Begin at the Beginning

Mark Twain said, " There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."

I, the Chief, am finally succumbing to the fatal allure of telling the whole world the entire and complete, unabridged, low ball truth about...well, about whatever I think I know the truth about.

I don't want to examine too closely what I think I know the truth about, because I know from past experience that I will begin to see the holes in my own argument.

And that is fatal.

At least, it's fatal to winning arguments. And arguing seems to be what our whole public life is about now.

This telecommunications age was once described by Andy Warhol(I think it was Andy...) as the future in which "everyone would be famous for 15 minutes."

Andy( or whoever) got it a little sideways: we are all famous all the time; at least in our own minds. If we aren't on tv or the internet, we supply ourselves with a surrogate self: Rush for the Dittoheads("Rush is right"), Obama for the Progressives("The audacity of Hope"), Dale. Jr for the Rednecks("them other drivers don't talk like us"), Tiger Woods for fat white guys who look past his color("when he won with his hurt knee, I cried")(no Tiger jokes--you've heard all the good ones).

So now we come to the Chief and the name of this little soiree(French for rodeo):

I've often heard arguments based on Twain's three categories; in fact 99% of what you hear is based on those three.

There's a great reason for this--it helps you, or your surrogate you, win that argument you have everyday on the drive home listening to the radio.

You know the dream; you corner that walleyed, pasty-faced, panty-wearing liberal(or Dick Cheney--looking Chicken Hawk; take your pick) and you blast him with a litany of unassailable facts(more like statistics) and he slinks away forever chastened.

This fantasy is really Americana with deep roots in our past.

Many years ago, a college friend of mine's father was a successful small town vet. He was a nice, short, bald, round man of middle age.

It just so happened that at this time one of the popular tv shows was "Cannon" starring William Conrad--a short, bald, round middle aged man, with a mustache.

We noticed the change first when my friend's father grew the mustache. Next, he bought a pale, ugly green Olds 88. Guess who drove one of those on tv.

When my friend came back to school from break, he related, with a bit of a tremor in his hands, that he had accompanied his dad on a farm call while he was at home.

"You know how Cannon always chases the bad guy down in the last scene--how he rips across a gravel parking lot and slides that big boat around and throws gravel everywhere?" my friend said, "then he jumps out and waddles off to punch the bad guy out?"

"My dad went across that pasture about 80; mud and cow shit going everywhere. We almost ran in the ditch and hit the farmer's fence. He made me clean the clumps of grass out from behind the bumpers."

"Mom says not to ask him about Cannon--it'll just make him mad. She says it'll be alright when that show goes off the air"

And so it was. But for a while Cannon lived at my friend's house.

Now the point of all this--the point of this blog--is to somehow get some perspective on our 21st century life, without becoming something.

I'm going to try to just be the Chief(just ignore the inconvenient fact that "Chief Tanasi" isn't my real name).

And I hope the Chief will present the Raw Data. Just what the numbers say, without the Live Wrestling aspect of things.

So now, I'll leave you with one:

There are about 300 million Americans today. Of those, somewhere around 6 million earn over $250,000 in income per year; obviously about 294 million earn less than that.

We'll leave it at that; I invite you to think that over.

No commentary, but just weigh those numbers in your mind for a bit. Think about how those people(including you) relate to and interact with each other.

Put it another way: out of every 300 people you know, 6 probably make over $250,000 per year and the other 294 make less than that. If you can figure out who is who, think about who they are and how they relate to you and to each other.

Consider it the Chief's homework assignment.

"Don't worry that the horse is blind, just load the wagon."

Chief Tanasi 12/16/2009