Batchelor @ the Hard Rock

I cannot believe that Californians are still suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. If true, it’s the only way to explain it - putting Democrats back in office. Carly Fioria is a survivor. That in itself should say it all. Boxer is a clinger. Whitman is a message. Brown is an antique.

This brings to mind something I had forgotten: Remember back when Rush Limbaugh lost his hearing? Can you imagine anything worse than for a radio host to lose hearing? Yet, he never missed a beat. True, those initial broadcasts right after his hearing loss were painful to listen to. (Someone had to transcribe what was said by his callers for him to read.) Still, it amounted to a magnificent display of pure will.

Last night at the Hard Rock was equally inspiring. Surely John’s job is a lot more difficult than how he made it seem. I was especially pleased to find myself in the same room as Malcolm Hoenlein. Larry Kudlow was better than he is on his own show, and Monica and Margaret graced the stage with their beauty and intellect.

I had expected something far more informal. McCotter doing a guitar solo, perhaps; or Sapientia taking a bow. None of that. It was professional all the way. BRAVO, John!

We’ll have to do it again!

Leaders And Jailers

Leadership should not be difficult. The Bible says that people should obey their leaders as to make their leadership not a burden to them. A leader is in essence a tube through which a higher power speaks. The people will be proud to serve for they know that he serves them as well. They will be confident that he has their best interests in mind.

Leadership is a gift - an inborn skill, like that of ‘boys who can hit a bird with a stone at thirty paces. They have not learned it; they can simply do it; it did not come by effort, but by magic or grace. The stone in their hand flies off by itself; the stone wants to hit the bird and the bird wants to be hit.’*

How far we have fallen!

Leaders who complain about how hard it is to lead are not leaders; they are jailers who must constantly watch their backs. They preside over chaos and discontent. Indeed, they make use of these in order to promote the fiction of their leadership. It renders them ever more isolated, like planets spinning out of their orbits.

‘There must seem to be a center in the vast network of associations. If one were at that center, one would know everything, could see all that had been and all there is yet to come. Knowledge must pour upon the one who stands at that center as water runs to the valley and the hare to the cabbage. His word would strike sharply and infallibly as the stone in the sharpshooter’s hand.’*

I used to admire Jerry Brown. I had read somewhere that he studied Buddhism and practices Zen. As such, I thought of him as possessing some measure of wisdom. Now I see him (and others) as just another in a long line of political hacks.
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*excerpts taken from Hermann Hesse’s ’The Glass Bead Game’ and translated roughly from the German to fit the context of this writing.

Summer Of Love ('67)

I used to admire Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown and Muammar al-Gaddafi. This was before I ever held a job or raised a family. I remember voting for Jesse Jackson in the primaries. The Beatles' 'Revolution' and the Stones' 'Street Fighting Man' were favorite anthems. I don't quite know when the change occurred. For a long time I didn't pay much attention to what was happening in Washington or in the world. Once I came back to it, the fight was already on.

There was a certain romance to those early days. America was our straw man that we could set a match to any time we wanted - to warm ourselves; to celebrate fire - without really changing anything fundamental. America was America, rock solid, leader of the free world. We fed our own egos by tearing pieces off of her, sitting around a campfire on some far-off tropical beach with the blue moon rising over the water, smoking splits.

There's no romance now - only the hard work of getting Sisyphus' stone back up to the summit. Thank God that so many of us have awakened from the stupor and are willing to roll up their sleeves. What's amazing is that so many others are still stuck back there in the 60's and 70’s; that their views haven't changed even in light of all that's happened. It speaks of a Peter Pan syndrome; a kind of pathology that resulted in stunted development of a sort.

I can’t believe that Jerry doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. He’s a pol first and foremost – and a smart one at that. He thinks he can rekindle that old Haight Asbury illusion in enough others, if not in himself. Maybe in California the smoke is still rising from that ‘Summer of Love’ (’67) disaster as to give the impression that there’s still somebody out there who gives a s**t. And Jackson surely found his niche: extortion. And Gaddafi found his: oppression. I can’t really blame them. Not everybody can afford the luxury of idealism. People get it where they can. The afore mentioned wing nuts have done rather well for themselves - even if they did it at our expense.

But what’s Obama’s excuse. Surely he sees not much profit in standing with the old guard of commie losers. Maybe he’s just plain stupid – but that’s a stretch. Maybe he’s so twisted by hatred, he can’t think straight. Maybe he’s always been carrying that cross of race. Maybe he now sees the opportunity of ditching it for once and for all. But in order to do so, he’s got to put white people in their place. That’s not as easy as he thought – even for the most powerful man in the free world.