Tag: Culture

Lethal Aide

Finally, we have ended the charade and let Branding and Marketing have its hegemony in the abode of war.  Sure, we’vehad propaganda, pamphlets and the like, but now you can sense a real shift in philosophy.  It feels like those formerly Mad Men-style, Madison Avenue types have made it into the smoke-filled rooms where the biggest decisions are made.   And, at the head of the table, they’ve decided that masking war to make it palatable for public consumption is just so last generation.  No, the marketers have determined that warfare is an actuarial product, a commodity that is limited only by the difference between return and exposure.  Moreover, the return doesn’t have to be simply money; we’ve learned that war can bring about impetus, helping people see it your way.  Death and destruction boiled down to risk management; it’s a wager on the value of life vs. resources, variable only to P (proximity), π (profit – in its many forms) and P² (popularity).  Finally, the means to calculate how many foreign troops it could take to get a dollar reduction on energy costs or a tack-on tax cut to a relief bill.

​I came to this conclusion as the term “Lethal Aide” made its way around the Sunday Morning political shows.  Besides its obvious oxymoronic leaning, this term seems warmed-over and focused-grouped.  One can imagine a group of white male mid-westerners, ranging 18-34, sitting in a sterile room being feddifferent terms like “Death Help” and “Kill Assistance” before, finally, finding the perfect phrase: Lethal Aide.  “Yea, I mean…it makes me think…like your also kinda…helping the people you’re shooting at,” one of the focus group members must’vesaid.  It’s a softening of the hard reality of war and it is highlighting a grave cowardice that has become all too common in “modern” warfare: the outsourcing of responsibility and blood.  As long as another country’s soldiers and people take on the risk of death, there is no need to delve deep into the soul of a nation in order to find a morality and then the will to support it.  

Of course, there will always be despots. Even in the sandbox, we dealt with tyrants, but their crimes were petty or ridiculous. They needed the proper turns of fate and resources to grow into the monsters we always knew they could be. Consequently, when the beast comes to maturity, he or she will feast on a people or a country or a world. Free Nations will rush in to condemn and denounce, but do so in the company of their own allied autocracies, hand-in-hand with the “Lesser of Two Evils”.

The Islands and the Dark Places

On January 26, almost 250 years ago, British Admiral Arthur Phillip sailed a boat filled with convicts into Sydney Cove, in the land that became Australia.  This effort won the admiral a governorship of New South Wales, Australia, much to the distaste of the ignored Aboriginal peoples.  Such are the lengths societies will go to “get rid” of those citizens that committed a crime.  Those people that have severed the cardinal, two-pronged societal rule that if you break the law and do not have the means to defend yourself, you are forfeit.  

​Surely, a quarter of a century later, there has been some progress in the way we rehabilitate, reeducate and reincorporate the convicted population.  Nope.  It has remained the same plan.  We, as a society, stow all those we deem void to the social contract and ship them off somewhere.  Here in New York, we have an actual Island (Rikers) that houses those awaiting trial, no matter their mental health status, gang affiliation or general degree of criminality.  There are many institutions like this around the country, hidden away, to avoid waking the everyday citizen’s sympathy or empathy.  Any ember of sentiment for this lost population is quickly stifled by the brutal and lazy logic that these people “knew what the consequences were” or that they “shouldn’t have done the crime to begin with”.  How profound that branch of empiricism must seem to the complicit?  

In the real world, those that truly understand the vast and uncontrollable variables of life know that we are all one or two bad decisions away from a unique and terrible descent. Society will march on from any of its failed or lost members without a misstep. I would suggest that we, as a society, should never allow extant life be so prematurely obfuscated and forgotten. No matter, for as long as our civilization finds the value in storing people in the dark places and the will to overlook them, we will never truly be civilized.

Call Me A Quitter

​Call me a quitter!  I don’t care anymore.  Let’s just all move to Canada and open up a Maple syrup-flavored Bed and Breakfast called “Sweet Dreams”.  My family is already on board.  If any responsible politicians want to come, you’rewelcome to jump aboard the next Mountaineer train smoking and head out.  We’ve lost the battle for reasonable discourse, legislation and governance.  So, come one, come all, let us flee from this failed state and embrace the Maple Mother of the North.  Meet me on the border my friends; that is, if you can make it through America’s crumbling tunnels and roadways.  

