Hubris

Julian Assange is a not so nice product of Australia who has gained notoriety  by hacking into various web sites, downloading the contents and, after cherry picking the product publishing the information for all the world to see. Almost nothing he has raided and published is noteworthy, in fact most of it is inconsequential email and low level reports, but there is usually enough titillating data to thrill the general public and always enough dirty laundry to embarrass the originator. Assange has made a name for himself, by persuading others (such as the hapless US Army private Bradley Manning, who had access only to Confidential files)  to raid those files and accounts and sending them forward to Assange for his profit and emotional thrill.

The narcissistic Assange put himself into self imposed exile and for a while hid out in Sweden. While there he allegedly sexually attacked at least two women before moving on to England and when England decided to honor an arrest warrant he sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy where he has been for several years. I'm sure his self aggrandizing personality must wear greatly on the Ecuadorians but they are stuck with him since they did grant him asylum and he will not leave in the face of certain arrest, transport to Sweden and,if guilty, several years in prison. There is truth for Ecuador is the adage that "no good deed every go unpunished".

True to Assange's self indulgence he is now asking for other people (who are probably lessor individuals in his eyes) to donate money for the creation of a life size statue of, who else, Julian Assange. In his proposal Assange says that the statue will be shipped around the word and displayed for all to admire his "bravery" and (my words) "self indulgence".

At the moment the world is awash in narcissistic personalities and we don't need an individual who most likely believes that he is more important than our own resident team of self important administrators. So if you get a request from the fugitive Mr. Assange for money to make himself more visible, please decline!

Toxic People

After gainful employment for almost fifty years I took my last retirement from work and dedicated my life to My Lady and our family. But the world has a way of intruding and my wife was working as an Emergency Manager for the county and was concerned about me being at “loose ends” while she was at work. So in an act of self preservation she suggested that I become a mediator. Why she settled on that occupation I don’t know, but after some initial reluctance I took the training and now, a decade later I’m a contented practicing mediator.

What I do is work with people, businesses and institutions that are caught in a crisis situation and help them resolve the issue to the satisfaction of all parties. The state I live in has recognized my ability and in addition to maintaining a private practice I am certified and approved to practice within the judiciary of the state and help reduce the number of cases that go to trial, it costs both the state and the parties a lot less money to use my services.

I quickly learned that a large part of mediation is knowing that the people at the table are just people. Each person comes to the table with an individual viewpoint and biases and outlook on life that influence how they see events and react to situations. Most of the people I work with sincerely want to resolve the issue and get on with life. But there is a percentage, small but ever present, that have personalities that make my work interesting, challenging and occasionally wondering why I didn’t bring a club to the mediation.

A large percentage of mediators in the U.S. are either attorneys or have trained in the psychological sciences. My background is engineering and management so I bring a somewhat pragmatic skill set to the table. Without stepping on the toes of any of the soft scientists who love to classify and quantify people I see the problem people I work with in four broad categories. Fortunately, for my own sanity, these people are only a small part of the many clients I work with, but each and every one of us can occasionally show parts of our persona that can be said to fit within one (or more) of these categories.

Most common are the self centered personalities, who believe that they are “the only important one”. These are people who can’t understand the other fellows’ viewpoint, since, in their mind, the only opinion that counts are the opinion they have. When challenged they generally go on the offensive and behave in a generally unsocial way.

A second group is those I personally label as “weird”, they are usually emotionally unstable people who are personally affronted by anything that challenges their opinion and almost always react in a somewhat bizarre manner. I have had individuals threaten harm to themselves, pets and inanimate objects if they don’t get their way.

A sub set of the weird ones is the person that sees everything and everyone as the enemy and is always living in a defensive mode. Life, to them is an eternal “me versus them” battle that makes life for those who have to live or deal with them a constant battle. My soft science friends often use the pejorative “paranoid” when discussing them.

Fortunately for my mental health the last group I occasional have to work with are the Predators, people who have absolutely no empathy for anyone else and who take great personal satisfaction in making life difficult for anyone who enters their sphere. They are emotionally destructive to all who come in contact with them and are often physically dangerous people.

Clients I deal with who exhibit these traits (or combinations of them) certainly do make my practice challenging and certainly interesting in the way they perceive events and issues. Solutions to their issues often need to be innovative, and their attorneys, while they may mutter and shake their head will usually compliment me for resolving an issue they could not find a legal solution for.

To my surprise I recently ran across a book by a retired FBI agent who talked about the same personality types, their threat to other individuals and how to deal with them if you are unlucky enough to live or work with them. I recommend that you borrow, or buy this book: 

           Dangerous Personalities by Joe Navarro.

It's a good read and might give you insight into your own safety while dealing with the world and its variegated population. 

Moral Turpitude

The media is atwitter with the release of a 500 page report from the Senate Intelligence Committee that describes actions by the US intelligence community in the period shortly after 9/11. By design the report only talks about events and actions the occurred during the Bush administration and does not address numerous equally reprehensible actions that were taken by subsequent Democratic administrations since that time. Since the report was issued by only the Democratic majority of the committee it's easy to suppose that there is more than just a little politics behind the report.

