“The Conga Line at Disneyland”

This is a true story.

Disneyland. Christmas week. If you have never been there during the holidays you need to understand — it is not a crowd. It is a condition. Wall to wall people, all of them heading for the exits at the same time, all of them on Main Street USA trying to get to the gates before the next ten thousand people had the same idea.

We were in the middle of it. Vicki and I, just trying to move.

Three ladies stopped her.

They didn’t know us. They had never seen us before in their lives. But they had been watching me move through that crowd — finding the gaps, reading the flow, stepping where the opening was before it closed — and they made a decision.

They asked if they could tag along.

Just like that.

By the time we reached the gates it was a conga line. Strangers, following a tall man who knew how to read a crowd, getting somewhere they were struggling to get to on their own.

Nobody asked for my credentials.

Nobody needed my resume.

They watched the result. They made a practical decision. They got where they were going.

I think about that day a lot.

Because that is exactly what this is.

Not a newsletter. Not a blog. Not another voice on the internet with opinions about things.

A line already moving through the crowd.

And an open invitation to step in behind.

This year has been a crowd.

I don’t think I am telling you anything you don’t already know. But let me say it plainly so we are standing in the same place when I tell you what comes next.

The systems have been difficult. Government systems. Filing systems. Tax systems. The kind of machinery that was built a long time ago by people who are no longer there to fix it, running on rules that don’t always talk to each other, asking you to prove things you already proved and correct errors that were never yours to begin with.

I have been inside that machinery this year.

Federal filings. State filings. Identification numbers that don’t match across agencies. Returns that come back rejected not because of what you did but because of what a database somewhere decided didn’t line up. Deadlines that keep running while the resolution is still pending.

I did not write about it while it was happening.

I walked through it. I stayed in it. I kept moving until I found where it gave.

Because that is the job.

There is a kind of authority that comes from credentials. The degree on the wall. The title on the door. The years of formal study that give a person the language of a field.

I respect that.

But there is another kind.

The kind that comes from stamina. From walking into the wall enough times to know exactly where it is soft. From staying in the problem past the point where most people decide it isn’t worth it anymore.

That second kind is what I bring you.

Not theory. Not textbook. Not advice from behind a desk by someone who has read about the crowd but never stood inside one at Christmas.

I stood inside one. I found the way through. I came back.

AI this year. That has been a crowd too.

Everybody rushing toward it. Everybody heading for the gates at the same time. Vendors and platforms and frameworks and promises — wall to wall, all of them moving, most of them not sure where they are actually going, just moving because everyone else is.

I have been inside that crowd for over a year now.

Testing. Documenting. Building a framework that doesn’t bend to the noise. Taking the positions that weren’t popular before they became obvious. Writing the governance principles before governance became a word everyone started using.

The Faust Baseline exists because I walked that crowd first.

Not because I read about it. Because I was in it — talking to the platforms, running the tests, hitting the walls, finding the footing, marking the path.

Every piece of that work absorbed something so you wouldn’t have to absorb it cold.

The ladies at Disneyland didn’t know my name.

They didn’t need to.

They watched how I moved. They made a practical decision. And they got where they were going without fighting the crowd alone.

That is all I am asking you to consider here.

You are in a crowd right now. Maybe it is AI and you don’t know who to trust or what is real. Maybe it is the machinery of systems and filings and bureaucracy that won’t move at your speed. Maybe it is just the general noise of a year that has asked more of you than you expected.

I have been in all of it.

I am still moving.

Step in behind.

The line is already cleared.

“A Working AI Firewall Framework”

“Intelligent People Assume Nothing” | Michael S Faust Sr. | Substack