Incomprehensible Post

I don't know everything. But, like Socrates, I stay ahead of the crowd by knowing that I don't know. Just last Saturday, as I was at the vendor desk, a vendor asked me if I was in a good mood. I didn't know! But I KNEW that I didn't know, so I could ASK. I also knew that Anitra "High Maintenance Babe" Freeman was somewhere within earshot, diddling on some computer. So I shouted, "HEY ANITRA! AM I IN A GOOD MOOD? FRANKLIN WANTS TO KNOW!" She answered back directly to Franklin. "His mood is pretty good today. He's not horrid."

I mean, really, how can I know if I'm in a good mood or not? I don't have to suffer from it. You might as well ask me if I'm tolerable to look at. What, do people think I stare at mirrors all day? I know my hands aren't a freak show.

Sometimes not knowing a thing is smarter than knowing it. One of my pet peeves is aroused by people who know that "racism is about power," and conclude that "Black Americans can't be racist."

First of all, you can't even tell how racist you are by looking in a mirror, because the face in the mirror is you looking at you. You need to see how you relate to others.

First and a half, note I said "how" racist, not "if." You ARE, and the questions are only: In what way? To what extent?

Secondly. The statement "racism is about power" is precisely the kind of meaningless, vacuous, rotting from the head down and out its ass bullshit that makes me wonder if the people in this country who want to be educated don't want to bother being there when it happens. Of course racism is about power. Anything that isn't static is about power. Verbs are about power. Giving, taking, walking, talking, and singing are about power. Even standing is about power. Stand up for what's right!

Third of all, for the conclusion to be valid, the reasoner is required to accept the unstated premise that Black Americans have no power. None. Whaa?

Think about it. If Black Americans have any power, and they do, 'cause I've seen them have some when they didn't know I was looking, then they are able to have that much racism. OK, maybe they can't be as racist as White Americans, what with all that humongous power White Americans have, seeing as how White Americans own Disneyland, Idaho, South Dakota, and most of the McDonalds, but Black Americans can at least be a tiny bit racist with the little bit of power they have.

A good, smart, starting answer to the question, "How much is that tiny bit of racism?" might be, "I don't know." Such an answer might demonstrate the readiness to begin to know.

Another smart time to not know something is when you're faced with events beyond all human comprehension. I'm writing this the morning of April 16. Yesterday was not only Tax Day but Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day. Originally it was meant to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began April 19th, 1943, speaking of oft unspoken power. It's a good thing, I am sure, to remember the Holocaust, but not a good thing to comprehend.

My promise to one and all: If anyone can convince me that he truly and completely comprehends the Holocaust, I will worship him as a stupid god. I will carry him around on my shoulders and use his aura to heal the sick and the lame.

No, I'm not in a horrid mood, even though Kurt Vonnegut died last week, and losing a smart one pissed me off. "The firebombing of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I am," he once said. Well sure. The firebombing was incomprehensible; incomprehensibles illustrate one another, they don't explain. He knew that.

In a Smoke-Filled Gloom

Recently the Seattle Times reported that some public-housing agencies around here are looking at banning smoking in the units of some buildings. At first this got my Wrath up and running around, and the Downtown Emergency Services Center was about to demand ID from the visiting vein in my forehead. So Anitra “Who Needs No Last Name, As Her First Is Not Yet Used Up” fetched the customary three vats of cold water, and here we are now, calm and orderly, and able to discuss this issue in a polite and civilized manner.

I should begin by saying I don’t smoke. I haven’t for nine years. I don’t plan to resume smoking ever. I don’t have a direct personal interest in the question. If smoking were banned in all the rooms of my subsidized DESC-run apartment building tomorrow I wouldn’t give a wrinkled rat’s ass.

But there is another issue behind the immediate issue of whether smoking is banned in rooms or not. It is an issue that means a lot to me, so much that I could spit flaming wrinkled asses.

Here’s the thing. The article was all about “these public health people here sent out a survey of these residents there” and “these residents responded” and “this public housing agency here will do another survey of these other residents” and then “we’ll decide what to do about it” and WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY MEAN BY “WE,” I’ll tell you want they mean: THEY MEAN THEM.

