A key part of our national mythology is the rugged individual taking on the world. An individual who welcomes, swallows whole or even actively seeks as cover denial, Propaganda, Pandering and Posturing is a frightened individual. "Rugged" lies somewhere on the other end of the spectrum from lame excuses and turning a blind eye to reality.

I'll illustrate a few points about ruggedness, insecurity and fear with snippets from real life.

There are many rugged Americans, but I wonder how many are "the old breed." Here's an example of rugged. I recently met the father of a young customer of mine; I'll call him A.W. Like all Vietnam vets, he's a few years older than I am, i.e. he's over 55. I felt sympatico with him right away because he drove up in a big Chevy truck, not the wannabe kind that sits in the driveway and hauls groceries, but the workhorse kind with locking tool compartments and his company sign on the door panels. He was weathered and wiry and didn't say much; he spotted our garden and made some intelligent observations which told me he'd crumbled some earth in his hands. We discussed a dwarf citrus and he suggested a fertilizer mix I was unfamilar with.

I asked him where he was from, and he said Alaska. I asked, did you move there when you were young? and he replied, No, born there. Now I'd met a few rugged individuals from Alaska when I worked construction in Hawaii; they'd work all summer in Alaska and then come down to work winters in Hawaii. I knew a bit about the harshness and scale of Alaska second-hand, but after some prompting A.W. told me about his youth. Since his father had worked in some capacity related with the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs), he'd traveled to remote areas of the state where there were no roads, and dogsleds were transportation in winter.

After high school, he'd worked in a remote Native Alaskan village--a village so small and inconspicuous that in flying over it, he'd completely missed it. He was dropped off alone--the only Caucasian person in town--and as a result his first "job" was earning the trust of the residents.

(Aside: I am fortunate to correspond with another rugged Alaskan, David V., who lives in a remote wilderness of that great state. David, you will relate in a way the rest of us cannot.)

A.W. told a variety of tales, such as clearing away snow to uncover some dried grass which they used to stuff their boots as insulation; about cold so severe that falling off your dogsled would mean certain death because no one could stop for you. He told of the "old breed," Native Alaskan men who could heft 200-250 pounds--a quarter of a moose--on their backs and walk for miles.

I wasn't too surprised to learn, after further prompting, that A.W. had flown gunships in Vietnam and been shot down five times; after flying all day on sortie after sortie in a particularly hot zone, his ground crew counted over 200 bullet holes in his aircraft, including several through the pilot compartment.

Having worked with many Vietnam combat vets in my years in construction, I knew how hazardous copter duty could be; a Loach pilot once told me the average length of service of a Loach pilot was less than a month, meaning the majority were killed or severely wounded within a matter of days or weeks.

I reckon A.W. was decorated, but too modest to mention it. Now he ran his own small business, and so our conversation naturally drifted over to the high taxes and junk fees we paid, and the "fubar" bureaucracies we were obliged to tangle with just to get anything done.

Like anyone actually doing something real in the real world, as opposed to diddling around with paper or keyboards, his competition were mostly illegal unlicensed guys who paid no taxes and hired undocumented workers. I knew the drill and so we just shook our heads, expressing what everyone in our shoes knows: there is no way the country can go on sucking the life out of the legal businesses while hiring illegal competitors who don't bother paying a dime of taxes.

In fact, it's the standard-issue American, conservative and liberal alike, who lines up to hire the illegal guy who pays nothing and hires undocumented guys because he's "cheaper" than those of us who pay living wages and pay taxes. Thank you, America, for your support. Of course he's cheaper--he's not paying 40%+ taxes or FICA or workers compensation insurance or unemployment or licensing fees; he contributes zip, zero, nada. And you support him by hiring him over us. It's not "the system," America, it's you. If nobody hired the "cheaper" illegal, that business would dry up and blow away.

What a nation of hypocrites we are. Don't bother denying it; just look around and stop BS'ing yourself.