No need to look back, public discussion and consensus is dead.  Turn your weary eyes to the engineering wonder that is the Ambassador Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world.  Cast off those mental shackles we knew to be the American Dream not only because it was a ploy by James Truslow Adams to sell books, but also because this country never intended to be meritocracy.  Our system always picked the winners and losers and uses status quo to ensure that the backs of the working class bear the weight of the pyramid to benefit the apex (GASP).  Justice and opportunity was not for all!  No biggie, that’s water under the Peace Bridge; go grab your warmest toque and bunnyhug (Canadian for winter hat and sweater…don’t be lazy, learn the language) and let’s walk away from the corrupt and stifled governance that has plagued us for too long.  Let’s walk out on this sh** show; no need to see the last act!  This experiment never got out of clinical trials.  How many more lethargic metaphors do I need to give you people!  

Sure Canada isn’t as “fancy”; it doesn’t have suit-clad lobbyists with million dollar condos parked in front of the nation’s capital, but it does have charm.  More to the point, it seems to have a semblance of reason about it.  For God’s sake, the country produced Alex Trebek.  

What are we holding onto? The Trump folk seem to want it more; they seem to be willing to break from any tether that links them to morality or reality. I can applaud excellence even when it’s found in the area of delusion. However, my love for reason has put me at a disadvantage, because I can’t simply overlook facts and no amount of double talk or hat giveaways can make me storm the Capitol. Moreover, I don’t go in for many conspiracy theories because I subscribe to Occam’s Razor (simplest explanation and all that) and I don’t believe two people can keep a secret let alone hundreds or thousands. No matter, that place America is no longer my concern; this time next year, I’ll be knee-deep into preparation for National Aboriginal Veteran’s Day and thankful that my October 11st Thanksgiving dinner went off without a hitch. All hail to the Red, White and… Red. How aboot that!

The Ryder Files

​I’m a dad of a toddler – soon to be preschooler – so there is no way I don’t know who Ryder is.  For the uninitiated, there is a cartoon called Paw Patrol where a boy name Ryder leads a group of rescue pups – all with specific skills, and assorted, representative colors and vehicles – that help the people in and around a place called Adventure bay.  Feasible so far right?  You’re probably thinking they’ll be catching cats that fall out of trees and putting out the occasional picnic fire, no big deal.  You’d probably also assume they’d have a ladder, maybe a hose or flashlight and operate out of some sort of clubhouse or something.  Wrong!  I submit to you that Ryder is at the helm of a cross-departmental, DEA-CIA-NSA operation, which he’ssince become a double, no quadruple agent and is now playing all sides leading to a simultaneous career as a narcotics smuggler!  And if the Pups are not patsies they are aiding and abetting his criminal activities.

​Fact #1:  Ryder has unlimited technical resources with seemingly unlimited large-scale logistical support by the way of communication devices like Pup Pads and the mega headquarters known as the Paw Patrol Tower (The Tower also has a formulation that is powered by a meteorite that is seemingly radioactive.  They’re nuclear!).  Ryder can reach his team anywhere in Adventure bay, FoggyBottom and parts of Barkingburg without interference – the signal also works in some sort of land-before-time esque location only accessible by cave, but more on that when I watch those episodes.  This can only mean satellite signals, which means he definitely has military clearance.

​Fact #2:  Funding of this Paw Patrol project is not discussed, but on-demand new updates and tech become available to Ryder without any discussion of his means of acquisition.  I would eliminate the possibility that Ryder himself is the engineer of these devices and the many well-equipped vehicles like the Mission Cruiser, which is a 100-foot multi-purpose reconnaissance transport (tip of the iceberg!), since he has always had a great difficulty discerning Mayor Humdinger’s identity even though the mayor uses terribly conspicuous disguises.  This kind of support must be vast and with a marginal amount of oversight.  I don’t think you need me to spell out the kind of agencies that work that way!  However, even with the “Alphabet Boys” attached to this operation, Ryder’s sheer opportunity and access have also made him a player in the international drug distribution business.  

​Fact #3:  Ryder has cultivated relationships on all the major transport routes.  Cap’N Turbot runs the boating routes with the perfect cover story of being a marine biologist.  His back-up is none other than Zuma with extensive underwater and aquatic experience.  After that, you have the sky’s covered with…well Skye with the artificial intelligent-capable Robo-dog running any mission she can’t accomplish.  Jake operates the snowy mountains and Farmer Yumi handles the plains in case any passage is blocked.  Carlos and Tracker hold down the jungle area where I believe all the product originates!  And, of course, you have Ryder’s most loyal pup: Chase.  Chase that is always dressed as law enforcement, but whose main skill is sniffing out what’s wrong.  Sounds like a drug-sniffing dog if you ask me!

