So, what you"re saying is it wasn"t enough to fire me for no good reason. Now you question my integrity? On top of the humiliation of being fired, you threaten me? You threaten my family? It never crossed my mind not to honor my agreement. And I will tell you, Mr. Sandefur... and Brown & Williamson too - fuck me? Well, fuck you!
In both the book and the film, Fight Club, the narrator tells another airline passenger about his job in the automobile manufacturing industry, assessing fatal accidents, and calculating the costs of settlements vs. recalls.
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don"t do one.
Along these lines, the theme for next year"s Second ZeroHedge Symposium and Live Fight Club in Marfa, Texas, is...The Insider.
noun in·sid·er (?)in-?s?-d?r , ?in-?s?- :a person recognized or accepted as a member of a group, category, or organization: such as
a :a person who is in a position of power or has access to confidential information
b :a person (such as an officer or director) who is in a position to have special knowledge of the affairs of or to influence the decisions of a company.
This article is a call for speakers, insiders who are ready, willing, and able to come to Marfa this spring and tell the truth. The following are some possible areas of interest. If you know someone that might be interested in speaking for 60-90 minutes, even under a pseudonym, then please contact them about this opportunity to get up on the Paper Street soap box and tell us their story.
Big oil - speaker committed
Chinese manufacturing - speaker committed
The stock market
Professional sports
The war on drugs
The US military
Corporate farming
Islam
Television news
Web search
Climate change
US elections
Civil litigation
Chiropractors
K-Street Lobbying
Online porn
Municipal bonds
College admissions
US prisons
Social Security disability
Please, offer your ideas for other topics in the comments section below. Interested parties should send an email to me at this address:
The best way I know to overcome fear is with knowledge. Knowledge allows us to see false evidence as false. Knowledge also allows us to be bold, and to take action, rather than be timid, staying right where we are. Knowledge enables us to be revolutionary.
The exact dates of next year"s symposium will be forthcoming. Please check back here regularly. Once again, there will be no charge for admission, no registration, and no badges. Anonymity still has its place in Marfa.
As we warned over the weekend, when we first learned of Beijing"s new sex doll rental business, China"s sharing economy may have just jumped the shark.
Now, just 4 days later, after its business model elicited a flood of complaints and criticism, Chinese company Ta Qu – or “Touch” in English – has announced that it will close its week-old sex-doll rental business, inspiring budget-focused silicon slammers in the world’s second-largest economy to issue a collective groan.
Touch began offering five different sex doll types for daily or longer-term rent last Thursday in Beijing. But according to the BBC,“it quickly drew complaints and criticism.”
The company said in a statement on Weibo that it "sincerely apologized for the negative impact" of its business model.
But the company added that sex is "not vulgar" and said it would keep working towards more people enjoying it. The company said it had generated “a lot of interest and requests” during its short-lived run.
Unfortunately for entrepreneurs hoping to enter China’s thriving sex-toy industry, the company noted that succeeding in that industry “is really hard in China.”
"We prepared ten dolls for the trial operation," a company spokesperson said via email, adding that they received very positive feedback from users.
"But it"s really hard in China," the firm wrote, saying there had been a lot of controversy with the police over the issue.
The company had offered the sex dolls for a daily fee of 298 yuan (about $50), according to Chinese media. It also sells an array of sex toys and dolls, according to the BBC.
Here"s what that would"ve bought you:
In its Weibo statement, the firm said its original intention had been to make expensive silicone dolls more affordable but conceded that the service triggered a heated public debate. The company also said it would pay out compensation to users worth double the amount they had paid as a deposit for reserving a doll.
The statement added that Touch would in future pay more attention to its "social duty", and would actively promote a "healthier and more harmonious sex lifestyle".
The Chinese app was launched in 2015 as a platform for discussing issues about sex and sexuality before “pivoting” into sales.
As we reported earlier in the week, the company planned to offer five models to choose from: "Greek bikini model," "US Wonder Woman," "Korean housewife," "Russian teenager" and "Hong Kong car race cheerleader." Users can customize the dolls to their liking by picking out hair and eye color, as well as their outfits.
For those asking the obvious question, the company states that it also has hygiene on its mind, as explained by their official policy.
"The dolls" lower parts are changed for every customer," reads the app. "Please remove the lower parts before returning. After the lower parts are cleaned, the doll can be used repeatedly."
The company hoped to capitalize on China’s notorious gender imbalance favoring men, as well as the country’s thriving online gaming culture, which breeds hordes of lonely young men.
If we don"t challenge these poisonous polarizing binaries, they may well trigger the accidental suicide of our polity.
If there is any statement about politics in America that qualifies as as a truism accepted by virtually everyone, left, right or independent, it"s that America is a deeply divided nation. But is this really true?
Like everyone else, I too accepted that the line between Hillary supporters and detractors, and Trump supporters and detractors, was about as "either/or" as real life gets.
