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Tag Archives: Military Industrial Complex

Trump, Trust, People Power & A New Social Contract

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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20 Million Voices, Con, Divestment, facebook, Fossil Fuels, hawks, Islam, Lyndon Johnsen, Military Industrial Complex, Monty Python & The Holy Grail, NeoCon, Oil Men, PeoplePower, Pussy Grabber, Radicalism, Social Contract, Trump, TRUST, UltraCon, Vietnam

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I’m less concerned with the overt Trumpness of Donald. I am sure that I should be.

Weirdly, the idea that one certain mister ‘pussy grabber’ becomes the President Elect of the United States does not surprise or shock me.

The White House has had its fair share of mysoginists and philanderers – and of course the hawks (both the useful ones the world desperately needed and the assholes the world didn’t). Presidents have not all been shades of the wholesome, family-loving God bless America of Carter and Reagan.

Trump’s direct assaults on minorities, global warming groups, foreign aid, etc. are in no way a surprise. He claims that he is against radical Islam not Muslims, but seems to think beating up Muslims is a great strategy to that end.

And as for the Wall and the Mexican issue. Its teetering on high comedy.

I imagine Trump in the roll of the Norman Knight played by John Cleese in Monty Python & The Holy Grail, looking down from his high vantage on the castle wall.

As the people far below call up to him the Donald flicks his nose at them.

Whispers from off camera: What do they want?

Donald: They’re looking for the American Dream… (sniggers) I told them we already got one.

The cynics point to the fact that Trump can’t be a friend of Hollywood because Hollywood would never forgive him for sending back the people who do their gardens – as every lawn from Sunset to Malibu would scorch and die if it weren’t for the Mexican part time labourers who fill the pick-ups every morning on every principal corner of Sunset where the bus stops sit.

Global warming is cobblers of course  in Donaldland (my new name for the Disney-esque NeoCon Hoo Haa place we call the Disunited States of America).

We knew this was coming. His dinner party friends have all made a huge amounts of money from fossil fuels – Oh, and they think the science is cod. How remarkably convenient. Oh and they’d like to continue to make a whole lot of money from fossil fuels. (Apparently the quickest was to roll back environmental impact stuff and fluff is to roll forward one hell of a pipeline.)

And the new hawkish ‘build it up build it out’ approach will be making a whole lot of industrialists in the ordnance sector positively dribble in anticipation. Its like ’64 and Lyndon Johnson’s election all over again.

So shock horror probe.

Donald’s anti the soft lefty red types in the arts. He’s backing the Oil Men, the Military Industrial Complex, the dream of the self-made Millionaire, a two people America and defensive divisive Isolationism.

Damn right.

This is what made America great people. And that’s what Donald is gonna do again.

Look it. Whatta guy. Even his Campaign Officer is a helluva woman – comin’ out fig’tin an e’ry thing at that Inauguration Dinner. Hah.

We’re a hellzaapoppin, asskickin, red slappin’, say it the way it is, speak my mind raise my fists burn some rubber bomb some ragheads give no quarter US of Damn A – an’ don’t you forget it.

There is nothing surprising about Donald Trump at all. He is a very ordinary unsurprising old school alpha man. He is that man in that bar or pub. Foghorn Leghorn. His scrabble for money has given him bragging rights and a loudspeaker for whats right and wrong. And his politics are simply his genetic ‘assert & ascend’ survival strategy writ large and loud.

The greatest issue with Donald Trump is not his politics. It’s his integrity. That fuzzy golden grey periphery that seems to wrap itself around and about everything he touches.

And the minority of ordinary people who voted for him are potentially in for a rude awakening one day. There’s no guarantee he’ll screw it up of course. He may busk it. Survive the next 4 years and fate will smile on him.

It’s a little like functioning alcoholics: teetering on the edge of the abyss of their addiction but never quite falling into it. He may just glide across the bumps. Even more scary for some, there may even be some things that he does that are not necessarily welcome but actually might benefit a large number of people. The issue is can you trust him to do that but not at a punitive cost to others. Favouring one group or bloc or constituency over another is a politician’s remit. But not a President’s.

A substantially larger number of the thinking, living, earning, voting population of the country he runs don’t trust him to run the country in a manner they see fitting for an advanced and great First World bastion of Democracy and Liberalism (and I don’t just mean the fiscal kind).

They do have some fair reason.