A.W.'s daughter had received a full tuition waiver to the vaunted University of California based on academic excellence; after she'd selected her campus, then the "oops" letter arrived; A.W. and his wife had too much assets so the waiver, supposedly academic-based, was pulled. His point was simple: they had the financial information before they offered her the waiver, so why offer it and then yank it back months later?

How many other recipients had lied or buried their assets or otherwise gamed the system? It certainly looked like yet another case where the hardworking honest folks are penalized and the liars and cheats who game the system get the goodies. A.W. hadn't asked for a damned thing; but they'd offered the scholarship on merit, then pulled it because the parents had the unmitigated gall to have assets. If they'd borrowed every nickel of value and blown it on boats, vacations and BBQs, then their net assets would have been zero or negative and they'd have been home free.

Story Two: the Jesus Freak.

Long before religious faith had been hijacked for political purposes by the so-called "evangelical" movement, the true evangelicals were young people who did not need some TV preacher to tell them what the Bible said; they carried their own Bibles and read them themselves. They were often scraggly, poor and thin because money was not the guiding light of their lives and they truly left their future up to God. Long before a bunch of well-fed hypocrites labeled themselves evangelicals, these "Jesus freaks" were true evangelicals.

I haven't met a hippie evangelical (a.k.a. Jesus freak) in a long while but while riding my bike home from class a youthful bearded man on a beaten-up bike rode alongside and we exchanged pleasantries. He'd found a box of granola bars in the dumpster, apparently dumped due to Americans' morbid fear of expiration dates; he offered me one and I was glad to accept it and eat it while we rode and talked.

He was looking for a place to stay, perhaps as caretaker, and inquired if I knew of any such place; what with all the foreclosed homes and abandoned buildings, he reckoned that maybe someone would want someone living there to keep the place up and ward off criminals.

I was too polite to tell him Corporate Banking America couldn't be bothered with taking care of abandoned and foreclosed dwellings; that costs too much money and by golly, if you can't conjure up a hefty quarterly profit then just let the property go to heck.

I asked if he was worried about finding a place to live and he shrugged; no, God would take care of it; he'd spent the summer working in Yosemite, and that hadn't been planned. We spoke of God's plans, the consequences of sin and greed--the housing bubble's popping-- and forgiveness, and I marveled at his faith, so unlike the tin-plated "faith" that wasn't faith at all but greed and loathing masked by a rotten veneer of faux piety. (Please read my quote below on piety.)

Phony "believers" always want to impress one with their piety and good works and blah-blah, and invite you to their church; but when I ask them about John 10:10 they always fall silent; they don't know what to do with someone who actually reads the Bible without a politically choreographed "interpretation" from some huckster/preacher.

Story Three: "My God, people are fat here. It was not like this when I was growing up." How often have you heard that? Now those of you who are heavy, don't get me wrong; you are tired of being slammed, fine. But the fact that we as a people have become far more obese in just a generation is simply an observational fact.

I want to make some statements which might excite emotions, but that is not my intent at all. I am puzzled by this terrible disregard for our health, and I find no satisfaction in the superficial answers: we eat too much junk food, we don't exercise, we sit in offices now, etc. etc. But why do we eat too much junk food?

Are we eating so destructively because we've come to believe "we deserve to be indulged"? I would say yes. In other words, the average consumer of french fries is seeking that fatty crunchy mouthfeel and thinking, somewhere in his/her unconscious or subconscious, "I deserve this treat." (Substitute chips, sodas, ice cream, deep-fried snacks, candy, double-bacon cheeseburgers, etc.)

Meanwhile, a person who loves their body--it is, after all, the only one we have-- looks at french fries and wonders, why would I want to burden my poor body with that garbage? Why would I want to torture it with a strawberry soda while I wait here for my prescription drugs? (Typical scene in Walgreens or any large "drug store.")

And please don't tell me real food is "too expensive." Junk food is not cheap, and anyone shopping in Chinatown or the Mexican/Hispanic market or the halal can find seasonal real food which is much less costly than a double-cheeseburger with fries and a sugar-loaded soda. That's just an excuse for the real reason: we've grown too lazy to go shopping, and too lazy to prepare real food. All that "work" might cut into the 8 hours of TV we watch every day, and the other hours spent texting, surfing the web, taling on the phone, etc. etc.

