"So Let It Be Written, So Let It Be Done"!

The title of this post comes from Cecil B. Demille's movie "The Ten Commandments". The movie was about Moses, played by Charlton Heston, leading the Jews from slavery in Egypt to the promised land. The line comes from Yul Brynner's Pharaoh character. Whenever Pharaoh made a decision or ruling, "So let it be written, so let it be done" would be proclaimed.

That line seems to sum up the mentality of the modern Democrat party. When I say the Democrat party, I'm not necessarily talking about the rank and file but more those who run the party. The Obamas, Pelosis, Reids and such, to include the Hollywood airheads, paranoid bloggers and dogmatic academicians. To the general public, these people style themselves as "Liberals" but in fact they are "Progressives". Progressive thought is grounded in the grand family of failed utopian ideologies that made the Twentieth Century such a bloody one. Marx was a "progressive". Lenin was a "progressive" as was Mussolini, Stalin and yes, even Hitler. Granted, these men are examples of the progressive movement gone to extremes. But that is where the lesson lay for progressive thought is far removed from and anything but liberalism.

Read the history of the "progressive" movement and you will read a tale of arrogance and conceit. It is a tale of intelligent people, at least they thought so, who, due to the advent of scientific discovery and the industrial revolution, thought they could tame nature and rationalize the world. They dismissed the idea of God as silly superstition because science "proved" there was no God. With science, Man could conquer nature and reshape it, engineer it into a wonderful, rational utopia where everything worked perfectly and progress was achieved. Man could be, would be God! Of course, not everyone could partake of this Utopia,oh no. For in order to bring about this new world order we had to speed up the evolution of Man. This would be accomplished not by Natural Selection but by Artificial Selection. Gone would be the indigent, the handicapped, the "stupid", the lazy and unfit. The "lesser" races would have to go also to weed out the undesirable genes of those "inferiors". The Old World would be torn down, replaced with new concepts, ideas and morals all guided by a "ruthless pragmatism" for the betterment of society.

Progressives believe themselves to be rational beings, therefore what they think is right is based on rationality. If someone disagrees with that thought well, they're just acting irrationally. That can be the only reason because the "Progressive" is the rational one. That, my friends, is the fatal flaw, perhaps one could say the "Fatal Conceit" to borrow from Fredrich Hayek, of the "Progressive" mind. They see an irrational world where this in fact a rational world. When you try to rationalize an already rational world, you become irrational.

So what does this have to do with today's politics? The so called "Progressives" won the election and in their arrogance thought they could once again begin reshaping the world. But the people who voted for them became nervous, then fearful, then angry for they are not stupid. They've seen this before and all they need do is look across the Atlantic to see a possible future for the Progressives are far more entrenched in Europe than here. Europe is slowly committing suicide. The anger arises from the feeling of being duped. Back in 2008, amidst the cult like fawning, soaring rhetoric, Grecian column festooned pageantry and choirs singing "Hope and Change", many voters thought they were electing Moses to lead them to the Promised Land. Now they realize instead they got Pharaoh.

Measurable Metrics

Earlier today I caught a bit of Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice discussing the Administration's new strategy for Afghanistan on CNN. During the course of the interview, Ambassador Rice mentioned that while they hadn't done so yet, the Administration would develop "measurable metrics" to gauge the progress and success of the strategy. Measurable metrics is a term that, for some strange reason, keeps popping up in recent conversations. So, of course, when those words came out of Ambassador Rice's mouth, the phrase "Danger, Will Robinson, danger" echoed in my head.

My fear is that the Administration and the military leaders on the ground in Afghanistan will fall into the trap of setting measurements to determine progress that don't necessarily reflect real progress or paint a misleading picture. We have done this before and then been stymied as to why the situation didn't improve. It can go both ways. We can fool ourselves into believing we are successful when we are not or think we are failing when we are in fact successful. All because the "measurable metrics" we establish may not reflect reality.

Losing Sight of the Mission

I had a long phone conversation last night with my best friend that lasted several hours. Thanks to this blog, Verizon Wireless will remain profitable. Anyway, the conversation evolved over a range of subjects, separate yet interconnected. Basically, you could say one thing led to another. The last part of the conversation ended up being about institutions, bureaucracy and leadership or lack of thereof. My, oh my wasn't that conversation enlightening. We work in different organizations, with different goals and yet suffer with the same problems.

