Where Are They Heading?

Where are they headed? Public domain shot of The Band from “Buckaroo Banzai” (1984)

“The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai” (1984) is a brilliantly droll send-up of how we like to imbue superpowers in our science fiction heroes. The film’s title character (seen above, leading his Banzai band) is not only a physicist, neurosurgeon and rock star; he single-handedly prevents the “Red Lectroids”--inter-dimensional aliens from Planet 10—from atomizing Earth. And that’s just what he does on the job. His most beloved hobby is firing up the “oscillation over-thrusters” on his Jet Car and ploughing through mountains at the speed of sound.

The film is a spoof. Or is it? I began to wonder as I read up on Joe Lonsdale, a 41-year-old tech entrepreneur whose life now seems even busier than Buck’s.

After graduating from Stanford, Lonsdale co-founded Palantír Technology in 2004, a “big data” cruncher that reportedly helped the U.S. find Osama Bin Laden. (Tolkien fans will recognize his reference to the Palantíri, those indestructible “seeing stones” in “The Lord of the Rings.”)

 Later, as a San Francisco-based VC, he invested in emerging technologies like Oculus and co-funded OpenGov, which builds cloud-based software, mostly for the U.S. government.

In 2018 Lonsdale co-founded Epirus just south of LAX to “redefine the future of power by …enabling unprecedented counter-electronics.” Though I’m not sure what that PR blather means, I confess I plan to keep my distance from its “EM-pulse beam defense systems“ and “high power microwave technologies.”

In 2020, fed up with high taxes and burgeoning homeless encampments in the Bay Area, Lonsdale moved to Austin, Texas. I’m guessing he failed to consult his Palantíri, for they would have warned him that tent cities had been popping up all around Austin since its city council legalized them the year before.

The “Lady Lake” path in Austin When Lonsdale Arrived.

Without missing a beat, Lonsdale reached out to Texas Gov Gregg Abbott, persuading him to ban camping, especially along the lush hike-and-bike trail that surrounds Lady Bird Lake.

Aiding Lonsdale were staffers at Austin’s  Cicero Institute, which he started in 2018 to “deliver entrepreneurial solutions to public problems.”

The “Lady Bird Lake” in More Untrammeled Times

Only last month, however, did Lonsdale declare all-out war on “Housing First,” the flagship program created by Philip Mangano and President George H.W. Bush  to bring safety and security to both street dwellers and homeowners. According to HUD, Housing First reduced chronic homelessness by 30%  from 2005 to 2007.

 Lonsdale’s “New Way on Homelessness” would replace the Bush program with “short-term shelter and sanctioned, police encampments.”

Since receiving a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for my L.A. Times series “Helping People Off the Streets,” I’ve never seen anyone promote Regress as Progress as breezily and brazenly as Lonsdale.

The Housing First model emerged after nearly 60 years of research proved that while all of the un-housed want shelter, they’ll invariably decline help if it comes with preconditions like steady employment, and random drug or misdemeanor checks.

And does Lonsdale really think “police encampments” will offer the un-housed a better incentive to seek help?

In short, what Lonsdale calls “a new paradigm” is the same old nonsense. And therein lies a big distinction between him and Buckaroo. As we find out at the end of the movie (excerpted below), Buckaro hasn’t been bravely marching ahead after all. He’s been leading his proud groupies in meaningless circles.

“Buckaroo Banzai” was a comedy with a purpose: to reflect our existential fear that while we think we’re doing good, we might just be going one step forward and another step backward.

Lonsdale’s recent adventures in government by contrast may run afoul faster than Buckaroo’s Jet Car. For in social policy, if not in tech, he’s the real Buckaroo, a kamikaze pilot crying Banzai! (“Bombs Away”) just before hitting the carrier deck.

Click on the link arrow below if you’d like to see the (public domain) ending of the “Buckaroo Banzai” reel.