But are we really that divided? A fascinating 55-minute lecture by historian Michael Kulikowski entitled The Accidental Suicide of the Roman Empire has made me question this consensus certitude.
Maybe the real driver of this division is devisive language--more specifically, language that is designed to drive a wedge between us. In other words, maybe the divisions are an intentional consequence of the language we"re using.
Kulikowski makes a number of nuanced arguments in his talk, but his primary point is that the late-stage Roman Empire collapsed partly as an unintended consequence of rhetorical binaries, polarizing rhetoric that lumped an extremely diverse Imperial populace into false binaries: Roman or Barbarian, Christian or heretic, and so on.
The actual lived reality was completely different from these artificial either-or binary classifications. As Kulikowski explains (and anyone who has read a modern history of late-stage Rome will know this from other accounts), many "Roman generals" were "Barbarian" by birth, and the boundary between "Roman citizen" and "Barbarian" was porous on purpose.
Rome had prospered by ensuring the boundary was porous (not counting slaves, of course). An impoverished young man from the hinterlands could join the Roman military and achieve a stable income and Roman citizenship. (Women could advance through marrying into a Roman-citizen family--even one that was "Barbarian" until recently.)
By Imperial decree in the 3rd Century A.D., any free person inside the boundaries of Imperial Rome was declared a Roman citizen. So numerous people of a variety of ethnicities may have been born outside the boundaries (i.e. Barbarian) became as "Roman" as any native born Roman in terms of their obligations to pay taxes and rights to judicial review.
This social/economic upward mobility was a key "secret sauce" of Rome"s enduring success.
So why the sudden fatal attraction to completely false polarizing binaries? Kulikowski makes the case that deploying these rhetorical devices--polarizing binaries-- served the political purposes of warring elites within the Imperial aristocracy.
For example, one sure-fire way to undermine a political challenger was to label him as a "Barbarian." Even though he might have served in the Roman army from his youth, his political opponent could transform him into a "bad guy" by virtue of his being born a non-Roman. Sound familiar? (Hint: try "deplorable".)
There is a self-destructive, self-reinforcing dynamic in this polarizing rhetoric: though it served the political interests of individual members of the elite, it did so at the cost of the entire polity, which was poisoned by these false binaries that then developed into dominant narratives.
Hence Kulikowski"s startling conclusion: Rome didn"t "die of natural causes"--it accidentally committed suicide once its political elites embracing polarizing binaries as political weapons. These weapons seemed targeted to their users, but the rhetorical narratives spread like a deadly virus through the empire, helping to trigger collapse of the Imperial core.
The story repeats the truism of America being a divided nation, but my take-away was not the either-or binaries accepted by the mainstream and alternative media alike-- my take-away was a newfound appreciation for the incredible diversity in America, not just ethnically, but geographically, demographically, and in every other measure of complex diversity.
How could a nation of such astounding diversity be artificially cleaved into polarizing binaries? The short answer is that it cannot: the polarizing binaries are artificial rhetorical devices, completely out of touch with the nuanced, complex reality of a diverse populace with widely diverse opinions on a wide spectrum of political topics.
My conclusion is that we should be alert to the great distance between these politically useful but systemically poisonous polarizing binaries and the complex and dynamic realities of the American populace.
We would also benefit from recognizing the artificiality and self-serving nature of these polarizing binaries, and be alert to the false and destructive narratives and teleologies they generate.
We"ve already witnessed the toxic weeds of polarizing binaries spreading across the political landscape, choking out real-world narratives: diverse populations are being demonized as "deplorables," "racists," "evil," and so on. So many of our choices are false choices based on polarizing binaries. For example-- how many voters would have championed an alternative to Hillary or Trump? If given a choice, would 60% of the voters have chosen someone other than the two party candidates? (Hint: Bernie Sanders is the most popular politico in America, according to recent polls.)
Identity politics is another rhetorical device designed to consolidate diverse populaces into politically useful (to the elites jockeying for power) binary blocks: you"re either "for us" (and good) or "against everything good" (bad, evil, racist, etc.)
If we don"t challenge these poisonous polarizing binaries, they may well trigger the accidental suicide of our polity. THe saying is the demographics is destiny; the same can be said of the language we use to divide or unite people of good faith who are sick of the parasitic, predatory elites that are plundering the nation.
I read a quote somewhere last week that went something like, “JFK put a man on the moon, Obama put a man in the ladies room”. This got me thinking about President Obama’s oft cited, “war of narratives”.
Who says something like this? Well, it’s people who believe that as long as they control the narrative, as long as they control the story, then they are winning. The facts don’t matter, the actual events, the situations, the way things unfold, these are also the things that do not matter.