My friend Joe works for the Department of Children and Families (DCF) back in my home state as a Social Worker. As such, his job puts him in the field dealing directly with the clients. So his job, one could say his mission, is to work with and help his clients, who by the way are people. Listening to Joe describe his job, one can sense the frustration he has in trying to accomplish his mission. The frustration stems not from the clients but from his own organization and the way it works. For example, though he is assigned clients and has to deal with those clients, he has no authority to make decisions about each case. Those decisions have to be made by someone higher up the chain. In addition, every contact with a client, be it a face to face meeting or even just a phone call has to be documented and reported. He, of course, has more than one case (client) assigned to him with more added all the time. The net effect is that, by his estimation, 20% of his time is actually spent with the client while the other 80% is spent doing paperwork. In addition, though his job is to help his clients, he isn't given any authority to actually help them.

The interconnection between the above aspects is interesting. The mission of DCF, at least initially, is to help children and families that find themselves in certain circumstances that require outside aid. On paper, that is still the mission. Because the organization deals with people, it needs to be careful in how it provides it's services because of the possibility of that aid making the situation worse. The wrong decision could adversely affect the client which opens up the organization to lawsuits. So, ostensibly to protect the client, the organization puts into place processes and procedures to check against this possibility. Decisions need to be checked and validated up the hierarchy giving the top of the hierarchy ultimate authority to make the final decision. This leads to those lower down on the chain not even bothering to make decisions but to pass it up. 80% of the workers time is spent documenting all interaction with a client in order to protect the organization from a possible lawsuit or investigation stemming from the wrong decision adversely affecting the client. In effect, while on paper and to the public, the mission of DCF is to help people, subconsciously within the organization, the mission has shifted to protecting the organization from the very people it is supposed to help. Those within the organization who are good at accomplishing this new mission are promoted to positions of leadership based not on their ability to help people, but on their ability to abide by the processes put in place. Thus the new, unstated mission perpetuates itself. What we call "group think" sets in. The organization has lost sight of it's original intent and purpose.

In my phone conversation, I identified Joe's frustrations without getting all the details very quickly. I said "Let me guess,..." and proceeded to list off a series of situations and circumstances that when tied together painted a picture of the culture of his organization, the source of his frustration. I was able to do this because I substituted "U.S. Army" for "DCF", "Sergeant" for "Social Worker"... need I say more.

Power to the Sourpoints!

Anybody who works in the corporate world or government will most likely appreciate this piece from the Wall Street Journal Taste page. It's entitled "Speaking truth to PowerPoint". Of all the items in the arsenal of the United States' military, PowerPoint has to be the most under appreciated in terms of lethality and destructiveness. Want to simultaneously sow confusion in the minds of your enemy while sapping their physical strength? Hit them with a PowerPoint presentation.

I am convinced that the key to defeating Al Qaeda is to infiltrate their command and training camp network with specially trained teams of briefers highly skilled in the use of PowerPoint. The concept is similar to a virus in that the mission is two fold. Not only do the teams masquerade as jihadists and use PowerPoint to present their ideas, more importantly they train the real jihadists in how to use PowerPoint. As the jihadist start to master PowerPoint, the first symptoms of the virus appear. The organization becomes sluggish and confused. Because the structure of Al Qaeda resembles a network of cells and affiliated organizations, each cell or group will do their slides differently. The Taliban may use a green background, the color of Islam. Egyptian Islamic Jihad may opt for a template that resembles old parchment in order to get that "original Quran" look. Dissention sets in as each group argues over who's slides are more Islamic.

At the lower level, more and more IED attacks are less successful. This is because in the training camps, rather than learn how to build and emplace an IED by actually doing it, Johnny Jihad gets the instructions in bullet point format with serious gaps in information. When he tries to figure out why the IED didn't work, he can't because his instructors didn't give him an actual training manual. Instead, they gave him a packet of printed slides with the same bullet points from the presentation. When Johnny Jihad tries to recall what the instructor said during the period of instruction, he realizes all the instructor did was read the bullet points out loud and ask if there were any questions. Of course there were no questions because: a.) The students didn't know there was a gap in the information and b.) It was Thursday night so all the students wanted was to get released for the day so Johnny Jihad could hook up with Joey Jihad.

At the same time, the logistics system starts to strain both physically and financially. More money has to be budgeted for laptops, network servers, printers, power backups, ink cartridges, printer paper, binding machines, staples, staplers, staple removers, clear plastic covers for the slide packets, spiral combs for the binding and so on. Not only do all these supplies have to be purchased, they also have to be transported from, for example, Pakistan over the mountains into Afghanistan. This is in addition to/ competition with bullets, food, explosives and personnel. Because there is a shortage of donkeys and Toyota pick ups in theater, the supply chain becomes clogged, slowing down the conduct of operations. The highest level of command notices what is going on and sets out to remedy the situation. Osama Bin Laden dispatches subordinates on a fact finding tour to figure out what the problem is. Their task will be to identify the problem, develop a solution and then brief the seniors on that solution. The brief will of course be presented in PowerPoint because Osama's schedule is packed with other breifings and he doesn't have all day to read a report.

