Why I’m leaving politics at Facebook

 

Not putting myself in his league (he simpered, lying), but Dante had to finish his Divine Comedy in exile, because he got too caught up in the politics of his day, which compromised his thoughts about the politics of heaven and hell.

I attracted a following once, before they met me. Then, despite my bluff bonhomie, they realized that I only needed somewhere between 10 and 100 of words they put on a page to calculate their IQ as Stanford-Binet would measure it. One by one they all realized this and withdrew from me. Understandably, it makes them think that any relationship with me is me using them, women being the sole exception. Which is completely not true. Why? Two reasons. One counterintuitive, one demonstratively proven.

First, am I really that smart, able to make such determinations? Yes. 

I was bred, born, and raised to be the last great Victorian intellect. Always off the charts, I skipped second grade, had to pass up being enrolled in prep school as a sophomore when I was 13 (thanks Dad, honestly), admitted to Harvard as a sophomore, graduated at 19, almost went to law school but knew better, and dropped out of graduate business school at Cornell, mission completed, at 22. The counterintuitive part: I had to compensate. I did. When I got to Harvard I already had a classical liberal arts education. So I pursued a childish fantasy instead. I expected to meet America’s upper class, the caste I had been raised to be part of. They weren’t there. I was from a higher class than anyone I met at Harvard. Spoiled trust fund brats, precocious back street class warriors, pampered Grottlesex boys who would spend their lives as boys, and merciless elites who would say, do, pretend anything to acquire power. I was from the natural upper class that made American things happen outside effing Massachusetts and so I rebelled by becoming a social success while remaining an Episcopalian virgin, drunk as a lord a real Laird is, and I was elected the first 18-yo final club president (Phoenix having the smartest, suavest, and most creative of all the Clubbies) and a secret second-story superstar, breaking into the inner sanctums of every other final club but one. I was famous but not popular.

The great thing about what I have to say here. It’s all in the record. What I’m conveying, I hope, so far, is that I was just a kid at Harvard and that was both a disadvantage and a bigger advantage. I got a firsthand look at the Valedictorian of the 1970 class, whom everyone regarded with uncritical awe while I was able to view him from skeptical teenage eyes. Of all of them I could see that he was probably my intellectual equal in conventional terms. He looked perfect for eventual intellectual stardom. I have followed his career. He is considered a leading expert on China, a tenured Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, now known as the home of the Penn-Biden Center, and his silence now is matched by the silence I have seen from him the whole time I have been following his academic tenure. The current situation makes him the same failure I saw in everyone I went to Harvard with. I looked them all up over the years. The handsome and perfect are now blurred and puffy. They are not CEOs but CFOs. They are dead in the traces. The talented ones are dead in the grave. Philip Core and Page Grubb (composer of the last great Hasty Pudding musical “Rhinestones in the Rough.”) were both Phoenix. All the other guaranteed winners are proven sellouts to everything they said they hated. (Legal superstar named Craig Ulman. Look him up. He’s a quiet mover in the CHYOS club. Ran against me for Phoenix Pres. Lost. Lost his soul more like.)

Intelligence is not Stanford-Binet. It’s something way different, way beyond what they measure. Which I have written about very specifically. The smartest guys I knew at Harvard went to St. Alban’s School (DC) and The Taft School. Their positive contribution to the world to date has been nothing.

Second. I don’t look down on the ones who fail to comment, fail to follow my links to myself, fail to build an alliance around me like the ones who built the original Boomer Bible website, the html version of Shuteye Town 1999, and the second generation Boomer Bible website with a LIVE Interactive Column Reference. I didn’t do those things. I don’t look down. What I do instead: Wonder why I keep talking to y’all. Smart people on my Friends list. From all my target conversion groups. New Yorkers. Intellectual Jews. Evangelicals who think I’m just a cute old curmudgeon. You know who you are. There’s no point. You’re in the mainstream. “A blog is not a book.” Which is not that distant from words I heard long ago: “The New York Times will never review The Boomer Bible…”  and “We reserve the right to know how great you are and never lift a finger to help you.” (Send my book back to me, Lisa.)

This is me surrendering. It is possible to shun, isolate, and provide no feedback of any kind to someone long enough. Nobody could even be bothered to buy the one electronic book I offered for sale at my eBook store. You can’t wade through Gateway Pundit without his tip jar tackling you from behind and jabbing repeatedly at your ass. I never ask for money.

I was a world-class management consultant back when $200 an hour was real money. I gave it up to write for free. For all of you. Because I believe there is something way behind Stanford-Binet strictures inside you. Which I wrote about in my most expensive book, The Naked Woman. The most standalone brilliant book in my kit. One of you bought it at my insistence and asked, ‘Did you really invent all this science, not cop it from somewhere else?’ I told him, yes, I made it all up. He said, ‘Oh’ and went dark on me. You could buy it. That would be nice. (And a great investment. Because genius always rises through drek.) But not as nice as if everyone who’s ever chuckled or nodded or liked one of my contributions to the national conversation decided to BUY PUNK CITY from Amazon.com. It’s the greatest, most imperiled work in the history of American writing. Physical copies are everything when it comes to survival. No other writer has done what I have in this book. It will die forever if there are not enough physical copies to pop to the surface after the coming Dark Age.

What will I be doing now? This Day in History? Just fun stuff more amusing than Just the News? Lurid sex photos of Madonna with Justin Bieber? (That’s slander, pure and simple, not doing that…) I have a site just coming online. About Vignettes, Verses, and Vagaries. I also have my own versions of Facebook and Google Search. And a Game to play if I have enough time (doubtful) to finish it without frittering away so many unrewarding hours on Facebook. You’d have to find those on your own hook. Scratch yourself on the way out.