It’s just another example of how the public housing agencies don’t defer to the rightful power of their tenants.

How about if we decide our government the way public housing decides these kinds of rules.

Let’s say in the summer of 2008 Congress commissions a survey. They select a “representative sampling” of Americans and ask them questions like these: Which statement is more true FOR YOU, 1) I like a president who listens to me, 2) I like a president who goes his own way, 3) I don’t care, either way is fine. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most, tell how much do you agree the following statements. 1) It’s OK if a woman is president. 2) National security is really important to me. 3) Presidents should be tall.

Then let’s say a Congressional Committee made up of five or ten typical Congressional jerks, much like the jerks who sit on public housing agencies boards, gets together and wets it’s collective seven or eight neurons with the results of that survey. Then, let’s say they do a few more surveys, because they liked the first one so much, it tingled.

Finally they make a decision! Your next president is… whoever they say he or she is!

Meanwhile, let’s say you ask, where was the power of the people in all this? They then tell you that you, the people, WE’RE consulted. By surveys! They tell you they did everything they could to take your “issues” into account. They say they got all kinds of “public input” and “public feedback.” But in the end they decided.

That’s what public housing agencies do.

Would it hurt them to let the residents of each building work it out themselves? The enforcement could be the same. Management could stage the community meetings and set up the vote and enforce the result. But the difference is, the people whose lives are effected by the decision do the deciding, not patronizing jerks who live in houses in the suburbs and think they’re better than the people forced by circumstances to rent from their public housing.

Speaking of people forced into public housing, the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness is underway and everyone’s congratulating themselves on the numbers from this year’s One Night Count. A piece of the plan is to lure homeless people into permanent housing and off the streets, to reduce the total cost of services.

It’s easier to lure people into self-determination, than into slavery.

Shooting an Elephant

Let’s ask weighty questions about philanthropy!

What a negative bastard I am, that I don’t think the world of Bill & Melinda & Warren E’s highly noble goal of donating $3 billion a year of their hoardings. I don’t care about all the fabulous good they will accomplish thereby. I don’t see any of the promised solutions to the world’s problems as being nearly such glorious goods as to justify the processes that led to this situation, meaning the processes that gave these jackasses so much power in the first place.

It’s all about the power. That’s all I see. Who elected these twits? Who really believes that these people actually deserve all the money (= power) they have to throw at us?

Don’t get me wrong. At heart I’m a screaming conservative. Watch me rant and rave on behalf of the rights of people to live the way they did during the Stone Age. I’m for Detached Accessory Dwelling Units, because I want Big Government to stay the hell out of my garage. I was vehemently opposed to the Supreme Court decision on eminent domain, because I didn’t think our Founding Fathers thought replacing George’s fighting bantam farm with a Wal-Mart constituted “public use.” I’m so opposed to Big Government I think we should all be allowed to run naked and drunk in the streets, and all of us enjoy public cockfights and bear baiting, if you know what I mean.

But there’s such a thing as Big Money too. It shouldn’t exist in the first place: no one, in the history of the world, nor any group of three people, has ever truly earned $60 billion. Bill & Melinda & Warren E didn’t just recently sit themselves down on a log and wipe the collective sweat from their brows and say “Whewee, that was a whole lot of work hoarding all that money the last thirty years, now let’s rest up a spell and pass some of it out.”

But back to the power. It occurs to me that we all might benefit from a little Gedanken experiment. Or in this case a Gedungen experiment. Because when I think of elephants in the house, I think of elephants.

Let’s imagine that they weren’t about to give away $3 billion a year in money, but $3 billion a year in elephants. What would that look like?

Let’s see. One elephant costs 1,000,000 rupees or less. That’s around $20,000. Figure in the $500 per year to feed one at wholesale prices, plus costs of keepers and temporary housing, 2.26 cents per ton-mile for railroad freight, 78 cents per ton-mile for air-freight, at about 5 tons per animal, and out comes the rough answer: The cost of obtaining, maintaining, and shipping elephants to anywhere whatsoever averages less than $100,000 per elephant. So Bill & Melinda & Warren E have the equivalent of at least 30,000 elephants per year to give away around the world. That’s one pachyderm to give to every 200,000 people, per year.