A man who does not immediately and absolutely divest his business interests in the interest of running a country is like a man who turns an old pre wedding girlfriend into a post wedding mistress. A weighty dose of cake and Eating it.

A president who does not happily take a transparent line on his business and tax affairs is not to be trusted. This is where I will draw the Silvio Berlusconi parallel. It simply does not work. It leads to or exacerbates existing corruption, self interest runs riot, and toxic back room dealings and trades become the foundation of government decision making. Governments and Presidents do not need any more ‘obfuscation as policy’ – other than  that which already exists in the misty foggy worlds of GeoPolitics.

Regardless of whether he is playing games to reduce tax disproportionately or whether it is because Divestment might lead to full and open scrutiny of the financial health and integrity of those businesses – especially the degree of leverage he’s using and the source of that leverage (China anyone?), he is a man who fogs facts and doesn’t finish sentences – an obfuscator of the first order.

Policies are not the issue. Trust is, in regards to both his intentions and his actions.

And to be clear what I mean by ‘half the nation do not Trust Donald’ – I do not mean Trust as in their belief in his ability to undertake and do something he commits to doing. I wholly trust him to keep to his (vague) word and commitments:

“I trust DT to execute a mass of executive orders in his own and associates interest and to his own ends”

I wholly believe he will do that.

The Trust I mean is the one that defines the commitment to an action that is instilled with values and ethics – and of a clear sense of collective and not just selective good:

“I trust DT to set aside this own self-interest in pursuit of creating a better country for both the people who didn’t vote for him as for those who did.

As President, his role is to increase prosperity, and reduce division between the haves and the not haves, and between those for and against him.

Which leads me to venture a thought.

I wonder whether perhaps in our peer to peer world in the absence of a Trust coming down from on high, the new social contract needs to be drawn not between government and the people, but BETWEEN THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES.

Perhaps the new social contract – the contract of TRUST – needs to be drawn up between Trump voters and non Trump Voters. And to each the other is held accountable. Because if Donald is all about acting on the will of the people, then the people’s integrity and mutual trust and vision is everything and he should be in service to that.

Perhaps this is the new model to be forged – enshrined and acted upon in the interests of the American people.

The social contract of TRUST should become a respectful charter for mutuality that transcends party and individual politics:

I trust you to uphold your personal liberties without holding them above mine.

I trust you to raise and protect your family but not at the expense of mine or others

I trust you not to harm our communities in pursuit of making a better one of your own

I trust you to raise your hand in support of those less well off than you, not in suppression of them.

I trust you to protect the freedom of every American citizen, not just those like you.

I trust you to protect our great American wildlife and countryside for our grandchildren

I trust you not to be seduced by words but swayed by actions

I trust you to share equally the Greatness we collectively make.

Just a thought. A new peer to peer Social Contract for the American People.

If we could get both sides to agree that it is the people who Donald serves, and let the people shape the Social Contract that he is action, underwrite and secure using all of the instruments tools and machinery of his elected office, now that would be something.

Who knows: we might even have finally found a meaningful role for Facebook in a declining market.

A peer to peer social contract managed across face book’s 20 Million users – which to be fair even allowing for the teenage user profile and pre voting age bloc is still a hell of a lot closer to representing the future voice and desire of America.

It is certainly more broadly representative of the people of America than the 60% turnout of which Donald still did not secure the majority.

Just saying.

 

 

Minions, miniturization, anthropomorphia & a smarter lighter life

31 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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21st Century Consumption, A.I., Anthropomorphia, Blue Steel, Bob The Minion, Bond, Cold War, Cultural Tapas, Derek Zoolander, Downton Abbey, easyjet, Explorers, Fisher Price, God Particle, Hubble Telescope, Joe 90, John Cooper Clarke, Kellogg's Variety Packs, KFC, Life Size Living, Men From Uncle, Military Industrial Complex, Mini Series, Minions, nano technology, Playfamily Characters, Smarter Lighter Living, Subway, Sylvanian Families, VOGUE

Tic-Tac-Sweets-Minions-Banana

BLUE STEEL

I’m not quite sure when the time of old school Miniature passed.

But the last micro nail in its super miniature coffin arrived with the face of blue steel

Derek Zoolander’s phone marked the absolute end of old school miniaturization as cool. The moment he takes out the teeny tiny phone and flips the tiny weeny lid we know the old world of miniaturised anything is so last year – certainly in the electronics department.