The 500 page report has in excess of 38,000 footnotes for an average of 76 footnotes for each page. As an author I know that that a good way to confuse the reader is to litter a document with footnotes and get them lost in the minutia of your argument. Authors who are unable to state their case clearly depend on footnotes to confuse the focus of their debate and to overwhelm the reader with (often) extraneous information,

That being said the report reveals, to no one's surprise, that the US did in a number of cases apply physical and emotional torture to individuals in an effort to obtain information. I don't care if they were successful or not ... this country has always portrayed itself as a defender of freedom and a moral bellwether for others to admire and follow. And for a brief period of time we failed and now we have to recognize that fact and return to the founders position that these United States are a "shining city" for others to admire.

I can only hope that a moment of moral failure is just that, a moment in time that we as a country regret and will not allow to occur again.

The Unidentified

Every day Law Enforcement receives reports from people who are concerned about a friend or relative how has gone “missing”. It’s  hard to disappear, particularly in today’s culture of personal identification, data tracking and governmental oversight. So in the vast majority of cases the missing person is soon found and balance is restored to the social order. At the same time each and every day there are bodies, or bits and pieces of bodies, found and never identified. You would think that identifying a found body would be somewhat easy, but people who are trying to hide someone they have killed can be innovative in making it difficult for law enforcement to identify the body. I recently read that there is a minimum of 40,000 unidentified bodies and cold cases at any moment in the United States, and there are indications that that figure might be too small by as much as 50 percent.

Americans believe that success is largely due to hard work and the many law and order shows that litter the networks supports that belief. When was the last time you watched one of those shows and seen them admit that they had failed and the case had gone dead? But in real life cases do go cold and law enforcement is inundated by fresh cases with higher priority and ultimately a large percentage of missing person cases are put aside, filed away and finally forgotten. Too many families and friends never know what happened to their friend and too many morgues have unidentified cases languishing in their files. There is a bureaucratic disconnect in merging reports of missing persons and bodies found elsewhere. Police, medical examiners and coroners do not have a well developed and linked reporting system and are often reluctant to share information.

But in a society that has grown up on TV crime and reality shows there is a (relatively) large and articulate audience that has a desire to link the missing in one jurisdiction and the found elsewhere and to provide closure to families and solutions for law enforcement. They have three weapons they bring to bear on solving this problem; Public records, usually found via the Internet, an empathic drive to solve a problem and the grit to override the initial reluctance of many in law enforcement (and administration) to recognize that a “civilian” can solve a case they have given up on.

I don’t know if I have the ability to expend the time and energy it takes to link together disparate bits a data and develop a coherent case. But I have to admire the people who spend their own resources to close long dead cold cases and bring families back together again. If you want to learn more search the Internet; NamUs, Doe Network and Websleuths are good places to start.

A Tale of Two Cultures

Texas is a study in extremes, climate, people and the social culture are variables that continue to surprise people as they travel across the state.

Two Texas sized incidents illustrate my point.

Texas City is located in the Houston metro area and is an industrialized, unionized city with about forty thousand residents. Mason County, on the other hand is located in central Texas, is mainly agriculture and has a population of around four thousand people. And that explains the different events that happened recently.

Earlier this year four pit bulls in Texas City broke through a fence and killed the neighbors beagle. That's a terrible thing to have happen and the neighbor was almost certainly upset when their pet was killed by the owners dogs. Rather than apologizing for the event and making restitution, the pit bull owner has now sued the neighbor for "failing to securely confine and restrict the beagle". In short she wants to be paid for her failure to keep her dogs from invading the neighbors property and causing the death of the beagle. In my mind the owner is a perfect example of the "gimme society" that the politicians are trying to encourage with their blatant disregard of humanity and common sense.

Up in Mason County a local rancher acquired a beagle mix dog from the animal pound and about four months later the dog proved that good deeds are worth while. The rancher was experiencing chest pains and difficulty breathing and the ambulance crew decided to transport him to the nearest hospital, about ninety minutes away. About twenty miles into the run the ambulance was flagged down and told that there was a dog riding on the side step of the ambulance.

The dog, named Buddy, had decided that his owner/companion was important enough to him to justify the dangerous ride on the ambulance step. Rather than kicking the dog off, to fend for himself the crew brought Buddy inside to be with his owner and informed the hospital by radio what had happened. To its credit the hospital admitted both owner and dog and both are now reported to be safely (and happily) home.

Culture does indeed make a difference and I'll take the culture of Mason County Texas over the culture of Texas City any time.

The Sporting Life

I’m not a football fan; in fact I don’t follow sports at all. I always have something better, or more challenging to do when sporting events try to intrude in my life. I occasionally watch a game of the sport de jour because the channel  has preempted a more thoughtful show in order to pander to their potential sales audience. I also don’t know the first thing about “Fantasy Football”, and frankly can’t care less about that. I don’t gamble on sports events, and I don’t talk sports at the water cooler, in short I’m not part of the audience the sporting industry depends on.

