SEPARATION OF POWERS

In 1975 I learned about organizational design from two sources.  I had been an animal control officer in the SE quadrant of Portland, OR, trying to understand the various communities there and maintain order.  My boss, Mike Burgwin (now deceased) had been a cop in Martinez, CA, and lost his job.  When he took the AC managing job he had many experiences, including working for a major paint corporation that had given him management training that approached organizational design.

The other was that I'd joined the Unitarian Universalist church and was sent to what we called "Leadership School," which combined the usual Sunday school sort of subject with the new study of "Organizational Design".  It was backed by Peter Raible and Rod Stewart, who were trying to wake up the UU congregations that had become a little too comfortable.  The first year blew up.

"Organizational design is a step-by-step methodology which identifies dysfunctional aspects of work flow, procedures, structures and systems, realigns them to fit current business realities/goals and then develops plans to implement the new changes."  (Google)

This is a major field but hadn't been applied to churches. The second time the first year was tried, Ord Elliott was added to the team.  It was his formal job to teach and analyze organizational design and his method of teaching was to divide us into small teaching teams and encourage innovation, like planting disruptions or playing games.  For me, it was like switching on the lights, finally getting past both  the problem of hating and resisting authorities and the contradictory tendency to admire strong man heroes.  

I went back for the second week of Leadership School, and then for the third week of Leadership School which crashed again.  It's just so dang hard to make ideals and new ideas work when people want to be their old ornery selves, even if their highest ideals (putatively religious) are the best the Western world can come up with.  Seminary (Meadville/Lombard) was a relic.  U of Chicago  was inarguable.  It just WAS in powerful ways.  Ministry in many different places demonstrated how much people needed Leadership School and convinced me that I was too antisocial to do Organizational Design.

As soon as I discovered Rachel Maddow, I was drawn in to her narratives about people and forces, although I would never have predicted that.  I mean, war and oil are two subjects I try to avoid, not understand.  But decades on an "Indian" reservation made me realize that a great deal of the time those two forces -- war and oil -- controlled the story.  The old Blackfeet territory up from Montana through Alberta is a huge oil field, much like Oklahoma, a great joke on the profiteers who gave it to tribes because it was worthless.  The oil boom on the Blackfeet rez, like the small boom of the Valier irrigation dam, did not leave any tribal people richer but gave them a skewed idea of the world.

I've been following all the Trump hearings and am quick to recognize the same cast of characters, both noble and depraved, and to see how much is at stake.  The computer algorithm saw what I was doing and started offering "Atlas Shrugged," a very strange three-part movie version of Ayn Rand's novel that cut up the plot line into three separate movies, each recasting all the main characters.  This plan didn't work well, so the first one was beautiful people and fabulous CGI, etc., but it didn't make money, so the second part and third part were diminished.  Each cast of characters was a little less appealing than the one before. Presumably the raw material in Ayn Rand's book was about the same, but as soon as the investment didn't pay off, less was invested.

Later I'll write more about Ayn Rand and her relationship to life in Browning, but for now being barraged with her, Trump's hearing, and my nearly life-long preoccupation with prosperity on reservations, plus Organizational Design theory, have smashed together in a mishmash I'll be resolving for a long time.  

It's full of surprising jokes, like the world turning away from fossil fuel just as Putin is counting on it to take Russia back to its former glory.  On a clip from the NATO meeting Trump assures us, "We have the oil -- our army is guarding the oil.  Ukraine can take care of its own borders."  He has evidently promised the oil to Putin.  Today was the dedication of a new long pipeline from Russia to China, though Putin really wants to put an oil pipeline from Russia through Ukraine.  In Canada the indigenous nations are fighting pipelines with all their might because they rupture and destroy potable water they need -- water more than oil.

Taken together, the hearings and the movies make it clear that Repubs have accepted the idea that they are superior and that their proof is that they are elected and therefore making a lot of money.  The movies argue that the government enforces socialism, a sort of primitive Marxism that insists the workers get severely limited according to deservingness, the plutocrats take the resulting profit, and the businesses crash because brilliant people will only work for money.  There is no element of money-laundering  which is key for someone like Putin, who would have more riots than he has now if people figured out he was hiding Russia's billions off-shore and in America.  I have to admit he's much calmer under pressure than the Repubs, so many of whom seem to have that feverish shrill "lovemelovemeloveme" vibe when they get the MIC.  Trump, of course, is just nuts.

The organizational design in the Constitution is, of course, about three separate bodies balanced to check each other.  At one time on the rez the cops would arrest someone in the middle of a crime, bring him to Bob (town judge) to be tried and sentenced, take him to jail  -- only to have his auntie who was on the Tribal Council come and release him in time to interrupt Bob having supper at a café.  An educated Blackfeet, a success, complained about this to me while we were walking.  I half-joked, "I guess no one here ever heard of the separation of powers."

He stopped short. He knew what I meant. He'd just never put the two things together.  It's been fixed for a long time now.  Except for the United States of America.