Welcome to R-Complexville...


...where down is up, facts are interpretations, and you shouldn't do as I do, but as I say. Unless I'm cussing. Then, do neither, and avert your eyes and plug your ears.

[For newer readers unfamiliar with my reference to R-Complex, try a quick browse of this here. It will explain some of the bluntness you're about to encounter. Translation: For a business-y blog, there's a fair bit of locker room language and unvarnished spleen coming your way, some mine, but most of it from unexpected, supposedly mature sources. And that's kinda the point of the post: "Do as I say, not as I do" can be crazy-making as reality intervenes and people tamper with our worldviews.]

Fox News via David Sirota:

"I'm very disappointed that he would use that kind of language," [White House Chief of Staff, Andrew] Card said. "I'm hoping that he's apologizing at least to himself, because that's not the John Kerry that I know."

The money quote:

"When I voted for the war, I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything?' Sure. Did I expect George Bush to f--- it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did."

Now, we could all bore each other to tears debating whether it's more insulting to use Fuck as an adverb describing someone's actions, as Kerry did to an interviewer for Rolling Stone, or, in Cheney's case, as a command, a direct conversational insult to Sen. Pat Leahy.

But wouldn't that be a waste of time?

Abso-fucking-lutely. The kabuki that is official discourse is precisely the problem in the groups we grown-ups form to try and get things done. In other words, organizations are fucked, precisely because we insist on donning the veneer of politeness when in fact, our businesses and their models and the plans to execute them are innately desensitizing, polarizing and mercenary.

Stupidly, this officialdom and its barrier to reality is only increasing in velocity and impact at precisely the moment when truth and unabashed authenticity are about the only remaining markers of differentiation and worth--and the only damnthing that can get us all--all of us Americans--out of this cannibalistic rathole.

The cover up is worse than the crime

No, I'm not talking about politicians. I mean our business dealings. With each other, with underlings, with shareholders, with *GASP* customers. Yeah, it's a wicked web we've woven as we've shambled into the 21st centruy where all the knowlegeable experts told us women would be paid the same as men, race wouldn't matter, and the reform of the [name your industry] would yield a brave new world of [whatever] based on universal ethical norms with 10% of profits tithed to protect small furry animals.

Damn. The bastards. They lied!

Yep. We lie about our motives and mistakes and wrap them in piety and patriotism. Or in Powerpont™ and bullshit ROI, TCO or rosy M&A forecasts or boardroom koolaid rallies. Hmmm. Wait a minute. Near 1/2 of the executive conversations I've participated in consist of nitty gritty, and the remainder is brainstorming sweet bows to wrap screw-ups or sniggering self-interest in. It's kind of surreal, really like grandmothers earnestly knitting little woolly hats to pretty up those icky spare toilet rolls waiting their turn in the bathroom.

But, for this 1/2, the question is never asked: Whose fuckup are we remediating here and why is he or she not prone on the floor begging for mercy?

Simple: Because, more often than not, it's the boss that's why. And should we be surprised? Hell no. Bosses get to swing the biggest hammers--an army of them. But bosses, being uniquely pressured animals within the pack, looked-to for answers, tend to make mistakes out of hurry and catch-up or leap-frog moves. The result is hunger for quick fixes and easy answers: "I'm busy, give me a formula, don't bore me with what I think I already know about my Customers."

Yeah. Let's promote my narcissism and enable my myopia. Let me be stupid about the world and its changes relative to my company and its operational universe. (Research says that depth of understanding beats breadth of offering, but that's another post.) In the face of this doubled up risk aversion compounded by "Big Chief" confidence, nodody tells the boss he's a dope--a non-seer, like most of us. In this anti-pattern-language, you never get the essential: A reversal of Otter speaking to Flounder in Animal House: "We fucked up, we trusted you."

Treachery! Disloyalty! Passion! Gut! Second-thoughts!

