Oval Misdirection

A short story

The Oval Office

Early March, after the inauguration...

POTUS:  Welcome to the White House, Jim.  May I call you Jim?

Jim:  Absolutely Mr. President.  Thanks for having me.

POTUS:  Have you been here before?

Jim:  I have been to the White House many times, but only once before to the Oval Office.  Almost exactly four years ago.

POTUS:  Yes that's right; you came to see my predecessor, shortly after he took office.

Jim:  Yes, he let me have a look through that box on the coffee table there.

POTUS:  I'm sorry?

Jim:  Well, Mr. President, as best I can tell, that's the very same box he showed me.

POTUS:  Oh I see.  Yes, it's a fascinating historical archive.  A bit risqué for my taste.

Jim said nothing.

POTUS:  Yet, he never found a use for it.  I wonder why?

Jim:  I'm surprised to see it.  I thought he would have taken it with him.

POTUS:  Well we all know he was losing it at the end of his term.  I found the box in my private study with the classified files only accessible to the sitting president.  He probably just forgot it.  But I do wonder why he did not turn it over to the Department of Justice earlier?

Jim:  Yeah, well, I paid him to make it go away.

POTUS:  You should have paid him to give you the box.

Jim:  I did try Mr. President.

POTUS:  Bribing a president, can you imagine?  How much did you pay him?

Jim:  I'd rather not say.

POTUS:  Well you know Jim, before he lost his marbles, he did add the financial records of that transaction to the box.  It's all in there.

Jim:  So you know what I paid him.

POTUS:  Yes Jim, I do.  You got off cheap.

Jim:  Well you know, if you've never had real money, it's hard to know what real money is.

POTUS:  Yeah, I can see that.

They were both quiet for a moment.

POTUS:  Jim, you know that I know what real money is.

Again Jim said nothing.

POTUS:  Let's come back to that.  I have another question.

Jim:  Okay.

POTUS:  How did you two get the people who filled the box with its contents to keep quiet about it?  Oh, and other people in his administration who knew about it?

Jim:  Yeah, that was my idea.  Your predecessor and I agreed that he would just tell everyone in his administration that it was a long term top secret intelligence operation.  He would keep it vague, but shut down any further investigation, or even discussion.  I mean government types...no one wants to lose their precious security clearance.

The President nodded slowly.

Jim:  He also leaked this possibility to a number of internet conspiracy types, as sort of a back door explanation for dropping the matter.  These were not leaks exactly, more like breadcrumbs that they could stumble upon.

POTUS:  Very clever.  And of course, he never mentioned exactly what agency was running this operation.  It may have been one of ours or it may have been foreign.

Jim:  Yes, that may have been the most ingenious part of the subterfuge.

POTUS:  What about your friend, the principal player who died in prison.

Jim:  He was never my friend Mr. President.  He recorded me...betrayed me.

POTUS:  Okay, your associate.  You should have listened to your ex-wife about that guy.

Jim:  Indeed.

POTUS:  And?

Jim:  Well intelligence assets sometimes die.  It is not unexpected.  So that worked out okay.

POTUS:  And his lady friend, also in prison?

Jim:  Are you kidding, she was the very first person to find out he was dead.  She does not want to suffer a similar fate.

POTUS:  The box says you had him killed.

Jim:  Well he also knew what real money is.  And besides, he proved himself to be...untrustworthy.  Something had to be done.

They looked at each other.  A minute passed.

Jim:  Are you going to let me have the box?

POTUS:  Yes Jim, I don't see why not.

Jim:  What is it going to cost me?

POTUS:  Fifty billion dollars.

Jim:  That is about a third of everything I have.

POTUS:  Yes Jim, but this time, you get the box.  Besides, you'll still be one of the richest men in the world.  Good to keep up appearances and all.  No one will be the wiser.

Jim:  And you'll keep the misdirection in place?

POTUS:  My predecessor did all the work.  I don't have to do anything except keep quiet about it.

Jim:  And your people?  Your attorney general seems to be a bit of a loose cannon.

POTUS:  Well, she likes to see herself on television.  But you know, without intending to, she's been great at obfuscating this whole thing.

Jim:  And the others?

POTUS:  So long as I keep quiet about it, my people will react just like my predecessor's people.  It's all need to know.  And what they don't know, what they cannot even imagine, is that no one knows.  It's the perfect secret...one that does not actually exist.

They both let that sink in.

Jim:  Undoubtedly you have other boxes belonging to other men...

POTUS:  I will not confirm or deny, but I needed to start with you.

They sat there.

POTUS:  Do we have a deal?

Jim:  Yes Mr. President.

POTUS:  The transfer details are there in the envelope beside the box.

Jim:  It will take time for me to get that much cash together.

POTUS:  No doubt; you have until the end of the month.

Jim:  May I come back to collect the box myself?  I don't really trust anyone with it.

POTUS:  Sure Jim.  Let's schedule a dinner for the first.  I have lots of dinners with lots of people.  I'll invite the vice president.  It will be a robust, but cordial exchange of ideas.  Again, no one will be the wiser.

Jim:  Thank you Mr. President.

