Gnats & Politics

[James Brody]

A late summer’s afternoon…I walked onto my porch and there in the shadow a hundred gnats flew around each other, probably following the three rules that guide flocks of boids…move to the middle, move to the front, and don’t bump into another boid. The cloud kept its shape although its individual members constantly changed their position…politicians and activists probably fit this model.
-------------------

A campaign breakfast: A committee member invited me and I promised to be a good boy but failed. Gubernatorial candidate Jim Gerlach asked all of us, “How do we get past voter apathy?” I blurted: “The 912ers and Patriots groups have lots of energy and sometimes focus. It would help if some Gerlach buttons were on the corner with us. There’s a rally today at 10 on the courthouse.” Mr. Gerlach smiled. After all, he let me sit at his desk in Washington last week and – for a few seconds - rest my motorcycle boots on its surface. He remembered, “You looked really comfortable!” “Yes sir! It was wonderful!” His campaign manager asked for our schedule and joined the Cat’s list but no one from the meeting came to the West Chester rally.

Herr and NOW at the West Chester Courthouse: The modest crowd, of about two hundred, had four hubs. The veterans’ Sheepdogs staked out one corner, the pacifists a second, and the pro-lifers a third plus a sidewalk facing the courthouse, and even some sidewalk on the courthouse side of the street. In front of the courthouse, Lois Herr and NOW defended their right to kill more people than Joe Stalin – one difference is that American victims are usually unborn and black. Our side shouted continuously for an hour while a few with very clean cloth coats and big cameras took pictures. None of these latter jumped and shouted and, in a sense, also were not at the rally.

Is there a g-loading for hopping walks with signs as opposed to scheming in meetings? Do some instinctively prefer jumping and yelling, waving signs and swapping waves with passing drivers to the quiet brow lifts, annoyed glares, and suppressed belches in a committee meeting? Or will the traditionalists join the shouters later in mutual distrust? And can the shouters attend a meeting without squirming or day-dreaming? (I bet Sarah and Michele would rather jump curbs than meeting seats.) And How in H can blacks be loyal to liberal atheists who give them dead babies, bad schools, and easy divorces…all of them techniques that warp a child’s life?

King of Prussia – Mall Blvd & Rt. 202: A young cop supervised the lights while a crew repaved the bank’s lot. “Can we still picket?” “Heck yes! You folks have been here forever…” There were 20 strong backs with sound minds and rude signs on site when Carl Namiotka arrived. I left for DC for the Senate debate about whether to debate health care.

To DC: Meet Up Interruptus: I stopped at the Chesapeake House for coffee and a sandwich when she called with news about Blanche Lincoln’s vote. “People are disbanding.” I shared my sandwich with sparrows in the late sun and got lost twice on my way back home. I should have continued to DC and spent an hour alone with Jefferson.

A mailing and an email, both from politician’s wives that start with “Don’t tell my husband or anyone else about this message.” It could have been Africa and a sly glance near the grasslands 40,000 years ago. It could also be the latest fundraising ploy…

Glenn Beck wants us to meet him at Lincoln’s steps on August 22nd. He’s a great man but also a fast talker…a very fast talker. What happens to his coherence if his audience fades? And what happens to his audience if Beck’s coherence scatters for other reasons?

Why does Andy Breitbart have to uncover ACORN? Where is Eric Himpton Holder or our State Attorney General, Tom Corbett, who, by rumor, gets campaign money from the people he investigates. And why does the state Republican committee fund his campaign when he is still in a primary?

Bottom Line: I’m gonna be my own gnat and circle Sarah and Michele in Nashville …

Inspirations/References/Notes

From AnnMarie in response to an activist’s email:
(Remembert: boids move in parallel with other boids.
“Surely those of us who have enough time to be all over the internet and meet-up sites disseminating information have enough time to play an active role in local GOP politics. If we can go to meetings and rallies every week/month or so, can we not spare some time to BE the politicians we are crying out for? We have a whole lot of "bell-ringers," lots of sound and fury to spare. It's time for us to be the leaders we are looking for.”
More Gnats: TEA Party Rifts
“‘These groups don’t play as well together as they should,’ said Kevin Jackson, a St. Louis-based conservative author and activist who has spoken at dozens of tea party-type rallies and is traveling across the South with a convoy sponsored by the national Tea Party Patriots group.
“‘They’re fractured at the organization level, I think mainly because there are a lot of people who have not had managerial experience who all of a sudden are thrust into the limelight and become intoxicated with it. And when a potential rift comes up, instead of handling it and maybe agreeing to disagree, they splinter and go off on their own.’”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29744.html
Boids …. An algorithm invented by Craig Reynolds in the ’80s. The computer simulation duplicates the movements in a flock of birds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids. See also http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/applet/
Stu Kauffman, a biophysicist, remarked once that emergent organizations discover self-interest when they find resources. Cancers grow from small things, whether in car companies, banks, and governments or in clumps of cells.
Winner-take-all describes Country & Western charts as well as the success of cocaine dealers – a very few make it to the top. The others stay home, twanging their guitar in mom’s basement or working at WalMart. See Levitt, S. & S. Dubner (2007) Freakonomics. Also Frank, R. & Cook, P. (1995) The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us. NY: Free Press.
Peter Csermely, a Hungarian chemist, described where we are when he described four stages in network organization: 1) chaotic, 2) the rich get richer, 3) winner-take-all, and 4) collapse. These stages line up with Bose-Einstein math. They also assert that as resources collapse, uniformity first increases, but, next, the big organization collapses into components that might be salvaged by an invader. Csermely’s notions line up well with those of Arnold Toynbee! Csermely, Peter (2006) Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks. NY: Springer. See also Brody, J F. (2008) Rebellion: Physics to Personal Will. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. And for a lot of paperback fun that might also change your life: Barabási, A-L (2002) Linked: The New Science of Networks. NY: Perseus.
“Cats”: www.DeadCatsandClippings.com. Three times a week, no ads, no fees, no shared email addresses. “The liberation of the human mind has been best furthered by…fellows who throw dead cats in sanctuaries.” H. L. Mencken. Always room for another subscriber! Send an email to jbjbrody@cs.com
Back to Valley Forge Patriots: http://www.valleyforgepatriots.org/?p=305