Cats, Cowboys, and Capitalists
by F.R. Hartnough

The following piece appeared in our email recently as an attachment to this note:

Dear Magellan,
I had in mind the op-ed page of the Journal when I wrote the attached column, but it apparently was a bit too polysyllabic for them. The word "pretentious" actually escaped the lips of the editor I talked to. A few days later I was bemoaning the state of (il)literacy in this country over drinks with a highly wired friend. He mentioned that he had recently come across an online magazine not averse to words of more than two syllables, an oddball undertaking called, he said, "Magellan’s Log." Although my politics hardly fit, he thought you might be taken enough by my (his words) "unashamed robber-baronness" to publish the piece. If you do, of course, it must be under the given pen-name.

The signature to the email was of a recently retired CEO with a fairly high media profile. I read the piece, and then verified that he was in fact the responsible party.

He was right on all accounts. It’s politically far from the stance we take throughout Magellan’s Log. But it’s rare you’ll find one of the top-dog capitalists talking in public with such honesty about what he does and why he does it.
Caveat lector.
                                                                        --Doc Cuddy, Editor.

"I know what I believe, and I believe what I believe is right."
                                                     --George W. Bush.

CATS
Consider, please, my cat. She eats from a bowl on the kitchen floor. Finished, she claws at the vinyl floor. Lately she sometimes claws as well at the metal leg of the nearby table. Rooms away, I’m no longer surprised to hear the sounds of her claws futilely scratching at those impervious surfaces.

A behavior hard-wired, as present-day reductivists and behaviorists are wont to say, into her: her catness tells her to do this after eating. Period. No choice.

Thinking about her necessary but useless actions, I’m lately reminded of cowboys and capitalists.

COWBOYS
Cowboys who in this time of feedlots still ride the range, tending fences, moving herds, even I suppose lassoing the occasional dogie, and others of a more esthetic bent who also more profitably ride the ranges of yore to retell and retail properly embroidered stories and images.

CAPITALISTS
Capitalists who in this time when even (especially!) physicists are reduced (!!) to contemplation of not merely (!!!) trans-universe simultaneity (tickle this electron right here and that electron 20 billion light years away giggles at exactly the same time) but the improbable likelihood of infinite parallel (!!!!) universes still turn agglutinative cartwheels at the thought of more acquisitions.

THE REST OF THEM
Born, reared, reaching the age of majority, humans too come with their own assortment of hard-wired behaviors, once called "instincts." These behaviors, we believe, have served us well, getting us after all to this affluent here. Who’s to gainsay that which gives me the chance to compete, to defeat, to win, to get, and winning, to do it again and get more still? Eh? Who? For that matter, why?

ME
More, more, more for me, me, me. I look at the earth, the vast earth, at the millions, millions! of square miles of still unexploited earth and, gripped by my comfortable ancient instincts which have served us well can only laugh at pantywaist scientists and timid so-called environmentalists who squeak, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" Chicken Littles we shall always have with us.

OK, granted some of my old acquisitive instincts now seem maybe a little useless like my cat scratching the metal leg of my kitchen table. Still, when push again arrives at shove (as it will, you may be sure), I know that the bigger and the stronger will win again (as they will, you may be sure), and blood and bodies will be left behind as proof. Years, decades may pass when the human instincts are keep deep in storage, invisible, waiting. But the time will come when again they are as necessary and useful as they were when we first climbed out of the primordial muck.

Lock my cat out of the house, she will revert, survive, thrive. And you?

Give the cowboy free rein and free range again, he will revert, survive, thrive. And you?

Release me, disentangle me from the present smothering restraints of noisome over-regulation and filigreed law and falsely forced order, I will revert, survive, thrive. And you?

NON-QUANTUM REALITY
Whatever equations the fancy-mouthed physicists come up with, whatever lovely words spew spittle-laden from haggard cheeks of barefoot seers and seekers, I take and will continue to take and hold my gold always in preference to their flimsy, cowardly, topsy-turvy fag-foolhardiness.