walls. Everyone has had that weird conversation with a lefty about something like homosexual marriage. Shrugging your shoulders and saying you don’t care is not enough. You have to be either for or against. In the old days abortion was this subject. You could easily have lost friends over it.

For the hive minded, people are not just wrong; they are a mortal threat because they oppose that which gives the adherent a reason to exist. Early Greek generals started to figure this out while observing how their men fought differently on their home turf than on the road. Additionally, Greeks fighting other Greeks could feel empathy for their enemies when they saw how they defended their lands and families.

The remedy to this was to find ways to convince the fighters that the enemy was evil in some way that made them undeserving of sympathy. Plunder was simply not enough to motivate men to kill their neighbors. The solution developed over time was small unit training to build loyalty within the ranks. When the men saw one another as blood brothers, those opposed were blood enemies. It is why trench socialism is still a part of Progressive proselytizing, despite their own social chauvinism.

What is passed off as sincerity, is actually an obsession with piety. Inside the hive, public displays of piety are critical to reinforcing one’s place in the hive. Those who fail in their devotions are, in effect, personally rejecting the group. Pretending to be pious, but secretly rejecting the group is crime because it undermines the very foundation of the group. Therefore, assigning this quality to the enemies of the group is not a lot different than ancient soldiers hurling curses at their enemy before battle. It reinforces reasons for the group and motivates the adherents to make war on their enemies.

 

 

Travelogue: New England

Posted on by

I was traveling over the long weekend. It is always good to see old friends, even when it is not so good to see old friends. As you get older, some of your friends get weird for periods and some get really boring for a while. Kids tend to make people boring, but when the kids grow up it makes some people get weird. Women often go bonkers when their kids outgrow them. Men get weird when the gray hair begins to arrive. Still, it is always good to catch up with old friends.

Travel, of course, has its own rewards. America has not been completely homogenized so there’s plenty of weirdness still left in her. New England, for example, retains its quirky Yankee flavor. Even within New England, there is a lot of diversity still. Boston is not Connecticut. Rhode Island is different from New Hampshire and Maine. Mass media has driven a lot of old weird America into extinction, but a lot of it is still around.

Anyway, when you travel to see friends you have not seen in a while it can bring some odd surprises. I’ve let my beard grow over the last month. I just felt like it. If extreme beard growing is the new trend, then I figure I can let my beard grow if I want. Over the weekend, I had at least four people ask me what I use to dye my beard. I don’t dye anything and I have a little grey so that should be obvious. Come to find out, men are now dying their beards and even their whole head. One of my friends is now getting his head dyed on a regular basis.

I asked him about it and he said it bugged him so he figured he would give it a shot. I’m guessing his wife talked him into it. Women have been getting dye jobs forever. The guys getting the beards done are doing it for the same reason and they were casual about it. Maybe it is a Boston thing or just a trend I am just learning about now. Out of curiosity I walked through the hair care section of the local market today and they had a lot of various treatments for gray hair. That suggests I’m the last guy to hear about it.

Now that I have, I can’t imagine ever dying anything. It seems like a lot of work. On the other hand, if it really bugs you I guess it is worth the effort. I’m very conscious of my weight so I torture myself daily to keep the scale happy. Vanity works on all of us differently. I see a lot of old guys huffing and puffing just like me so maybe there are lots of guys at the hair salon getting their beard dyed. It does mean I can no longer mock the young for getting beard transplants and shaving their chests…

Also on the travel agenda was the Tom Petty show at Fenway Park. I have been to Fenway Park for Sox games more times than I can count. I never saw Petty in concert and I did not know what I was missing. He does a great show and Fenway is a great venue for a concert, if you have field seats. I’m not a huge Tom Petty fan, but I highly recommend his show. These old touring pros really know how to do these things.

I wonder if the rock concert is going to be a thing of the past once these old guys finally die off. Starting in the 80’s and 90’s, bands that can play instruments in public have given way to dance shows with lip-syncing and piped in music. A few years ago I saw Madonna on TV doing a show for something and she looked ridiculous. Tom Petty can still play and sing and not look foolish. A fifty year old woman in a cat suit dancing around to her old club tunes is not something you want to see.

One of the things I never get over about New England is the provincialism. Everywhere has some of it, but New England is unique in this regard. I was talking to a woman at the show who wondered where in the south I lived. I was a puzzled and she said she could detect a southern accent. As far as I know, I have no accent, but to the locals, that is an accent. She has a brother living in Tennessee or Kentucky and wanted to talk about the south for what she thought was an authentic southerner.

That’s something you don’t run into elsewhere. Outside of New England, people have a decent understanding of New England. Most of it is gleaned from pop culture. Boston is a trendy place. On the other hand, the typical Yankee still thinks the south is dotted with plantations and fighting the civil rights movement. They think California is a version of Beach Blanket Bingo and the Midwest is just a vase unpopulated zone. The woman I was speaking with was incredulous when I told her life is better for black people in the Old Confederacy than in the north…

On the way home, I passed a group of bikers, members of the Wheels of Soul MC. I’ve always had an interest in gangs and motorcycle gangs in particular. There’s a lot to learn about the human animal from studying criminals. WOSMC is a unique group in the 1%’er world because they are multi-racial. I thought the Feds had put most of them in jail so I looked them up when I got home. The fact that they have a website is pretty funny, when you think about it.

The show Sons of Anarchy has popularized the motorcycle gang again. Hollywood glamorizes crime and criminals, but that’s to be expected. The reality of life in one of these groups is not good TV. The typical biker is an low-IQ, randomly violent and completely unpredictable. They live hand to mouth because they usually can’t hold regular jobs. That means they make money in drugs, hookers, strippers, stolen goods and so on. Selling crank retail in the parking lot of a strip club is not going to result in a lot of income. It also makes bad TV.

The message on the membership page of the WOS site reads:

If you are 18 years of age or older, male and own a motorcycle with a minimum displacement of 750cc, you may have what it takes to begin the journey to becoming a Wheels Of Soul Nation, MC member. We have chapters in every region of the United States and representatives who will be happy to discuss your options with you. The Wheels Of Soul Nation, MC is not structured to facilitate all applicant’s success in becoming a member. Our lifestyle is not recommended for everyone. Though it has it’s rewards, The Wheels Of Soul Nation, MC is not about being rewarded….it’s about brotherhood.

That’s the weird thing about bikers. They are the rare criminal organization that is honest with itself. Mobsters think they were doing good for the community. Heroin dealers in the 70’s carried on like they were local chieftains. Modern street gangs have no sense of self. Bikers know they are bad people and criminals. They put a lot of effort into making sure new members get this fact and they work hard to screen out people who can’t cope with being outside society.

Bikers are the people who put the lie to much of libertarianism. Organized barbarians are always a threat to civilization. A group of 500 bikers can hold a city hostage unless the cops get to do things the libertarians hate. RICO has been the main weapon to bring down biker gangs and the Mafia. Surveillance and deal making has been most effective with bikers. Getting them on video doing crimes is then used to get them to roll on their associates, often using the information to extort confessions from other members.

Sometimes civilized people have to do bad things to protect civilization. Too bad we have never figured out how to do the same against fanatics…