Perfect: The Enemy of the Good

(Nobody asked . . . but . . . )

One of my favorite phrases is "Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good."

I see this as a acknowledgement of the complex reality that we live in. We are not alone and we are not able to dictate and control all aspects of the world around us. People are complex and unpredictable and have intricate inner lives that they do or do not share freely. Motivations and beliefs and actions (both our own and those of others) are opaque. 

We see through a glass darkly.

We move through a world of others and they move through that same world. We try to be accountable to each other, but many act as if they don't owe anyone anything.

So many variables. So many uncertainties. 

How can we then expect perfection?

Believers know that we live in a fallen world. Perfection was lost and all we can do now is try to clear our way through the mud and mess that we have. Cane we do it with grace and with compassion? Will  we choose to do it selfishly and with disregard for anyone else?

Perfection is not achievable.

So . . . don't hold up actions in the vain belief for that perfection.

Don't create a utopia that you can't achieve when you can be trying to do something here and now. Knowing that mistakes will occur. But acting with knowledge and in good faith to protect and serve as many people as you can.

There are many enemies in this world.

Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good.

Getting into some high brow culture

(Full disclosure--I toyed with using a vulgar or course title using swear words or curse abbreviations for this post. You know, as a way of creating a clever dissonance with the content to come. But then I didn't. But that didn't stop me from taking even more time to type this out and explain it to you, so that you can pat me on the back for the joke I didn't make. I guess that is why people hate bloggers.)

Last Saturday, Lynda and I attended the Columbus Symphony Orchestra's performance at the Ohio Theater downtown.

You would be justified to think at this point Most of those words have never been presented in that particular order about something YOU did. 

But I did it because of the particular music they began the performance with: Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring. (I didn't know that the second piece would be based on letters written by Abraham Lincoln, but that was a nice bonus as well.) You can click this link to see some of the details of the show.

Copeland has been my favorite American composer since I was in high school. This was because of a set of circumstances that combine pop culture and marching band--so of course, it had to happen to me.

If you are of a certain age, you likely remember the "Beef. It's What's for Dinner" commercials that ran frequently on television during the Reagan Eighties. The jaunty upbeat symphonic music that linked cattle on the range to your Saturday night dinner table was courtesy of Aaron Copeland. (It is from the Rodeo suite, to be specific. The fourth movement is named "Hoedown.") Copeland became an even more mainstream name because of this bump in his musical exposure and brought awareness deep into South Georgia to me. 

I was further locked into Copeland soon after when my high school marching band capitalized on this popular awareness by incorporating the beats and some musical elements of "Hoedown" into the percussion feature of a halftime show one year. 

But that only linked me to Copeland himself. It didn't take very long for me to hear Appalachian Spring for the first time. And that was courtesy of the (Garfield) Cadets (of Bergen County) drum corps show of 1987.

(The final two minutes of this show . . . from the enormous musical hit of "Simple Gifts" through the scatter drill break and resolve into the march off of the field remains in my top three most impactful drum corps moments over 40 years after seeing it for the first time. Just chills-inducing.)

It was all over for me at that point.

I listened to a cassette recording of Appalachian Spring MANY times in the intervening high school years. In my bedroom at night, in the dark, with the volume down. Sometimes riding my bike around town via my Walkman. (When I wasn't otherwise listening to XTC's "Oranges & Lemons" or R.E.M.*)

But--to bounce back to the present.

It was a great thrill to enjoy such stellar music live. Copeland especially, but the entire program was great and we had such a good time. We are lucky to have the arts available to us here and I'm very happy we had the chance to be there and listen.

*More on this in an upcoming post.

George Orwell's "1984"--Chapter One excerpt

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were--in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be. . . . 

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out 'Swine! Swine! Swine!' and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein's nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston's hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies. And yet the very next instant he was at one with the people about him, and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true. . . . 

The Hate rose to its climax. . . . [Then] the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired, black-moustachio'd, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the face of Big Brother faded away again, and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals: 

WAR IS PEACE 

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY 

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH 

But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyone's eyeballs was too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like 'My Saviour!' she extended her arms towards the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer. 

