Lindsay’s Scribblings

Throughout his 12 years of Presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt acted surely, but prudently, recognizing his own weaknesses and taking actions to countermand them, maintaining candor with his nation. Few leaders that have come before or after him have dealt with issues so large or so lengthy, and fewer still have handled them well – with grace, compassion and wisdom.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big – Theodore Roosevelt.

When F.D.R. took office, the nation was ailing. Unemployment was at a historic peak, the banking system was faltering, and most were wanting for food. He spent his first one-hundred days in office proscribing policies that were to be the cure –ambitiously developing his New Deal, a clever and desperate ploy to revive the inert economy. The hundreds of agencies started by his administration provided relief, reform, and recovery. Several, including the FDIC and the SSS (questionable though it is), still do.

Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure – Confucius.

The same forethought that allowed F.D.R. to deal so aptly with domestic and economic reform propelled him to instate the first peace-time draft and to start lend-lease programs with the Allies. His fear of an inevitable war with domineering aggressor nations prepared the U.S. for the day Japan struck Pearl Harbor – the military was already in training.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing – Socrates.

Aware of his inadequacies and lack of omniscience, Roosevelt encouraged advice from the most competent minds in the nation, his “brain trust”, using the specific wisdom of professionals to custom-tailor his plans.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness- Niels Bohr.

The fire-side chats were brilliant, reassuring and coaxing an anxious nation through the power of personal contact. Roosevelt worked with the press, not against them, to form an alliance that the people could rely on. With an easy-going, informal living-room manner, he won over the people’s support, and kept them well-informed of his policies.

In a leadership position, I too shall seek to be open to audit, prepared for the worst, and aware of the people’s will.
Like Roosevelt, I shall attempt to take quick, deliberate action against pre-existing problems, prevent future problems, maintain intimacy and honesty with those I represent, and solve international problems multilaterally.
Yet, with respect to Roosevelt’s august achievements, I will not actively emulate any leader. Modern circumstances call for innovation, not duplication; recognition, not worship.
The words of many leaders can provide a guidebook, and the actions of many individuals can form a historical outline, but it is the responsibility of self to discern the imperatives of the present.

In my youth, I was partial to Socialism, if only abstractly. When I was ten, I posited to my father a Robin-hood system of distribution where the poor would be well-cared for, the rich – beneficiaries. Everyone would have enough, I proclaimed, most would have surplus.
But Russia, he told a crestfallen ten-year-old, had tried and failed. There was no work incentive.
I understood, and revised my ideals.
The more I explored Socialism and Communism, through Marxist theory and Orwellian parody, the more I saw both the no-longer-ripe back-drop for an industrial revolution, and the omni-present vice of the state.
Reading Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, I began to acknowledge that such problems were innate but still harbored hope that there might be at least one perfect ruler to regulate distribution; eventually Cincinnatus, the only Roman dictator to prove absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, might be reincarnated and instate a system of mass prosperity.
To be fair, I was already angling for full-fledged Libertarianism – touting individual rights and reveling in Nozick’s moral “side-constraints” – when I finally read Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. The novel is “gi-normous”, a whopping one-thousand two-hundred pages and replete with redundancies, but Rand’s protagonists still convey the frightening potential of hard-working intellectuals sacrificed for their virtues, enslaved for their efficiency and innovation. Worse, the novel reconfirms the lethargy of the average citizen, the proletariat-staple of any welfare-state.
Dagny and John are the perfect anti-communists, proponents of not only individual rights but individual labor, with individual rewards. They value work for the sake of man’s achievement. They think taking one man’s labor to feed another man merely leaves two men who do not labor. They are both intelligent and passionate, seeking a society which fosters more intelligence and passion.
Yet, while an Objectivist Utopia is difficult to reject on the basis of pure efficiency and beauty, its pragmatic effects on the rest of the world are equally difficult to condone. It would have diligence, but it wouldn’t have sympathy or compassion. Like Libertarianism, it wouldn’t be able to accommodate the poorest, stuck in an involuntary cycle of poverty.
Accordingly, I once again revised my ideals to both consider Rand and fit an Earth where poverty is the norm, where more than half of Sub-Saharan Africans live on less than one US-Dollar a day: Help as many as possible, while sacrificing the fewest rights. Educate rather than give. Raise society’s base-line standard-of-living, and then allow individuals to help themselves.
At ten-years-old, empathy led me to embrace a short-lived Socialistic-epiphany. And though empathy continues to drive my political philosophy, Atlas Shrugged compelled me to finally and completely reject redistribution-theory as a plausible panacea for the world’s ills.

When you analyze this poem
(in a classroom, thirty years from now)
You should know
I mean every word.
When you analyze this poem
(tonight, before you fall asleep)
Know
Your perception
is more real than my intent.

