Bonus story: over the weekend, my brother was out of town and my cousin was going to feed their cats. I was giving my cousin a ride, so we get in the car to go feed the cats. On the way there, cuz is like: why is there writing on your hand? And I said: I’m trying to get organized… yeah, it’s kind of funny, I remember this VP candidate years ago who they made fun of for having something written on their hand. Cuz said: I bet those people are really busy though. I said nah, they have a chief of staff to take care of things, it’s really easy for them, interestingly…

AND THEN I began a discourse on the general staff method, as developed by the Prussian*** (later German Imperial) military establishment as a way of managing the newly-vast armies of the 1800s which were of course a reaction to the Prussian defeat during the Napoleonic wars* which were in part a result of the levee en masse; this was part of the French Revolution and resulted in large citizen armies which were more highly motivated** than most professional armies of the time (at this point I sang a couple lines from the French national anthem to illustrate the point) and benefitted from the relative ease of use of the latest firearms which were much easier to train with than earlier weapons such as swords or (most notoriously) longbows (at this point I had to pause because I had taken the wrong turn while driving) ANYWAYS, mobilizing, supplying, and managing those large armies was challenging, and Generals had a lot more information to manage so they made explicit staff roles such as logistics, operations, planning, intelligence, etc. (at this point I struggled a bit trying to remember the exact roles until I remembered it varied by organization) but anyway, the point is that most modern businesses and political leaderships have a similar staff organizational structure with some “chief” of the staff to interface with the principal to help them stay organized and make decisions.

I glanced over at my cousin and noticed that they had taken a very relaxed appearance. They had leaned the seat back, and adopted a very zen-like stillness. They said it was all very interesting, and perhaps we could continue discussing it at a later time. I’ve been trying to be more in tune with other people, so I interpreted this as a polite request to Shut the Fuck Up for Christ’s Sake, and focused on driving which was good because we were slightly off-course but not so much that it could not be easily remedied. As we approached my brother’s house I looked over and noticed that my cousin was asleep! This was odd because I had been playing some very loud industrial music the whole time. I parked across from my brother’s house and turned the music down. As I waited for my cousin to wake up I looked out upon the slight layer of snow, the streetlights and shadows in the tree branches, and the indistinct shapes of people in a distant store. Then my cousin woke up and we went to feed the cats.

*and which were especially poignant because of the memory of Frederick the Great (a point I did not elaborate upon at length)

**there were some important exceptions, and some Terrible reactions to those, which I offered to discuss at a later time

***real historians like @[email protected] may object that the Prussians alone did not develop the General Staff method; I recognize that and focused on the Prussians/Germans because their use of the system resulted in the most dramatic results especially in 1867 and 1870. As for 1914, that’s another story.