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Ghetto Fatigue

Black people talk common sense about ghetto culture

Zarria Simmons

Amala Ekpunobi

Anton Daniels

Brandon Tatum

Jason Whitlock

Kevin & Keith Hodge

Amir Odom

Rogan Smith

Carmen Jaycee

Youtube will not allow me to embed her videos (too on the mark?), but they are definitely worth watching.  I have tried embedding several; let me try one more that is somewhat more reserved.

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Email in 2025?

Is email hate justified?

Everyone seems to hate email for different reasons.  It may be 2025, but it seems like email hate has always been with us.

Here is a 2017 interview with perhaps the most famous email hater, Paul Jones.

And I really do not have any qualms with his arguments, then or now.  But my question is and has always been:  But what is better?

Is there a way to communicate universally without having to set up a Facebook page, or some type of group chat, or coordinate the various communications apps that various people and organizations use?

The answer for the last thirty years, and still today, is yes.  Email.  Only email.

The closest thing to the ease of email is SMS text messaging.  And I don't know about you, but if it is anything even slightly complex, text messaging is just more trouble than it is worth.

Even email does not lend itself to extremely complex issues.  I tell people, if it is that complex, expect a phone call.  Yes, you read that correctly.  And of course, the most complex issues still, in 2025, require...wait for it...a meeting.

My younger clients often pushed back on this, especially the phone calls.  But I would say to them:  I am not going to discuss something as complicated and nuanced as a real estate transaction via text message.  I mean the contract alone is twenty pages long.  Take my calls, or hire someone else.  And always, by the end of it, they had seen the light.

So let's take these universal communication methods in order, for dealing with complexity, from most complex to least complex.

1. Meeting
2. Phone call (here, perhaps we can add videoconferencing)
3. Email
4. SMS text

Yes, I am leaving out postal letters; also a perfectly acceptable universal communication method.  But I am assuming some element of modern urgency.  If that does not exist, letter-writing should be added to the above.  And while we are on truly outdated methods, when I started my career, one wrote memoranda.  Yes, on paper.  Does anyone still do that?  I always loved a good memo.  Maybe that explains my extended attachment to email.

But why are other apps not included?  Because they are not universal and perhaps never will be.  The closest app that might work is Signal, and that is only because most security-minded people already use it.  But if your company uses Slack, and your customer does not, what are you going to do?  Even the videoconferencing, which I have included, requires coordination on what system we will be using and what time we will be using it.  And, the associated learning curb.

In fact, there is a learning curb for all apps.  And I suppose there is a learning curb for the above four, but most of us absorb these pretty early on.

It is the universality of email that is so valuable.  And the email haters don't seem to grasp this.

There is a second feature of email that I also believe to be valuable.  An email does not have to conform to any particular app's structure and parameters.  An email is like starting with a blank sheet of paper.

When we have an app that I can use to reach anyone with any message, we can then add a number five.  It may be 2025, but I still do not see that alternative.

Are there things we can do to make email more palatable and efficient?  Let's break it down.

• To alleviate the spam problem, use white & black lists.  As a still current email user, I will say that this works like a charm.  But it does require an initial time investment to set it up.  The upside is that I get maybe one spam email in my inbox per week.
• Treat email like a fast letter, rather than a slow phone call.  Send emails at any time, but only check your emails and/or respond when it suits you.  I think if we applied this rule to all forms of communication, we'd all be quite a bit happier.
• Only communicate with people who know how to write.  My question would be:  Do you really want to do business with someone who does not know how to write?  They will have other issues as well.
• Be prepared to mix and match communication methods.  For instance:  Yep got your text, but I'll have to respond in an email/phone call, etc.  Sure there is utility in keeping a chain of communication together.  But I would say efficiency is probably more important.  It is easy to ask a question via text; the answer may require a two-page response, not to mention any follow-up questions.  Text-only fans ignore this issue.
• In fact, it seems to me that the people most unhappy with email view it like a phone call, with lots of back and forth.  And it can be that.  But if we are trying to be efficient, would not an actual phone call be better?
• I have absolutely nothing against texts or chat apps.  But these suffer from a right now factor.  Once you accept that this is not necessary for email, its utility goes through the roof.  Respond in an hour, respond when you get back to your desk, respond after a trip to the basement archives, respond tomorrow, you get the idea.  Remember, fast letter, not slow phone call.
• If you want to text me about where we are meeting for lunch, great.  But if you seriously expect to discuss something more complicated via text, it only means that you are not serious.  Any yes, many people, perhaps most people, are not serious about anything.
• If others expect you to respond to their emails as you would to a phone call or a chat, just don't.  And see what happens.  If it is truly that urgent, you will get a call or a text.  If your boss expects immediate responses from his emails, likely he has other unreasonable expectations as well.  It is not about email.
• The overall point is that in the ecosystem of communications, email remains a useful tool.  And those who abandon it lose the use of that tool.
• We still have letters and phone calls.  And while we may have new tools in our tool belt, we still have access to these.  Why?  Because they continue to be useful.  I bet even Paul Jones takes the occasional phone call.

Many of the problems that we associate with email are not actually about email.  They are rather about unreasonable expectations and inconsiderate users.  If other users abuse the tool, that does not mean that you must.  And it does not mean that you somehow must tolerate their abuse.  Just don't.

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