Donald Rumsfeld Saved from Drowning

Photo by Kenta Kikuchi on Unsplash

TO: ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Things

I am looking for some clarification on my role here.
I understand that, as Secretary, I am automatically a member of the Homeland Security Council. And, of course, I am also a member of the National Security Council.
Are there any other bodies to which I belong? Not just at home, but considering the larger world as well.
And then internally: What are my responsibilities?
Please pull together a list of all the things I am.
Thanks.

R.

For a long time, R has been in the habit of writing memos. These are not sent by email but instead are spoken into the Dictaphone he has had since his days in the Nixon White House, then typed up by a secretary, printed, and circulated to whom they may concern. Sometimes these memos are policy directives. Sometimes they contain specific proposals for cutting back on department-wide expenditures on printer paper, ideas about what sort of sandwiches ought to be served at the next day’s luncheon with the British, requests for a copy of a political cartoon featuring his likeness that he has heard about but not yet seen. Other times, they seem to be simply musings, reflections that have occurred to him in the course of his day, so his direct subordinates, or White House legal counsel, or the under secretary of the Navy might find a crisp white sheet on their desk that reads:

“Potentialities of space. If now is the moment to act, why aren’t we acting?”

“We ought to think through what are the bad things that could happen, and what are the good things, and how we will know the difference.”

“If time were taken out of the equation, how would we view our necessities?”

R is sitting up in his bathrobe watching a cowboy movie. His wife drifted upstairs yawning hours ago. In the film, Gary Cooper is surrounded. To his front, a black-chapped desperado sneers through his oily mustache. And to his left and his right, dusty henchmen finger the pistols in their belts. The henchmen’s eyes dart between their boss and Gary