So if the elephants are distributed equally, and dropped in by helicopter, it should be virtually raining elephants everywhere on the planet. “Mbuzi! A present from the Gateses and the Buffett is about to land on your Mother’s hut!”

Or say they give them to cities and towns rather than small collectives. What would it do for Seattle to have an influx of 2.5 elephants per year? “Thank you Bill et al, our Mounted Police have never looked so Hannibalish! How retro!”

People are such suck-ups; you know they’re going to fall all over themselves thanking their donors not only for the elephants but also for everything that comes with the elephants.

I guess that’s what I’m really talking about. Thank you Bill & Melinda & Warren E for your $3 billion a year, but you’d better not send any poop with it.

Power to the Min

WARNING: This is going to be one of the most diffuse, scattered columns I have ever written. I'm dealing with a concept I don't understand, because I've never had much concrete experience with it. I'm dealing with the concept of power.

So, Tonto. You'd like to make some changes around here, would you? Getting bored with all the picket fences? Want to break out and grow tomatoes, yams, and strawberries in the parking strip, do you, Tonto? Want to raise goats? Want to be the one who wears the mask instead of the one who has to talk to it? Well, get in line, take an application form, and get ready to fill it out, and we'll get back to you in six months if we feel like it.

Sometimes when I get bored I like to multiply and divide numbers to see how big or little things are. Like the other day when nothing was on the TV except Jerry Springer and infomercials for the Psychic Hotline, I got to wondering how big this country really is.

I mean, everyone knows the US is 3,615,211 or so square miles, but what is that in square dog feet? I still don't know, but I found out another cool fact. I found out that if you divide that by the number of people they say we have, and if you know there are 640 acres in a square mile, you get more than eight acres.

Not having grown up on a farm, I immediately converted that answer to football fields, and got almost eight. The US is so big that if you divided it up equally among all its adults and children, everyone would get almost eight football fields worth.

That tells me two things. First, that this country is a lot more crowded than it was in 1864. Back then General Sherman thought there was so much spare space that the freed slaves could all be given 38.72 football fields and a mule and nobody would hardly have to move over to make room. (The trick was to give them land covered with sand that nobody else wanted, and then take it back when nothing grew on it.)

The other thing it tells me is that the problem of homelessness is not that we've run out of places to put people.

No, it comes down to the same thing it came down to in 1864. Power.

People who have power saying that people who don't have power shouldn't be allowed it; it would upset the whole Natural Order of the Universe.

"You can't allow freed slaves to have land." "They never had any land before, they wouldn't know what to do with it." "How can people who only know how to steal chickens raise them?" "It wouldn't look right, have you seen the houses they live in? They're positively eyesores!" "Next thing is, they'll be wanting their children to be able to go to normal schools."

Et cetera. Every possible excuse except the one that gets to the point: "If you give them power, it's less power for me."

Let's see how this works on a smaller scale.

At first glance you would think that if El Centro de la Raza said that 100 or so homeless people could pitch tents on their land until Jan. 16, 2001, that'd be the end of it, wouldn't it?

You'd be right, if El Centro de la Raza had the right to say what happens on El Centro de la Raza land. But in reality, nobody has the right to say what happens on their own land, because power isn't distributed that way.

Go ahead, try painting your house neon mauve, and see what happens.

Or try growing bamboo in your front yard. Or kudzu. That would be interesting, wouldn't it?

Interesting, but not within your power, Tonto. Your Neighborhood Association has some interesting ideas of its own, as does the Department of Construction and Land Use. Their interesting ideas usually involve something called Don't Rock the Boat.

Now if you'd just come in the middle of the night and put up something appealing, like a monolith reminiscent of the monoliths in Stanley Kubrick's "2001, a Space Odyssey," that would be different. That would be art, and this is a forward-looking, artistically sensitive community, which cares about not looking like a bunch of Philistines to the Rest of the World.

What does the Rest of the World have to do with it? Well, they have the power, not us. Didn't you know that, Tonto?