It was different once. Miniature electronic devices were once the height of slick modern technological chic. Advances in technologies powered by space programmes and the cold war rendered cameras, screens, phones, mics, recorders and files and documents invisible (who could forget Microfiche).

When tethered to Bond-like fantasies of kit from Q undertaken by Men From Uncle and underwritten by the futurist accessories of Joe 90’s briefcase, miniature everything was overwhelmingly stitched into the military industrial complex and the spy networks of the 50s 60s and 70s – and subsequently into the wish list of every dreaming boy.

But the world turns.

Now, nano technologies of ever greater invisibility have kicked visibly Miniature technological anything into touch. That we can now view the world through both sub-atomic God Particular and super-expansive Hubble Spectacular lenses has taken our concepts of inner and outer space to whole new dimensions. And the espionage aspect of miniaturization seems a little old hat.

Suddenly, in that particular bright and cruel light, products like Derek’s super mini cell phone seem almost ‘quaint’ – folksy. He may as well have whittled it on the porch.

MINIATURE IS DEAD. LONG LIVE MINIATURE.

So is miniature dead? Is micro done? Are we all so super nano chip technology friendly that the old school miniature anything doesn’t cut it any more?

Well I say a big fat No and the reason lies in a recent airport shop excursion with my 8 year old daughter

The drudgery of a late easyjet flight home was illuminated in brilliant splendour by my daughter’s beaming face. The thing that almost made her pop was this: a massive tic-tac box full to the brim with diddly little tic tac boxes – baby tic tacs as she called them.

That a receptacle for mints of any size can elicit from her the same ahhhhh usually reserved for when we are google searching ‘the cutest spider in the world’ (a particular favourite); And Bob the Minion (the one with the teddy bear) is remarkable.

The big tic tac box filled with mini tic tac boxes is to be fair a stroke of anthropomorphic genius.

It’s as if, in a moment of fading brand share and slipping distribution the grand Tic Tac fromage has shouted down the corridors – get me Disney on the line.

And in a flash they have come up with the idea of a painfully, immutably cute merchandisable tic tac mini series. Smiley face. Smiley face. I heart you.

 (I can already see the diffusion and content brand play – a new set of collectibles with cultural cache in an animated short – Tic Tac High School featuring a punked cover of the Ramones Rock N Roll High School –  shifted to a more euro punk pop ‘tic-i-tac…tic-i- tac High school’ – a place filled with tic tac tweenagers – the loner rock-n-roll tic tac mini; a goofy one; a punky girl one, a geek science girl one and one from a [please choose from one of 6 positive discrimination ethic sub groups].

The ability to anthropomorphize is not the sole domain of the Disney Corporation. We all do it. That’s why they do it. Because we like it. We’re suckers for it. Mini dinky versions of things we know and love are astonishingly attractive.

LARGER THAN LIFE SIZE

We still love love love mini versions of stuff. Why?

Is this just the old myth and folklore traditions of the little people: the elf, the pixie and the leprechaun writ new? (There is more than a touch of folklore, Grimm’s fairytales and the Singing Ringing Tree at work in Dr. Evil’s Mini Me.)

Or do we simply find the ‘scale of life’ we lead or feel pressured to lead over-whelming – and yearn for a simpler more childlike time – a time these things remind us of?

Do we have some deep-seated yearning for a more manageable dolls-house version of the life we have? One where all of the outrageous consumption is suddenly reset – shrunk – made more manageable and therefore meaningful by reducing all that heavy burdensome stuff that we cant bear to admit is suffocating us? Suddenly, the idea that we might have the opportunity of creating a new Honey I Shrunk the Household Bills/Work Stress/Performance Anxiety/Social Dislocation/Environmental Degradation life seems very attractive at 3a.m when we’re wrestling brain worms and goes bump in the night anxieties about making ends meet.

There is certainly anecdotal evidence enough to say that miniaturized versions of everyday things seem to appeal to a quiet and vaguely inexplicable corner of our psyche.

We seem to often apply a Minion-like personality to anything we see as having been miniaturized. They are immediately made playful, mischievous, naive, clumsy, goofy flawed and wonderful. And we can do it with anything.

Watch people’s faces when a Kellogg’s variety pack is popped onto the table. We love them! These small, diddy, boxed versions of our full-sized favourites and the small piles of cereal that pop out of their waxed paper interior, the perfectly weighed statistical baseline RDA to which all those calorific and vitamin figures apply.

The compelling seductive nature of mini dinky things is at work everywhere, not just in the larder or snack cupboard.

