We Shall See What We Shall See

We Shall See What We Shall See
©2012 Ross Williams

If you’re ever in Seattle, be sure to drop by Carter’s Chocolates. My younger brother built, owns and runs it.

Yes, he built it, Barry Hussein. Public infrastructure is required by our Constitution; you are obliged to provide roads and bridges. Personal initiative is a citizen’s right. My brother took his rightful initiative, undoubtedly over the many speed bumps and roadblocks our governments create, and he makes good chocolates – except for those which are jalapeño-flavored. That’s nasty, Matt. Matt Carter. Williams.

Carter’s Chocolate can be found online at its own website [CartersChocolates.com] and they’re probably on Facebook as well, I don’t know specifically. If you read his website you will learn that not only does my brother go in a big way for “natural”, “organic”, “sustainable” and “fair trade” – all of which means that he is employing Barnum’s strategy of fleecing the suckers – but that he is also a retard.

By which I mean he has been seduced by the dark side of the American Political Force: he’s a liberal and [ironic term] “progressive”. This is the same guy who, fifteen years ago in our mother’s Michigan kitchen and in front of my then-wife [a liberal and, ironic term, “progressive”, herself] was extolling the virtues of one Rush Limbaugh, who Matt then idolized. He gave me a Rush Limbaugh tie for Christmas one year in the late 90s. I still haven’t worn it.

“Just listen to him for a week!” Matt said, aping the promos Limbaugh used to give. “By that time you’ll be hooked!”

I’d heard the guy a time or seven on the radio already and could immediately spot the telltale signs of a populist cheerleader – rah rah. I scoffed at my brother for his puppy-eyed devotion to a “personality”. My estimation of the guy was that he knew his audience and he knew it well, he knew want they wanted to hear and, as all cheerleaders everywhere do, he gave his audience exactly that ... and nothing more. Limbaugh is not necessarily incorrect about what he says, but he often is; the worse sin, though, is that his analysis tends toward the grossly superficial. Which means even when he’s correct he rarely knows why.

Rush Limbaugh was, in short, a stopped clock: right twice a day through no fault of his own.

My position on Limbaugh has not changed substantially since then: he’s sometimes right, usually not, has no clue why. I don’t go out of my way to listen, contrary to what a number of people inform me – including Matt, the last time he decided to tell me what I was all about.

But all that was fifteen years ago before my brother dropped his last name for professional reasons and developed a new puppy-eyed devotion to a different “personality”, one Barry Hussein Obama, who is little more than the populist stopped-clock cheerleader for the opposing American political -ism himself.

I’ve avoided my brother since ‘03/’04 ... somewhere around there ... due to his newest puppidom emerging in the piddle puddles that, as with all puppies, didn’t quite make it to the fire hydrant as they should. Because I work as a DoD contractor in their myriad war planning/execution/sustainment programs, I am not reliant, as others are, on reports from the popular press providing information filtered through their convenient bias and misunderstanding of military goings on. I have straight poop to work from.

Because I have better, unfiltered information to do my analysis from, not to mention years more experience in war theory and doctrine than does a pastry chef who did 5+ years on a Navy sub doing everything he could to get out of his job and go scuba diving, I have a far more complete understanding of what’s occurring in a war than does the aforementioned pastry chef who is busy listening to his own stopped clocks telling him what he wants to hear. And the war that this piddling puppy deigned to school me on was Iraq II.

Needless to say, he was as ignorant and superficial about it as Rush Limbaugh and George Soros, both. And I told him so. I also told him that if I – as a DoD contractor working on the myriad war planning/execution/sustainment programs – were to accept what he [more correctly, the George Soros MoveOn insanity which my brother liberally quoted] defined as the reality of Iraq II, it would be the military doctrine equivalent of redefining pi to equal 3. Yes, such superficiality is easier to comprehend, but when pi=3 circles are rendered flat-sided, cars, planes and trains can no longer be built [and for more reasons than their wheels won’t roll], and modern society crumbles into a heap.

When war is fought by the childish paradigms offered up by America’s neophyte class – which was busy offering up countless neophytic paradigms during the Bush years – America loses wars, stops plying foreign policy for self-interest, and the first batch of yahoos armed with anything more than pea-shooters tosses the US bodily into the history books to be covered by dust.

You don’t need to like war, nor do you need to like the guy in charge of it, but if you don’t understand why certain things are done in war and that reality transcends party, then it’s best to keep your mouth shut. I can guarantee you that those who do understand war will consider you a raging ignoramus if you don’t; and it was because I actually told my brother he was a raging ignoramus – “Stop telling me how to do my job” – he and I both got snippy with each other and, well, I don’t need the frustration of a petite Napoleon converting his sincerely-held but baseless beliefs into my job description. Implementing even one of his crackpot ideas would have gotten me fired.

The last time I saw Matt was at my mother’s insistence at my older brother’s Florida house – I don’t talk to him either. He’s intellectually dishonest, not merely a sincere ideologue, and I didn’t talk much to either of them during that miserable visit.