The solution the subordinates devise, and brief in PowerPoint, seems simple and is designed to streamline communications, planning and logistics. An SOP on formatting slides is established.

• All slides will be written in a size 12 Arabic font, white background, black lettering.
• All slides will have a header consisting of the Al Qaeda symbol in the upper left corner, the subordinate organizations symbol in the upper right corner, the phrase "Allahu Akbar" directly centered on the page with a thick green line beneath separating the header from the content.
• No complete sentences are allowed. Only brief, concise bullet points will be used.
• The last slide will have the same header but no bullet points. In place will be one word in size 30 Arabic font; QUESTIONS?

For example, rather than communicate a plan like this: The suicide bomber will detonate his charge precisely at 1200 hrs in front of the checkpoint. Immediately after the blast, supporting forces will will engage surviving enemy forces with precise direct fires until enemy capabilities have been reduced to ineffectiveness due to high casualties.

The plan will be communicated like this:

• At noon he go BOOM!
• Everybody else shoot.
• Enemy Dead.

Of course this Standard Operating Procedure is only a guideline. In order to maintain Esprit De Corp, in addition to developing creative thought in juniors, subordinate commanders are given flexibility in developing slide formatting SOPs for briefings within their organization. However, those slides will have to be reformatted in accordance to the higher level commands SOP when briefed to the higher level command. Someone will forget to change the font size on one of the slides which will lead to 15 minutes of lecture about how the slide is not formatted correctly. That 15 minutes will eat up much of the briefing causing a whole slew of slides to be skipped and information lost.

On the logistics side, the subordinates solution for supply and support functions is to contract out those functions. This is deemed more cost effective as it frees up manpower for suicide bombings. Because the Jihad is already ongoing, the decision is made to bypass the bidding process and directly contract the most capable company in the region. That company turns out to be The Bin Laden Group. This spurs Muslim conspiracy theorist film makers to produce documentaries pointing out the connection between Bin Laden, the Saudi government and former President Bush thus concluding the whole Jihad is all about oil and profit, not about establishing a new Caliphate.

The benefits of this strategy for the United States war effort are huge. First off, this plan has been tried, tested and successful under various conditions already by the U.S. military on a global scale. The strategy does not require any additional funding or personnel increases as we already have a large cadre fully trained at all echelons. The third order of effects in terms of breaking enemy morale thus their will to fight are guaranteed. For example, prior to deployment, I had to attend Counter IED classes. The class was several hours long and the instructors gave it using a combination of audio-visual techniques. After the introductory slides, I was subjected to about 30 minutes of web videos showing IED's blowing apart Humvees and fellow soldiers. This was followed by three hours of PowerPoint slides covering enemy tactics, how we counter those tactics, how they counter our countering, various pieces of equipment we use to disrupt IEDs that work fine alone but cancel each other out if too close and then more web videos of Humvees blowing up. It was a great presentation but when I walked out of the class, I was sweating, heart beating fast and thinking "OH SHIT! I'm gonna die!". It's a 100% surefire guarantee that if given PowerPoint, some Jihadist in a training camp will do the exact same thing to their guys. I'm not saying that by using this plan Al Qaeda will fall overnight. But over time the organization will definitely lose it's ability to accomplish much. The best part of this plan is that we can define victory. The day Osama appears on Al Jazeera in one of his videos and after the first few words he says "next slide", we know we won.

The basis for this plan is what I call the Anti-Boyd's Law or Reverse OODA Loop. It goes like this:

1. I observe my own organizations actions and inadequacies.
2. I orient my enemy to those same actions and inadequacies.
3. He decides to adopt them.
4. His actions mimic mine.

The principle is sound. If it doesn't work for me, it won't work for him either. The reason this plan hasn't been put into effect is that I would have to brief my chain of command with a PowerPoint presentation. I suck at PowerPoint.

On Intellectuals

From Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary:

Intellectual:
1in·tel·lec·tu·al
Function: adjective
Date: 14th century
1 a: of or relating to the intellect or its use b: developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience : rational c: requiring use of the intellect
2 a: given to study, reflection, and speculation b: engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect

Intellectual:
2intellectual
Function: noun
Date: 1615
1plural archaic : intellectual power
2: an intellectual person

Anti-intellectual:
an·ti–in·tel·lec·tu·al
Function: adjective
Date: 1884
: opposing or hostile to intellectuals or to an intellectual view or approach

A friend of mine whom I love getting into conversations with has on several occasions told me that my problem is I'm anti-intellectual. He makes this assumption because at times I rail against higher education in this country or when I dismiss or question what is being taught. Basically, his psychoanalysis of me is that, even though I have knowledge, I'm "smart" and have thinking skills, because of my economic status, background and lack of formal education I resent being dismissed or ignored by "intellectuals". Therefore, based on my resentment, I dismiss and ignore the "intellectuals" thus making me an anti-intellectual. Now when my friend says this I usually reply with a half smile, roll of the eyes "Well, kind of, sort of but not really. It's a little more complex than that". Here's the problem with my friends analysis.

