Dilbert on Projects, or…?

Saturday 15 November 2008
1300

Having spent many years in the IT industry, I have followed and enjoyed the cartoon “Dilbert” since it first appeared, have cut out and saved many strips, and have several Dilbert books. Scott Adams has a wonderful talent for observing the absurdities of corporate life and poking fun at them. Many of his strips involve engineering and computer topics, but since people are people wherever you go, his observations naturally apply outside the tech industry as well.

Last Sunday the Dilbert cartoon seemed especially appropriate to my job here managing facilities and construction projects, and I cut it out:

( http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-11-09/ )

I took it to work to show some people. Naturally I expected people to get a smile out of it due to our experiences managing construction projects here. But one officer handed it back and said “Sounds like that could be the Obama Administration”.

Hmmm…could this be not-so-subtle political commentary, the weekend after the election? Perhaps Gary Trudeau wasn’t the only cartoonist to send in a strip about the election results early…

I have refrained from commenting on the election until this came up. For one thing, this is a military blog, not a political one. Although it is certainly a record of my personal thoughts, I’ve mainly kept it to topics related to my deployment over here. Since President-elect Obama will be my Commander in Chief, he will now certainly have an effect on that. As a military officer I am supposed to be officially apolitical. In today’s interconnected media world, the line blurs between what is an acceptable expression of personal opinion and what becomes an inappropriate endorsement or condemnation of people or policies. But the bottom line is that although this is intended for my friends and family, it is a public forum and I think it best that I refrain from most overt political commentary.

I will say this, however. After my previous post about John McCain’s book, I received the Fall 2008 issue of “The Objective Standard”, a journal of culture and politics to which I subscribe: www.theobjectivestandard.com

Reading some of the articles put me in mind of how some of my Objectivist friends might view my comments about John McCain and Teddy Roosevelt, since many of their actions and beliefs are inconsistent with Objectivism, the philosophy in which I believe and according to which I do my best to guide my life and actions.

Only a long explication of those beliefs could fully address the question, and again most of these would be out of place in this particular context. But I have read that “politics is the art of the possible”, and that is the best explanation I can give for always voting, even when neither candidate is everything I would hope for. While I live on principle to the best of my ability, sometimes one has to choose the least-bad option.

The author of the article “McBama vs. America” disagreed with that view, advocating that we stay home from the election altogether since the choice was essentially meaningless. I disagree with this approach, but it is easy to understand it as there are a number of things about McCain’s positions on certain issues that I found undesirable. The most frustrating thing is the lack of consistent pro-individual rights, pro-free market principles guiding his positions.

Another article in the same issue entitled "The Resurgence of Big Government" outlines many ways in which recent administrations have consistently blamed the free market for problems which were actually caused by government intervention, and then proposed (and implemented) further government controls as a supposed solution.

Over the past fifteen years or so, the Republicans have certainly lost their way and failed to live up to the principles for which I believe the party stands. So maybe they did deserve to be thrown out. I hope that they can learn the right lessons from this defeat and rededicate their party to the principles that led me to support them in 1980.

As a serving military officer I am not supposed to condemn or endorse particular political candidates. There is nothing wrong with intellectual activism, however, and in fact I consider it an important civic responsibility. If we want to have political parties that reflect proper, principled positions on issues, we have to ensure that our fellow citizens are educated in those principles as well as to the proper methods of thinking and analysis to guide their application. That is why I support the Ayn Rand Institute: www.aynrand.org

I guess that’s enough for now. Despite all these elevated thoughts, what I really feel like doing right now is going to the USO and playing World of Warcraft. I need to get to Level 70 so I can get my flying mount! (Can you say “anodyne?” I knew you could.) :-)

Mood: Upbeat
Music: Ilona Mitrecy – Un Monde Parfait

Veteran’s Day

Tuesday 11 Nov 2008
2000

I used to subscribe to the Reader’s Digest but recently let it lapse. Then on Veteran’s Day, I received a copy in my mailbox which included this card:



On the other side, it says “Christine Wingeier would like to salute you with this Reader’s Digest gift issue. Thank you for defending our freedom and nation. Every month for a year you will receive a gift issue from a grateful American.” That side also says “Gifts from Grateful Americans” and “Every Issue Captures the Spirit of America!” And that’s really true. We got the Reader’s Digest at home for as long as I can remember.

I think it was just a coincidence that I received it personally – my name is not on it anyplace that I can see. So the mail clerk probably just put it in my box because they were used to seeing me get one. But I can assure Christine Wingeier and everyone else who sends these that they will be read by many people, not just me. When I’m done I’ll place it in a common area and it will get picked up and passed on.

It’s an interesting phenomenon here that reading matter never gets thrown away. Books and magazines are endlessly recycled, passed from person to person or left out in common areas for whoever wants it. So many people over here will enjoy this gift. Thank you. :-)

We had a Veteran’s Day ceremony outside of ASG Headquarters that included a wreath laying, the playing of Taps, and then the end-of-day ceremony of Retreat, when the color guard lowers the flag while the bugle plays “To the Colors” and “Retreat”. As usual, I got a bit choked up and teary as I watched the flag come down. Maybe I watched too many John Wayne movies as a kid, but while participating in Retreat I always seem to think about all the times and places throughout our history that this exact ceremony has been conducted, often in lonely outposts at the edge of civilization. It is one of the small things that helps me to connect to our past and makes me feel very viscerally that I am a part of something enduring and important.

This time, however, there was an additional twist. As the music ended, but while the color guard was still folding the flag, the Qatari Army base behind us began to broadcast the five-times-daily Muslim call to prayer over their loudspeakers. So for the entire time our flag was being folded, the strange chanting drifted across our base, reminding me that although this is not exactly the edge of civilization, we are certainly an outpost. It was an unusual juxtaposition of cultural symbols. For a few moments I felt like a Stranger in a Strange Land.

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The news coverage of Veteran’s Day that I saw focused largely on WWI, since it was the 90th anniversary of the end of that war. It felt strange to see the cemeteries in France again. I traveled across France from Germany to Normandy by bicycle in 1984 visiting many battlefields and cemeteries. A few months later I spent an entire weekend in and around Verdun, visiting museums, battlefields, fortifications, monuments, and cemeteries. There is no way to convey the awesome emotional impact of the thousands of crosses, row after row. The human cost of that war was beyond comprehension. On one of the nights that weekend I had the only true nightmare I can remember in my adult life. I awoke sweating and trembling with fear, having dreamt of living though some of the events that had been so vividly evoked by the things I had seen during my visit.

The generation that fought that war is almost completely gone, and the WWII generation is passing. One hopes that the younger people today appreciate what they have and how it was secured for them.

Mood: Reflective
Music: Mozart: Requiem