Nobody says it--Employees, The Press, Executive Committees, political cohort or College of Bishops. Everybody's lame and mute. That's partly because we need to believe in leaders, and, partly becasue we haven't formalized our discomfort in a clear message. They know this, and they leverage it to squelch unconventional ideas or to defeat initiatives they deem unworthy or too costly/risky by their calculus. They squelch because of "youthenasia"--the belief that an idea coming from someone younger, less senior, or less credentialed than you or me, on principle, must be wrong, and therefore, must be killed. They ask, "Are you with us, or against us?"

Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him... "We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!"

We? All of us? At the same time? Damn, that guy must have really stepped over some kinda line, eh?

Who knows. But he was definitively "off the team." His tribal membership was being revoked. Bad R-Complex mojo.

Second-thoughts! Flip-flopping! (I'm always well informed and correct when I make a decision. Aren't you?) Oh, geez. Somebody going off the reservation is so frustrating!

In a competitve environment, that's often to be expected--because life is, first and foremost, about group identity, not group ideas. (Shake yourself of this piety and illusion if you do anything today.) To a degree, we often find ourselves derisively referring to people who don't agree with us or share in our situational dilemmas this way, the competiton or opposition perhaps. Then, there's the way we talk about customers.

For instance, whose "values statement" says this:

Communication. Excellence. Respect. Integrity.

Why, it's these guys:

Guy #1: "They're fucking taking all the money back from you guys?" "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"

Guy #2: "Yeah, grandma Millie, man"

Guy #1: "Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her asshole for fucking $250 a megawatt hour."

Gracious me. That's not how college educated, customer-centric, All-American businesspeople were supposed to speak in the brochures I got. People in positions of power and responsisbility, guardians of American propriety and restraint, know better. Yes, those fellows must have been an aberration, have to be...

The New Republic:

"The reason that Cheney was able to sell Bush the policy is that he was able to say, 'I've changed,'" says a senior administration official. "'I used to have the same position as [James] Baker, [Brent] Scowcroft, and your father--and here's why it's wrong.'" By February, observes a since-departed senior National Security Council (NSC) staffer, "my sense was the decision was taken." The next month, Bush interrupted a meeting between national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and three senators to boast, "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out."

Ah, the hearty machismo of the never-been-shot-at-before. I love the smell of frathouse beer funk in the morning. See? We don't have to do, we just have to mumble the correct noises of "A Doer"; claims of caring mean your methods must be right. Yeah, belief is the Cluster Bomb of angels.

Speaking of intercourse and ordnance, collateral damage can consume political careers and marriages and also principle in one fell J-DAM swoop, provded it's a Bunker Buster. Take Sex-club cowboy, Jack Ryan. No embarrassing public use of the F-bomb as far we can tell here, but plenty of shallow piety and, yes, a few attempted bombing runs while looking for stray swinger co-pilots

JACK RYAN ON THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE

I believe that marriage can only be defined as that union between one man and one woman. I am opposed to same-sex marriages, civil unions, and registries....

As an elected leader, my interest will be in promoting laws and educating people about the fundamental importance of the traditional family unit as the nucleus of our society.

Ahhh. But he meant well and spoke well, even if he was repeatedly asking his wife to be a sex-show exhibit, taking on all comers. Surely he gets points for thinking well?

The African Queen --

Hepburn: "Mr. Alnut, why do you drink?"
Bogart: "Aw, it's just human nature."
Hepburn: "Nature, Mr. Alnut, is what we were put in the world to rise
above."

Indeed, we're just frail humans, made in the image of a God who told us to be fruitful, to multiply, not to commit adultery, not to abuse His name. He also told us to try not to sin, but to expect to fail. He warned against holding other Gods beside him, warned against self-worship, and said, according to my church credo:

James 1: 22-27

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Funny--nowhere did the big guy mention Pride, Greed, Vanity or Lust as being virtues, or slagging off my laziness and venality on others; or a corollary: "Fuck" and its leveraged inference is okay if you're a Republican or a CEO or just a venal prole with a title and Land Rover.

Are we starting to see the institutional rot of saying the right things and doing the wrong?

As a business-person, I'm so fucking tired of fucking around.