Take the second definition of intellectual as an adjective. "Given to study, reflection and speculation...". That's me, I am an intellectual. I observe, I study, I read, I think, I reflect, I anylize, form ideas then question them, test them and further develop them. I'm always doing these things. In other words, I'm always thinking. Ask anyone who really knows me and they will confirm it. My problem with higher education is that the concept of "intellectual" has changed. It no longer is an adjective describing a thinking person but has become a title or a status symbol to denote one's level in society. Far too many people who are labeled intellectuals are not intellectuals. They are more like pseudo-intellectuals. They may be intelligent and have the capacity to memorize vast amounts of information and then regurgitate that information but they don't question what is taught, they don't analize it, they don't figure it out. They simply swallow it hook, line and sinker. Is it their fault they are that way? Perhaps, but it may also be that their time spent in academia involved not learning how to think but what to think.

The original concept of universities, at least in Western Civilization, was an area for higher learning. In order to accomplish that there had to be space for the free expression and development of ideas. Different theories were taught and debated. You were graded on your ability to understand those ideas and theories, not on whether you subscribed to those theories and ideas. Today, and this is not a blanket statement, far too often it's the opposite situation. In order to pass, you must not only demonstrate that you understand the idea but also that you subscribe to it. You must prove you are a "true believer". That is not intellectualism, it is indoctrination. Dogma and doctrine are the result of anti-intellectuals. Basically the message is "You don't need to understand the subject. You only need to accept it as fact. It is fact because we say it is fact. End of discussion!"

So, am I anti-intellectual? No, I am anti-pseudo-intellectual which means I am anti-fake. I am also against against anti-intellectualism even when it presumes to be intellectualism. I can't wait for the feedback on this one.

Black and White#2

First, some admin notes to start off. The theme of this series of posts is a discussion on perception, it's effects on our daily interactions and how our perceptions don't always match the reality of the situation. It is not about the incident in Cambridge Mass. between Professor Gates and the Cambridge Police Department. That incident was used only as a means of illustrating how two people can enter into a situation with completely different concepts of what is actually happening causing a conflict. A side theme to this topic is how outsiders not involved in the actual situation form perceptions and subsequently get involved, laying blame or finding fault with one side or the other. I'll be honest and tell you that is a pet peeve of mine because I believe not every situation that goes wrong or develops badly is due to the fault of one person or a group of people. But that is a subject for a seperate post. Now we get back to perception and reality.



Our perception of what is going on around us is influenced by a myriad amount of factors. These factors are too numerous to list but include such things as our emotional state, our physical state, the values we have, how we were raised, personal experiences, genetics, our knowledge base or lack thereof and so on. All of these factors effect how we "see" the world. They shape and influence the way we process all the information we absorb; the how we think. More importantly, these factors form what we think. The what is our final conclusion or perception. If the process stops at that point, the formation of a perception, then the perception becomes reality. In other words, truth.

But wait a minute, if we all have different perceptions that would mean there are multiple truths? How can that be? If something is true to me, if it is a reality, how can it not be true to someone else? I'm going to stop here to let this sink in but I'm going to leave off with a question. Is there such thing as one reality or are we all creating different realities around us. Is there an absolute truth?

Lost in Translation

Here's an interesting article on Arabic discussing the differences between Standard Arabic and Spoken Arabic. Standard Arabic is written only, while spoken Arabic is based on dialect and only used for conversation. These language rules affect and make difficult communication and literacy in the Arab speaking world.

Reading this article brought to mind how language, while a means of communication and conveying ideas, can also be an impediment. I don't know how many times in conversation with friends from other countries I missed out on a joke because the premise for the joke was lost in translation. My friends would sit there flumoxed because they couldn't find the right English word to convey the idea. This wasn't neccessarily because they didn't know English well enough but because there was no word existing in the English language.

Culture effects the way people think which effects the ideas they develop. I've always found it interesting that there are concepts out there in different cultures that when passed to other cultures either lose their meaning or are totally incomprehensible because of language. It's fascinating how the mind works. I can't understand something because the words to describe it don't exist, at least in the language I speak. We are born into a native tongue which steers u through our learning and development processes. Even if we learn another language later on, all we are really doing is converting the words from one language to another in order to process the thought being conveyed, so we still end up thinking in our native language. When we come across a word in our second language that has no counterpart in our first language, we have to find a similar idea and the word or words that describe it in order to translate. By doing this, we run the risk of changing the idea. It all just makes me wonder how many good ideas are out there in the world that never spread because of language barriers.