My older brother pretended he had Alzheimer’s and couldn’t quite put his finger on why I don’t need his interaction any longer. He talked at me for a time expressing his wish to let the past remain in the past. Hint: until you change the way your brain processes information, Steve, your past will be your future as well, and I don’t need people around me who refuse to think. I don’t care what your opinions are, but if you can’t think, then you can’t articulate those opinions; what you’re left with is axiomatic ideology which I’ve grown exceptionally weary of.

Matt simply got snotty with me on a few occasions while pretending that he hadn’t been a peevish little shit completely out of his league the last few times we emailed each other.

But I got a chance to listen to both of them while keeping my mouth shut at the jigsaw puzzle.

And Matt, the small-business owner, the one whose revenues put him perilously close to being the very same “wealthy” who don’t pay “their fair share”, and whose resulting selfishness further required Barry Hussein to construct Obamacare out of – and here’s an apt allusion for a pastry chef – pie-in-the-sky delusion, ... this very same Matt was whining for over an hour to my sister in law about how “the other side” just can’t understand that he [the uninsured] just “wants the same right” to healthcare that they [i.e., me] have. “It’s only fair. We want to be able to afford it as well!” he whimpered.

His idea of a “fair” “affording” of his right to healthcare? Thirty-five dollars – I neglected to notice whether he thought this fairness was per day, per week or per month. I neglected to notice because at the mention of “medical insurance”, “fair price” and “thirty-five dollars” occurring in one sentence I immediately had visions of countless hands all shoved into my pocket for the ability to avail themselves of their rights, using my money – against my will. I left by the back door as quickly as I could, startling several people and a dog on the way.

Just a note for the uninsured, if they are curious: my employer’s share of my medical insurance premiums is roughly $35 every two days, according to the benefits disclosure they provide me. That’s just for me, based on their bare-bones plan [which would be illegally scant under Obamacare], and this is a group plan with the lower premiums that Obamacare purports to provide for less. I pay for the “improved” plan upgrade for myself and everyone else in my family out of my paycheck. Total, it comes out to about $35 every sixteen hours.

This $35-every-sixteen-hours plan is even skimpy compared to what Obamacare is promising to do for everyone – by which we mean, of course, the 15% of everyone who, like Matt, refuses to cough up for their own insurance and, in Matt’s case [for he is a small business owner] for his employees as well, which I can only think is rude and hypocritical considering he’s a liberal and [ironic term] “progressive”.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the wizards who conjured up Obamacare knew damned well that they were [deliberately] grossly underestimating the cost of insuring people for what that insurance will cover, and that the minority support it receives on the street is primarily from those who understand nothing about how insurance works.

But now that five dunces on the Supreme Court have forgotten what the Constitution says about the limitation of federal authority, I am left wondering what my business-owner, “fair-share” scofflaw brother will do about it, and many questions nag at me.

Will Carter’s Chocolates provide $35-every-sixteen-hours health insurance for its employees, even though it is small enough right now to not be required by law to do so? ...and out of its own revenues, because it is the decent thing to do for its American employees? Or does his “commitment to the people” only extend to the Colombians who pick his cocoa beans?

If Carter’s Chocolates grows large enough to need so many employees that it will trigger its legal requirement to provide $35-every-sixteen-hours health insurance, will it take the tax credit of $8 every sixteen hours [until 2016] to provide $35-every-sixteen-hours health insurance for its employees? Or will it discover that it is significantly cheaper to take the $12 every sixteen hours “penalty” [read: tax] per employee than to get $8 every sixteen hours tax credit but lose $35 every sixteen hours in insurance premium? Or will Carter’s Chocolates go out of business before it needs to do such arithmetic, because those who can afford to pay twice or three times the regular price for chocolates simply because they are made from “organic”, “free range” and “fair trade” cocoa beans to the benefit of the people of Colombia are themselves going out of business because Obamacare was deliberately misrepresented to our nation’s hero-worshipping ignoramuses?

How long until the proprietor of Carter’s Chocolates discovers that even if the government has a good idea, the only tool it has to implement it is law and punishment, and those methods are only successful in breeding bureaucracy and crime, historically very, very poor means of making the good idea a “sustainable” reality? How long until the proprietor will understand why our Constitution was written the way it was – by my-style libertarians – to prevent the government from doing pretty much everything that the government is now doing? How long until he becomes a my-style libertarian himself?

These questions and more are going to need to be answered in the next several years by the only one whose answer means a damn: my younger brother, Matthew Carter Williams, founder and “yes he did build that” of Carter’s Chocolates in Seattle. Because I don’t go trying to tell other people how to do their jobs, unlike some people, I’ll just ask the pesky questions and let those whose job it is figure it all out.

But if anyone wants to prime Matt's mental pump about these, or simply order overly expensive chocolate, drop him a line at Matt@carterschocolates.com. Ask about his hero-worshipping Obamabar; it only looks inexpensive. Wait’ll you get the final bill.

Maybe China will pony up for it. Again.