At The Doug Moe Academy Of Sartorial Splendor And Architectural Design: The Deal with North Korea

You won’t find The Doug Moe Academy for Sartorial Splendor and Architectural Design in the Yellow Pages. Many who know of the clubs hate the secrecy that surrounds the places. Many think the secrecy is just another slab of evidence that shows to go you that the world is on skids greased with ignorance and idiocy.

Doug Moe Academies for Sartorial Splendor and Architectural Design exist in every large city in the world.

They are bars for political junkies.

The founding family—it was a group of men and women—therefore, chauvinistic slantings like “founding fathers” (and the more whimsical, “start up sisters”) seem inappropriate.

The founders are—or were—political junkies, and, therefore not automatically the most creative of spirits.

There are all kinds of rumors why the places are named after Doug Moe. None of them make sense.

There are no rumors why the phrase “Architectural Design” is in the title of the establishments. No one in the founding family was interested in architecture. None of the bars are examples of compelling or brilliant architecture. None of the bars are examples of anything other than normal, functional architecture. The bit about the phrase Architectural Design is just one of those things that is.

It’s also appropriate to note that the founders weren’t complete dimwits.

Moe’s Explained

At Doug Moe’s you can buy a drink or shoot pool, find a card game or cruise. But mostly the place is a chat room for political fanatics.

Once you’re in, you’re in for life. This makes becoming a member a good deal like being elected to Congress or confirmed as a justice on the Supreme Court—parallels many members loathe.

Way back when I joined, I simply was trying to find someone who would teach me how to roll a sliver dollar over the base of my fingers.

Ah but the lofty goals of youth all too often go unachieved.

Not too long ago, I realized that wandering through the club was an excellent—and almost effortless way—of writing a column.

Each “Academy” has a left wing and a right wing. On a given visit, members go to one wing or the other. They aren’t allowed to mix.

The manager of the Academy I frequent is an ex. She lets me into both wings—probably because she pities me. Once we parted she met and later married a tall, handsome guy, who tells funny stories. And he made a pile of dough and cashed in before the Internet bubble burst.

The Mood In The Left Wing

Going to the left wing lately is a good deal like going to a frat party. The Dems have Hillary. They have Obama. They have Edwards. Obama drew five thousand his first weekend after his announcement—in Iowa! While doing the monotonous and boring things reporters do when covering political campaigns in Iowa, I once came across a grain salesman who was giving away a new seed for free! He barely got two hundred people to show up. And Obama got five thousand.

For the Dems, there’s more good news. The former Chief of Staff for Dick “The insurgency is in its last throes” Cheney is on trial for perjury. Almost no one likes Bush’s surge. The election is too far away to worry about whether or not the Democrats will blow another one.

I’d come to Moe’s to talk about why Bush had elected to escalate in Iraq. Bush calls it a surge; I call it an escalation. I didn’t understand why he’d done it.

But when I got to Moe’s, I stumbled onto a conversation I couldn’t ignore. Two men were talking. But they weren’t talking about the surge. They weren’t talking about Obama, or Hillary, or Edwards, or even GW.

They weren’t talking about the beautiful blonde woman who was a few feet from them. Her date—or perhaps it was her husband--rambled on about water issues in the West. She looked to be a few nanoseconds away from falling asleep.

The two men were talking about the deal that was in the works with North Korea.

The Deal with North Korea, Part One

“There’s an odd couple.“

“Bush and Kim Jong Il?

“Yep.”

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight. North Korea now has one or more nuclear bombs.”

“Yes.”

“And Iraq never did—at least while GW was President.”

“Yes.”

“Yet we didn’t invade the country that did have nuclear weapons—North Korea. But we did invade the country that didn’t have nuclear weapons.”

“Yep.”

“And for a long time we didn’t even negotiate with North Korea.”

“Yep.”

“And while we were not negotiating with North Korea they developed the collateral they needed to leverage their nukes for a lot of fuel.”

“Yep.”

The Deal with North Korea, Part II

“And they’ll probably get to keep their nukes.”

“Probably.”

“And there’s all this noise about how other countries that yakked irresponsibly about nukes before they got them. Then once they got the nukes, they became more restrained and mature about how they talked about them.”

“Yep.”

“And we hope that happens in North Korea.”

“Yep.”

“Isn’t that kind of silly? Isn’t it silly to think that because one person handled a firecracker well that someone else also will?”

“Of course it is.”

“When I was young—“

“Don’t bother. Same think happened to me when I was a kid.”

“You don’t say.”

“One of my friends could juggle firecrackers—while they were lit. Never got hurt—not once. Another lit just one. He just lit one. And it ripped off a couple of his fingers.”

“And there’s another thing. I thought then when you were being blackmailed, if you delivered the ransom, you got whatever it was they had on you.”

“That’s Hollywood. That’s not reality.”

“Of course. Sorry.”

A Problem Discussed

“You know what the problem with you is?”

“What?”

“You’re logical.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll bet you never buy into that crap they try to sell you on TV.”

“You mean advertisements.”

“Yea, advertisements. Do you ever buy something because you see it on a TV advertisement?”

“Almost never.”

“Well there it is.”

“There’s what?”

“That’s your problem.”

“What’s my problem?”

“There.”

“I don’t see anything there.”

“I wasn’t pointing in a literal sense. I was being figurative.”

“Of course.”

“But if you could be more like me, if you could try to believe the commercials and spend a lot of your time trying to get the things in the commercials, well you wouldn’t have time to worry about all these so-called illogical things you think about.”

“So you’re suggesting that if I thought less and acted on impulse more, that I wouldn’t be bothered by stuff.”

“Not as much.”

“Ya think so.”

“Sure of it.”
“There are other things you can do to cut out this nonsense of yours.”

“Really.”

“Start getting scared of everything. Or better yet, help others to get scared of everything. Fear shuts down logical powers better than almost anything.”

“You don’t say.”

“Works darn near every time.”

“And yet we’re still fighting in Iraq—and not getting any significant supplies of oil from there. And North Korea successfully bribes us and others and gets to keep the bait for the bribe and it gets a lot of fuel.”

“Yep.”

“Tell me how this makes sense.”

“Bad politics.”

“Should a known.”

“And in America we think it’s the leader of North Korea whose nuts.”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

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Too Serious A Matter provides intelligent, provocative, and often funny commentary about the often convoluted intersections of politics, strategy, and history. The title of the blog comes from De Gaulle’s comment, “I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”