At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant of 'B-B!...B-B!'--over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first 'B' and the second--a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise. . . .

[Source: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt]

Ft. Bragg and Dog Whistling in the Dark

Today, the nation's Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth (nee National Guard veteran and Fox News media persona) renamed the military base Fort Liberty and restored implemented the old new name of Fort Bragg.

(You can read about it in explanatory detail here: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/10/politics/hegseth-fort-bragg/index.html)

You might--as I initially did--think that this is another MAGA example of reclaiming America and striking down Woke overreach. And it is that. But not (?) in the direction that is at first obvious. 

The Bragg being honored here is not the original Bragg who was indeed a Civil War general and thus was the target for renaming initially by the well-meaning politicians and people who wanted to avoid honoring people in active rebellion against the United States. Rather, as Hegseth explained, this Bragg is a World War II private who won a Silver Star and a Purple Heart.

So . . . that is progress in a sense. At least we aren't returning to the Bragg that was considered "one of the worst generals of the Civil War" and someone who was "widely disliked . . ."

And still . . . why waste even a few minutes of the government's time? What was wrong with promoting the concept of (Fort) Liberty? 

And even the most important part of this act (in my opinion) . . . is the calculated way that Hegseth has his cake and eats it too. To most people who see the headline and scroll along with their day, they will think that an actual restoration to the Confederate Bragg was achieved. And those people to whom that matters will feel a frisson of excitement that the libs were owned again. Woke was weakened and MAGA rose again.

Was that Hegseth's intent? Did he want the easy headline, assuming that a deeper investigation would not really occur. And if it did, he would have coverage by pivoting to the matching name but for a better person?

I don't know. But the part of me that is daily angry about the performative nature of politicians feels that this is just another example of superficial crap that shows how shallow people in power truly are and how much time and energy is wasted on stuff that doesn't actually end up helping anyone.

(And yeah, I wasted 10 to 15 minutes writing out this to be read by no one.)

Elon Musk, the Treasury Department, and partisanship

Over the weekend, there were many credible news reports that Elon Musk--Tesla owner and President Donald Trump friend--initiated access into the U.S. Treasury Department's computer system. The people acting on Musk's behalf are reported to be members of the Department of Government Efficiency "group" that has no actual legal basis--as it has not been created by or voted upon by the U.S. Congress.

These six young men who have gained access to the Treasury Department are not government officials. They have not been vetted by our elected representatives. They are therefore operating outside of law and government authorization. It would be no different than if I showed up to the Treasury Department and gained access to these systems myself. I have no authority to do it and I would be caught and prosecuted for doing so.

Elon Musk is also NOT an elected official. He does not represent in any legal way the United States of America. He has not had public hearings in front of the U.S. Senate. He has not been subject to questions by our political leaders. He is operating under some very vague "permission" given by the president but there is no legal scaffold surrounding anything Musk is doing right now.

The information that Musk's men have access to is personal identification and financial information for federal employees, taxpayers, and so many others. The U.S. Treasury department is the agency responsible for paying out government money to wherever it goes. That includes all of the American taxpayers that get refunds. And even if you don't get a refund, you might get Medicare or Medicaid payments or you might get monthly Social Security payments. The government has stored that information in these computer networks to send out all of these payments. This sort of private information can be used to track individuals throughout their personal and financial lives. When misused, it can wreck families, finances, and lives. And--again--the people who have now forced themselves into possession of it have NO LEGAL BASIS for doing this.

For those of you who voted for Donald Trump in the November 2024 elections . . . is this what you envisioned? 

I'm confident that you disliked Democrats and what the Democratic Party supported. You thought Joe Biden was ineffectual and that you wanted a strong personality in the White House. You may have been uneasy with what you believe are changing social and moral norms in the country today.

But did you want laws ignored?

Did you want people with no oversight or legal guardrails gaining access to sensitive private information, including your finances?

This type of ungovernable, illegal activity is very dangerous and needs to be taken seriously.

These are violations of law and they are high crimes and misdemeanors that qualify for yet another impeachment process for President Trump's administration. Will the members of the House of Representatives stand up to their oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States? Will the people we elected represent us and defend the law that they claim to revere?