If real food was as desirable and "treatworthy" as garbage food, we'd find the money for it.

And also don't tell me poor people don't have working ovens so they have to eat junk food; OK, fine, no oven; that cuts out baked goods. But the finest Chinese cuisine in the world, and the most refined Indian food in the world, requires exactly one burner (like a camp stove) and one wok/pan. That's it. The finest chefs use nothing else.

Why isn't the "treat we deserve" a nectarine, or a slice of yummy melon, or some delicious stir-fried spinach with garlic and olive oil? Hmm, could it be there's simply no profit in pitching those products? That's the "easy answer." But the mindset that enables one to put such visibly unhealthy and destructive food in one's mouth must be deeper than media brainwashing. When you think about it, eating much of the "standard American diet" is roughly equivalent to consuming toxic materials.

Oddly enough, we all know "this is bad for me" but we eat it anyway, as if "deserving" this wretched "treat" goes hand in hand with the magical thinking that there won't be, or shouldn't be, any consequences. Is this a permanent adolescence, a denial of the reality that maturity requires tradeoffs and sacrifices?

Recently I've been wondering if Americans are in the grip of a deep and unexamined self-destruction. Isn't the wanton, daily destruction of our health matched by the daily destruction of our financial health via excessive consumerism paid by credit, borrowed against the long-term assets of our housing for the short-term "splurge because we deserve it" vacation, boat, new vehicle, dinner out, etc.?

Isn't this self-destruction of a piece with the insecurity so visible in the country, of a fear that the "good times" are ending, even though they were phony and doomed to end badly from the start? Isn't self-delusion the essential starting point for a path of self-destruction?

It seems more and more that the entire nation is essentially a spoiled-brat adolescent who demands to be given all the "treats" life has to offer and then further demands that the consequences of irresponsible indulgence be set aside or ameliorated by "Mommy" or "Daddy" or the "nanny state" if Mommy and Daddy can no longer save us from ourselves.

Does this seem too harsh? Look around; why are the politicians who pander most and pander best the ones who get re-elected? Why is the most visibly ludicrous and false posturing accepted with nary a complaint, and the mainstream media/CNBC/Fox propaganda sucked up like a sugar-free soda? What are we so afraid of? That we can no longer work, or cut our own path, or deal with challenges that require long-term thinking and sacrifice?

I really don't care who wins the election; it's utterly, completely meaningless who wins and who loses as long as the American citizenry demand freebies and giveaways and phony assurances that we're all victims now of something or other. We will get the political cowardice we demand in our "leaders," because the political class has seen what happens when you speak the truth and ask for sacrifice and maturity and long-term thinking; you lose, and lose big.

We will get the leadership we deserve, and the country will sink into a quagmire of financial ruin that we as a nation have earned by our adolescent self-destruction.


New must-read essay by Chris Sullins: Dust and Shadow, Part 2

The reasons someone becomes a soldier are varied. At an individual level I would suspect they are little different from those given by warriors from across the planet from now to ages past. One can read “The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China” and see that the art of warfare, harnessing the motivations of men, and empire management has changed very little over the past two millennia.

During my deployment to Iraq. . . .

My new "little book of big ideas," Weblogs & New Media: Marketing in Crisis is now available on amazon.com for $10.99.

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An excerpt from For My Daughter

I believe she stayed with me out of kindness, and my admiration for her grew. For kindness is everything piety is not; where piety is all appearance, a brittle play-acting well-loved by treachery, kindness is spontaneous and true. Piety is easily falsified, so evil never tires of exalting it, while kindness cannot be feigned, and so evil rejects it. Piety serves self-pride, while kindness serves another.

"This guy is THE leading visionary on reality. He routinely discusses things which no one else has talked about, yet, turn out to be quite relevant months later."
--An anonymous comment about CHS posted on another blog.

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