I challenge anyone to pretend they did not LOVE mini Fish & Chips finger food the first time they came across them at some party of Do. And the Mini Sunday Roast. BOOM. Mini genius.

We’ve even got a soft spot for alcoholic miniatures. A perfect dolls-house measure for more meaningful consumption. An alcoholic Tinkerbell-treat best served in a very, very small petal shaped glass.

We have even built a mini socio cultural fabric in and around them. The poet, John Cooper Clarke, was inspired to anthropomorphise miniatures and the mini bars they come in:

You know you’re in the wrong hotel when a fight breaks out in the mini bar

WINDSWEPT & INTERESTING

Some might say that the International or Traveller’s miniature fixed the idea of little things into the psyche of the curious and the eternally childlike human being. Since the dawn of the explorer and intrepid traveller, things have been made travel-friendly by re-modelling, re-engineering and reducing items to make them more portable. Miniature versions of your everyday stuff – all specifically ‘shrunk’ to fit the traveler’s demands.

Scattered in and around hold-all of the worldly traveller we now find miniature pack sizes of shampoo, body crème, toothpaste, toothbrushes – and an array of miniature things pilfered from distant hotels or the rarified cabin class in-flight offerings – small silver utensils – mini salt and pepper pots – all of it evidence of people who ‘travel lightly through the world’ – hopping from plane to hotel room to slope to beach to boat.

Long before the existence of miniature or compressed proucts driven by smarter more sustainable strategies for a reduction in primary and secondary packaging; and the subsequent innovations in dispersal technologies they spawned, there was already a world of dinky mini travel sized everything out there – and to the increasing number of children and child like adults who find themselves on planes trains and automobiles to far flung places, they present a wonderland of child-like, child sized things.

(Though it has to be said there is a dark side to travel miniatures – some people use these items as a form of social jewellery, scattering them around their homes and hold-alls. In that way these are being used as the product equivalent of speaking very loudly in public places about skiing holidays – but that’s for anther time)

21ST CENTURY TAPAS

The clamouring affection many seem to hold for these miniature things is powerful indeed but perhaps it obscures an even deeper and more powerful and more particular culture at work: one which we might turn to good effect.

I believe that these are in fact a much-overlooked form of cultural tapas – a small dainty platter of elegant 21st century consumables.

In the same way that tapas takes what is a fairly robust and sometimes coarse set of food ingredients and diminishes them into small fine and elegant mouthfuls, perhaps all of these miniatures are our way of taking the coarse vulgar edges off the galloping excess of our consumption?

This for me creates an opportunity to have a bigger conversation in a fun and very non hectoring way.

If the first thing their very size and miniature-ness triggers in people is this Minion Effect, then perhaps we could celebrate a more life size, planet sized mode of consumption by elevating the Minion Effect to a national day of consumption consciousness.

A LITTLE BIG DAY

Perhaps we should have a Miniature day. A day where we celebrate the larger than life lives we lead but in miniature. A day where we take a Minion approach to life – a day filled with dinky things – small brilliant – perfect.

A day full of miniature everything:

Wake up

Shower – 2 minutes maximum – using miniature shampoo and conditioner

Miniature breakfasts – variety pack – mini croissant – very small tea cups –

Go to work with miniature lunch pack – or snacking utility belt – cool pockets of time staged miniature snacking

Equally – we should compel some enlightened food retailers to miniaturise their servings and prices for one day – e.g. Subway to serve a Baby Foot Long Sub – measured to the length of an infants foot.

Then – a Miniature chocolate cereal crisp like afternoon snack

Close the working day with minature drinks at the mini bar

and then a miniature dinner – in plane meal trays of portion controlled servings – using very small cutlery (in a fit of fashionista homage to Liz Hurley’s much maligned and probably hugely apocryphal weight watching ritual of eating with children’s cutlery)

Finished off with a fractual mini House Of Cards short watched on a mini wind up device.

Could be fun.

Everything shrunk to a play-size.

Pop a quick Cadburys Hero and make a shrink wrapped 50 character tweet.

Playfamily sized Family buckets from KFC – sponsored by playmobil.or Fisher Price.

Downton Abbey Special played out by Sylvanian Families.

A one page miniature copy of VOGUE.

And a short News At Ten all rendered in LEGO

So hands up who wants to take a run at applying the Minion Effect – and thinks charming people into reducing what they consume instead of boring them into submission through a love in with miniature stuff might be worth a go?!

I’m in.

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