 

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Originally, I was assigned to the library – that’s where the ballots were being handed to our judges. Truth be told, I was handling affairs well. I had successfully, if frantically, managed to get all of Round 1, Flight a, into proper hands, record the transfer, and get timekeepers to each room to boot.
It was only when, 3 minutes after the last judge left, I was given NEW ballots for Round 1, Flight a, to be filled out on the fly, I knew I was in trouble. Immediately, I sent a runner down to the Tabulation room. Why the change?
No real answer – both coach and sponsor were too stressed attempting to operate the finicky tournament-management software “Joy of Tournaments” to handle any other problems.
Ballot recall from thirty rooms – after rounds had already commenced – smugly promised absolute mayhem. I sent the runner back again to confirm; she returned intimidated. So I asked my helper to take over for a moment, and sprinted to talk to them myself.
After much ado, the ballots stayed out, but I was pulled from the library.
Flustered, I regained my equilibrium sorting and managing Tab. I wasn’t allowed to use Joy of Tournaments, that was my sponsor’s territory (meanwhile my coach was replacing me in the library, to my sponsor’s chagrin), but I was constantly accumulating data for rankings and breaks. Most importantly, I was the firefighter.
Nobody asked me to take over the job, in fact, nobody even voiced a need for it. But without a doubt, it was one of the most critical jobs at our tournament.
Because when nobody was looking, bossy old women with perfectly hot-rollered hair would try to sneak into the tab room and casually confiscate their schools’ ballots before they reached the coaches’ lounge across the hall. One or two of them must have gotten away with it – spreading the word, before I stepped in to tactfully inform them that after their ballots were promptly copied and then placed into the lounge, they could be taken at leisure.
The little old women snorted, “The power just gets to SOME people’s heads.” And with upturned noses they left.
But we still had our ballots, and nobody had screamed. Polite assertion was the only weapon I had against the selfish assiduity of bitter rule-breakers, and I utilized it mercilessly.
So it went. My sponsor fretfully rebracketed the Championship Policy break-lists so that two Brazoswood teams wouldn’t hit (go against) each other, and I made sure that the Westfield coach was able to get his student into a Poetry round on time, the extra Debate 1s roaming the halls were put to good use manning the concession stand, and all the postings were out punctually, if only just.
Originally, I was assigned to the library, but because I became the catch-all, our tournament ran smoothly.

NASA is an enormous, Houston-wide set of complexes bustling with diversity. Aeronautical engineers, software developers, and even Astronauts-in-training settle here, in Clear Lake, for ready access to the Johnson Space Center. My parents are not aeronautical engineers or hopeful-Astronauts, and while sometime in the mid-eighties my mother did contract with NASA as a software engineer, she has been focused in the private sector since long before I was born.
Even so, living here, she and I have become steadily accustomed to, even defensive of, a hetero-cultured, poly-religious society.
Houston, smoggy though its petroleum-refineries may leave it, is still a cluster of culture – not always art and music, but lifestyles and religions – and a magnet of intellect. It is here, in Houston, that I have found a conglomeration of kindred-souls, who, by virtue of their very being, have molded my world-view.
An abysmally low number of people outside my small haven (even the 4th largest city in the United States is small compared to the population of the entire Earth) see the potential of those outside their own kind. Even members of my extended family don’t always recognize the human dignity and worth of those separated from them by an imaginary, but surprisingly opaque, line. Bigotry freezes their hearts, egotism inflates their heads, and misplaced patriotism enflames their righteousness. Racism, sexism, “religion-ism”, sect-ism. They all blur together in the fury of one hatred, one misunderstanding. One lack of empathy.
I guard those who are different when I can – we all guard each other. But ignorance is the most wide-spread of all evils – a truth I have learned not from my community, but from the comparison of my community with so many others. A truth reinforced at debate tournaments every weekend, where I regularly see immature, culturally-inspired attacks vying for the judge’s pathos.
My friends can save themselves from the danger of ignorance merely by being open and altruistic. And they have, time and again. Our community has, in the spirit of science, questioned then accepted, and my friends and their parents have passed all the tests. But too much of society won’t give them a chance, drawing up the walls of prejudice tightly, like fingers over five-year-old eyes.
I would guard my friends forever, if I could. Save them from the burden of bias. Shelter them from passionate ignorance.
I will save them. Somehow, I will; I am certain. I will save them by passing policies which assume their equality and competence, and by expecting others to do the same. I will save them by proving that the mind is unique, but it is still the mind, regardless of its possessor. I will save them by showing that the brain hosts the mind, and the mind hosts the soul. I will save them by allowing them the opportunity to save themselves.
I will save them because I know that only a world which accepts them will be truly liberated, truly safe, truly honest. Only a world which accepts them will be open to progress. Only a world which accepts them will be able to cope with the dwindling oil supply, the Middle Eastern wars, the possibility of nuclear fallout.
Only a world which accepts them will be able to reach the stars.

My hair is red
Not scarlet, not auburn,
Not orange.
My hair is red.
The same shade as my passion-
A deep, dripping mahogany resolution
Of lacquered manners,
Independent thought,
And sensuality.

Candis and I are making this fajita
For you
Heaped with beef, and cheese,
And lettuce –
Candis and I are making this fajita
For you
Without tomatoes, or onions
Or selfishness –
Candis and I are making this fajita
For you
And dubbing it
A love fajita –
(Made of Lindsay and Candis’s love
Not love and Lindsay and Candis.)

 

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I tease you in my rear-view mirror
Lip-stick-less, but no less attentive
Flaunting my head-start
I tease you in my rear-view mirror
As I turn right or
Wrong
And even though I am easily lost
I expect you to follow me.

 

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