Or it could just be a kids show.

The Thurston Howell Gambit

Why aren’t there any new names for chess moves? If you study chess for an afternoon, you will butt up against a plethora of maneuvers named after people like the Smith-Morra Gambit or even after well thought-out concepts like the King’s Indian Attack. Some moves or pieces can even use different languages to represent them like “En Passant” or “Zwischenug”. Like how cool is that? Imagine how smart you’d look dropping down that Zwis-thing on some bozo (even smarter if you can pronounce it). That being said, it would be infinitely cooler to have a contemporary name for a move or piece, but it seems like that well has run dry.

Is it that no one has come up with a keen new strategy to get checkmate, take a piece or gain an advantage? Or is it that all the cool maneuvers are taken? I truly hope it isn’t the latter. I also hope that we haven’t advanced so far in the field of self-aggrandizement that we no longer need to hit a curtain call or two! Have we dug so deep that we’ve reached the other side and all that chess is just another game? Don’t worry my legion of pretentious, snoots, daddy’s home! And I have a brand-spanking-new chess move name! Hold on to your socks you gaggle of insufferable know-it-alls: I want to claim the move where one player gets frustrated and sweeps all the chess pieces off the board. That maneuver will now be called the It’s NotWhat You Know, But Who You Know Defense (also known as the I.N.W.Y.K.B.W.Y.K. Defense – pro bono marketers apply below). OMG! Here comes the egghead society again, “That’s not a real move!” My argument is simple – Chess is supposed to imitate life; it encompasses all the many components that we’ve bottled-up and labelled as Human Nature: loyalty, love, hate, heart-break, sacrifice, strategy, stimulation, desire, error, forgiveness, regret etc. And what is more life-like than a chess move that demonstrates that however much you’ve studied or learned there will always be well-positioned people that can just sweep your well-positioned pieces right onto the floor.

Declaration of Sentiments

Nearly 175 years ago today, the Seneca Falls Convention was held in New York.  With all the current turmoil revolving around voter’s rights (Georgia, Texas and H.R. 1), it seems apropos to look at that moment in time and see how far our democracy has come. 

On July 20, 1848, during the Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton read a sort-of state of the union for women including grievances and twelve demands for equality, patterned after the Declaration of Independence called the Declaration of Sentiments.   The culmination of this manifesto was twelve resolutions focused on women’s rights.  Resolutions regarding equanimity in legal and property rights passed unanimously.  Moreover, all of the resolutions that descried an inequality in educational and employment opportunities were also recognized unanimously.  In fact, eleven of the twelve resolutions were uncontested and approved in this group of sixty-eight women and thirty-two men.  It was only the resolution for women’s suffrage that passed on a simple majority, because it was deemed much too controversial.  So during a convention focused on the inequalities facing women, people still believed that giving women the right to vote was a bridge too far.  As a matter of fact, upon some criticism and derision directed at the suffrage components, many of the men that signed the Declaration of Sentiments later took their names off. 

A lot has changed since then.  With the two-party structure, lobbyist-designed gerrymandering, the obsolete electoral college system and the vastness of the voting battle field, it seems that one vote doesn’t mean as much as it did.  That being said, the one constant in our democracy seems to be an energy (held by the powers-that-be) to limit voting rights.  It seems like even with all the inclusions in our political process contrived to devalue the vote, those in power still seem to hunt for that elusive last bastion of democracy: the vote itself.  Since 1848, that singular vote has been attacked by poll taxes, competency tests, segregation, intimidation culture/domestic terrorism, an oppressive patriarchy and that good old-fashioned American wealth disparity.  And since 1848, the rich have gotten richer and the governing bodies of this country have maintained a stranglehold on power and resources, while only glacially changing the demographics within that landscape.  It seems that the vote will always be under attack for the benefit of the entrenched political class.  But maybe I need more faith.  Maybe the system needs more time to work on reflecting the powerful diversity stretched across this country.  Maybe the ruling class and the bureaucrats that aid them will realize that the people of this country draw strength, resilience and dynamism from our differences and that that is the secret ingredient in winning the future.  Or maybe I will be back here for the 200th anniversary of Seneca Falls still waiting for the first female president*.

*Scoreboard: 1 – African-American President, 0 – Female Presidents, 0 – Hispanic/Latin American Presidents, 0 – Openly Gay Presidents, 0 – Asian-American Presidents, 0 – Jewish Presidents …. 0…0…0…0….