One Part Mildew, One Part Presidential Moxy

I used to tell my best friend and former teammate, Luke, two things. First, that he’s remarkable. Flat out. He can get the work done and few can operate on his level. It will stand up among scholars and statesmen without question. Second, anyone who saw what it looked like behind the scenes would be appalled. 

I’ll spare sharing his last name because he’ll likely be governor of Louisiana one day and appear on a Presidential cabinet. I wouldn’t want him to lose an election because someone read a DEUCE blog from 2020 that said the inside of his car was beyond reproach.

Why am I telling you about this down-to-the-minute-circus, bomb-went-off-in-the-bedroom, car-smells-like-the-Mildew-Hall-of-Fame gentleman? Because he was also the unofficial honorman of a remarkable NCAA sports team, Mr. University winner, Columbia law grad, and a tier one human. He’s my pick for.. well, anything. 

I thought of him as I read the most comprehensive history available on the CIA, which, like most things, isn’t as polished as you’d assume. In fact, the details of the CIA and how little they were able to accomplish and how much they failed is so sobering, you’d question anything you thought about United States superiority. 

This isn’t a notion of shame for my buddy Luke or the CIA, but, rather, a permission slip. The greatness you observe in others that often feels far away, foreign, and unrelatable is often so refreshingly human that I think it would give anyone reading this the permission to walk hard in his/her greatness. 

I’ll leave you with this. I once had a conversation with a former SEAL Team Six member about a popular conspiracy theory. His response stayed with me. “Most conspiracies are based on seamless coordination and brilliant design,” he said. “When in reality they are almost always debunked with a more realistic expectation: human error and stupidity.” We’re prone to assuming brilliance and organization in others, but we keep our own chaos in intimate focus. We don’t realize that our chaos is universal. 

Greatness happens inclusive of chaos, not without it.