All of that is by way of introduction to my thoughts on the latest “NFL scandal”. This isn't a scandal at all. The hoopla is being whipped up by people who know and care nothing about football, instead it is being driven by people who want a very lucrative business (the NFL) to feel a deep sense of guilt and give money to their cause.  In short, there is no “domestic violence epidemic” in the NFL, statistics show that it’s a universal social problem but the truth doesn't help drive the agenda being pushed by people with their own agenda.

Domestic violence is not an NFL problem it’s a cultural problem with a particular group of NFL players.  When you read their histories, or charge sheets, you quickly find they usually grew up in families that had poor or no male role models. Penury and abuse were constants in their lives, and they never knew there is a better way. Many of them were desperately poor as kids, shunned education and if not for their athletic ability, wouldn’t be making more than minimum wage. At least one player apparently was involved in some gang activity before he played football and it appears that he was unable to shed his history and upbringing when he reached success in the football world It may be that he didn't want to rise above his origins but the end result is that he now sits in jail awaiting trial for several murders. All of which happened after he signed a very lucrative contract with a professional team. What we don’t see is this kind of behavior among players who grew up in traditional families with strong male role models.

The NFL (and other major league sports) are aware of this problem and offer all sorts of social services to new players. The National Basketball League has problems with a similar player demographic and also offers the same type of program for new players. In addition all pro sports teams have very experienced investigators. The teams know a lot about these young men who are coming in to the sport. Not everything, but a lot. What they do with that information is problematic, but apparently they don’t use the data wisely; perhaps the profit factor is what drives them the most. The new found wealth allows these kids, which is what most of them are, to engage in irresponsible life styles. With no cultural background and no experience handling large amounts of money they tend to live dangerously, father children they have no interest in and ignore social constraints they should be aware of as members of society. They just spent like drunken sailors and have plenty of help from hangers on that wouldn't even talk to them if they weren't famous and wealthy.

I don’t think that the players involved should be banned for life as so many people seem to think is appropriate. If convicted, they should serve whatever punishment is meted out and then be allowed to resume their lives. The idea of prison is supposed to be punishment and rehabilitation. It is a separate discussion whether rehabilitation works or not and I’m not interested in having such a discussion. (My personal experience has given me many and varied lessons in that arena) The voices calling for suspensions and banning and the suspensions and banning being handed out by the NFL are a panic reaction to the media dog pile. Most of which is coming from people who never watch the NFL or have much interest in it other than trying to win concessions and money out of the league. Their shrill cries are mostly based not on criminal convictions, but upon allegations. And I’m not comfortable with that.

Is domestic violence wrong? Of course it is. Should Ray Rice, a thug who beat his girl friend and then married her so she couldn’t testify be sent to prison for some period of time? Yes. Should he be forever more banned from making money in the only way he is capable of doing so? I don’t think so and I think if you asked his wife, she’d agree with me. Do you think she’d be better off if she was married to Ray Rice and he was working at Walmart? Keep in mind that she married him after the assault and battery in the elevator. Sure, it would be satisfying emotionally to ban him forever, but would it be fair? The dynamic is slightly different with another player who is accused of child abuse, in my mind he should not be allowed unsupervised visits with any of his children. That’s pretty clear, but does anyone think that any of them will be better off he can’t play football after this case is settled one way or the other? Of course he has yet to have his day in court and if I were his lawyer I would strongly advise him to not make any public statements. The more he tries to explain and justify his child abuse, the worse he looks. That however is his problem, not mine. These are very emotionally laden issues, but that doesn't mean that people should react with emotion and not with their brains.

All of which makes me glad that I have absolutely no interest in sports and can live my life trying to respect the world I inhabit and those who share it with me.

Theater of the Absurd

Last week the media reported that the Federal Reserve Board believes the reason for the poor economy is that people are “hoarding money” rather than spending every cent they make and overusing their credit cards.

Really!

After six years of an inept administration that has put the economy close to negative growth figures and with consumer spending almost at standstill they still believe that all we need to do is spend more money and tax the other guy. Our economic problems have nothing to do with high taxation rates, inordinate health care expenses for people and businesses or escalating consumer prices for food and energy. The Fed is on record as saying the fault is ours because we aren’t spending enough money.

The Fed and the economist elite fail to understand that Americans have been abused by their decisions to cheapen the dollar by issuing tons of fiat money that has only devalued the money people work so hard to earn. So many jobs have been lost as a result those recent attempts by the administration to create minimum wage jobs have flopped.

The cost of basic goods and utilities such as food, electricity and fuel are nearly double a decade ago yet average household income has sunk to 1967 levels and there is no end in sight to the misery a series of bad decisions by an administration that doesn’t believe Americans are capable of thinking. The result of all those decisions is that people are not able to save money, they are running hard just to keep up with cost, and they are certainly not hoarding! I’ve come to believe that the term “hoarding” and similar pejoratives so freely used by the administration are merely a means to stigmatize certain behaviors they don’t understand.

Come to think of it … don’t be surprised if someday in the future a government representative knocks on your door, enters without cause and inventories your food cupboard to assure that you have no more than a weeks worth of basic food. Any over that amount will be confiscated since your are “Hoarding”.