I’m not a paid writer, I am a blogger who tends to write to attempt to explore the world around me. I run a small R+D firm, and I spend most of my days working out either how to improve speech recognition, or depth cameras, or hacking on C++.
However, as a small businessman, I feel if we do it right — we have a a parallel to statesmen. Because as cool as it is to be running your own business, whatever product you make you have to eventually be able to sell. And you have partners and vendors that you have to work with, in order to be able to set up your price points, and get paid. What we do is human, in nature. We go to work, we work hard, but at the end of the day there can be someone who works harder, does more, and we work in a human world.
I feel that sometimes we end up not unlike the gold miners in that excellent documentary about Sebastião Salgado - "Salt of the Earth". I strongly recommend this documentary, if only for the first five minutes.
The first five minutes , maybe ten — are simply still photographs, unforgettable — of men who are working in a gold mine, covered in dirt. The photography is vivid; memorable. At first, to be honest, I could not actually make it all out , it looked like a picture of a city — and then slowly the picture became more and more clear. You were seeing the largest gold mine in Brazil - and men climbing into and out of it. The mine is set up so that the miners descend down these pitches so steep you can only run down them. They climb back up ladders with a bag full of earth, and pan at the top of the gold mine.
And it does look like they are all slaves. But each man can go to a different section of the mine - and if that section of the mine has hit a vein of gold, then he may have as much as a kilo of gold in his sack when he comes back up. He either has dirt, in the sack, or gold. As the documentarian points out, the miner is slave only to gold.
I feel strongly like small business is much akin to that prospect, and that as a leader of a small business, my ability to pay my people , sometimes it’s very rough — but we all work to the moment when one day, we will come up with a kilo of Gold. For some, the day comes sooner than others. I left Kos a long time ago, when I realized a few key things about it. I’m returning not to make a hit piece, but to share my thoughts as this may still be a viable platform. I’m unsure. I’m divided by Kos’ recent statements that “we need to pivot from primary mode” as if the primary is somehow over because news media entertainment says it’s over. But I suppose there is bias in anything. Politicians are different than statesment.
And so, I guess, like mining for gold, so it is with statesmen. One of my political heroes (and I guess this gives away my truly independent streak) is Otto Von Bismarck. He was Chancellor of Germany, and singularly responsible for the Unification of Germany. My ancestors came through Germany, on the way from Austria to America, and we were likely very drunk at the time, so perhaps there's a genetic memory of him within us Bismarck was famous for his saying that a statesman is one who can listen for the footsteps of God, and swing themselves up by the hem when he walked past. And of course, he was also known for "Laws and sausages are two things better seen not being made".
Perhaps it is with my blog posts, I try to write them as best as I can, without bias. Now, it should be said, that if there is any bias in my pieces, please let it be known that the bias should point directly to Bernie Sanders. Because the dude is a motherfuckin’ sorceror...
But you remember the moment. The moment in the Town Hall, that we all witnessed. It was a very quiet moment, when you could almost hear a pin drop. A man who had been on death row - asked Hillary Rodham if she would still support the death penalty even as he, and 150 other men like him - were innocent and sent to their death.
For myself at least, and I could be wrong —and really what difference does it make, when we are all human — where I felt as if I saw something in her crush - and make a sound of broken glass. I feel Hillary Rodham Clinton - had a flashback. I believe that in that moment , where she stood on stage and saw an innocent man who had almost died because of an unjust accusation — that she saw the ghost of Vince Foster. Her old Friend.
I was very, very young when Vince Foster was murdered. But I always wondered about that supposed suicide. At least, I felt in that town hall — that she may have remembered his loss . I certainly felt her humanity. I believe Vince Foster was a man who was largely innocent, and that he had lost his life in very suspicious circumstances. I remember the day he died, I started digging into the facts of his death. Some things I knew then — Vince Foster and an operating account, I think a swiss bank account. I know there is a legalistic reason why , but this was also a man who had been a prominent member of the Administration, had his death investigated by the United States Park Police. His suicide note , found torn up in his briefcase, mentioned Hillary Clinton by name. I never believed it to have been a suicide note. To this day, I believe he was an innocent man.
This was his note:
“I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience and overwork
I did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct
No one in The White House, to my knowledge, violated any law or standard of conduct, including any action in the travel office. There was no intent to benefit any individual or specific group
The FBI lied in their report to the AG
The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the travel staff
The GOP has lied and misrepresented its knowledge and role and covered up a prior investigation
The Ushers Office plotted to have excessive costs incurred, taking advantage of Kaki and Hillary Rodham Clinton
The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons and their loyal staff
The WSJ editors lie without consequence
I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport”
I remember being curious about it because it had been torn into 27 pieces, and my girlfriend at the time, whom to this day I miss very much — named Jennifer Flowers (!) , was always talking about that number. She believed it had strange powers. As a young physics student, I dug into the story just for curiosity’s sake. I still honestly have questions about the man’s death.
But even if we debate the circumstance of his death, it still stands as a means by which we can understand what a major political candidate may have felt. To suddenly see senseless death and loss in proper perspective, must have been a shock.
At the moment in the town hall when a good African American man who had escaped death row, a man named Ricky Jackson, who stood before Hillary Rodham Clinton - after having served 39 years for a crime he did not commit - an Ohio man who stood free when over 150 others had died by the state's hand —
I firmly believe that no government, be it state or otherwise, should be in the business of murdering its own citizens, for any reason. Her reasons were so that we could prosecute terrorists — but the definition of terrorist in a creeping police state has become so broad now I no longer trust it. In fact, even here on Kos, I have been accused of writing hit pieces and had my posts flagged… I feel it strange that this is the environment that Kos has morphed into — five years ago it was different.
But this is not a hit piece. This is a story that speaks to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s basic humanity in an unguarded moment. I could be wrong on this - but I personally believe that on March 13, 2016, to herself, and herself alone - Hillary Rodham Clinton saw a ghost. And it frightened her. Certainly, it frightened me. To see 150 men die without reason. In that moment, at least, I made up my mind that I would never again stand for the death penalty in our country, and that I would work to end it wherever I could. But that moment was not political, at all. It was a quiet, sad moment because we were all to blame.
And for a brief moment, we were all human. And she was a statesman. We were all statesman. Let us hope that moment guides us, forever, away from the death penalty as a means of enforcing the state. Creeping police version, or otherwise.