What matters most to a person who believes that the world is based on a “war of narratives” is that their ideas and world view are the only possible alternative. Isn’t this what doomed the Democrats in the Election? Did they not just believe that they had a superior narrative to the one that was being proposed by Donald Trump? So much so that they practically hid their candidate while waiting for her pronouncement as president.
With a president and leader, who holds a belief that the “war of narratives” is all that matters, Democrats have slipped into a very narrow (albeit progressive) world view. Is this starting to make some sense now?
From this perch, you ignore what is going on around you and it is your job and the job of your party to push any given issue through the filter of a given narrative. So take any issue and run it into the ground to convince people your narrative is the only acceptable one. You can blame people for falling down this slippery slope because it usually involves, at some point, the absence of using common sense.
Sure, Republicans push narratives as well, but they don’t seem to do it with such zeal and with the world view that whichever particular narrative du jour is the only plausible, logical story that exists. One thing that emerges is that being “locked in” to a position can quickly and often turn into a small corner you have painted yourself into.
This tends to result in slinging your final arrows from the last square meter you are standing in. A war of narratives Alamo as it were. Generally, you then have to fire your narrative in all directions. But that is not enough, dems tend to push to the point that everyone in the world (outside their square) is “wrong” (more often labeled racists, sexists, or any list of “ists”) and that the logical Democratic conclusion is correct.
When you fight this kind of “war of narratives” you inevitably end up in an extreme position, this usually involves fighting for the survival of your “narrative” or point of view over what, to most people, might seem like common sense. Issues are made more complex and solutions move further away from the real problems.
This is where Obama now finds himself on the eve of leaving office on Obamacare, Benghazi, Aleppo, the economy and many other issues where he placed the importance on the narrative rather getting to the core of whether the position serves America and American interests. His legacy is just another narrative that needs to be defended at all costs. How many times have we heard recently that unemployment is at it’s lowest while out of work people are at the highest levels in recent history.
This whole narrative issue and infatuation with it created a situation where democrats have become out of touch with TROA (the rest of America). This does not mean I don’t agree with some of the the narratives I have seen touted, I’m just pointing out that when you are seemingly unwilling to shift from a narrative, or a series of narratives you can end up right where the democrats are now.
Apply this logic to just about any issue and you can quickly figure out that by not being nimble in their narrative, democrats over the last eight years have become everything they always claim to stand against. Take big major issues like abortion, same sex marriage, immigration, jobs, the economy. These are complicated issues with plenty of grey area and plenty of points of view to service. You can’t afford to paint yourself into a corner and the complexity requires an ability to view the problem through more than one lens.
Most reasonable Americans would agree with both the rights and needs of individuals associated with any of these issues, until the point they are tilted a bit to far to the left, a bit to far toward special interest groups and until those people fire back and begin attacking anyone who is not delivering the most extreme version of the message.
Things begin being defined as absolute and in black and white terms leaving for very little grey (or what I like to call the place where actual change can happen). This is the problem with being glued to one narrative. This is where TROA fought back. Not all Americans share the view of the East and West coast Americans and they let that voice be heard. Now the arrows are being fired in all directions from that corner they have painted themselves into and the narrative they are one hundred percent invested in.
An example of this came up between now President elect Trump (then Mr. Trump) and Hillary Clinton in the last debate. It came down to a tough question on abortion where Secretary Clinton could not move off of her previous position/narrative and Mr. Trump could make a statement like, “You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb as late as one or two or three days prior to birth,”
That is an image that is very uncomfortable to many people and hard to defend, but it is an extreme example of why things can not be defined in black and white terms. Secretary Clinton had no real response or perhaps did not respond in the moment but my point is to illustrate why you can’t win by sticking to a prescribed narrative. At it’s core it comes off as dishonest as well because folks see you are defending a position instead of taking one. It might legally be ever woman’s right to end a pregnancy with two days remaining but it might not sit well with your average person/voter.
These types of narratives become tough to sell. Even when a given narrative is being touted, pushed, repeated and exploited through what we learned is the vast echo chamber known as the mainstream media. Case in point; election 2016. People were actually so tired, and one might even argue perceptibly fed up, with having a single narrative shoveled down their throats that they naturally sought out other voices.
To understand this one only has to view a video like this one, where talking points are being voiced, verbatim, on show after show.
Remember how Hillary tried to “power through” pneumonia...
What this kind of “instant narrative” produces in people (in me at least) is a sort of, “OK, now-I’m-being-bullshited-to”, effect and what might may have started out as a good message is rejected with all the disappointment you feel when a record or CD skips at your favourite part of the song. In other words, you can do your job too well. You can push the message out to the right people in such a strategic way that they begin to understand that it is just another narrative, to them it too slick, too polished and when you cross into that territory the bullshit meter goes off and they reject you, they see “a candidate” as disingenuous. This seemed to go both ways in the is election.
In a post election time of reflection, perhaps we’ve come to understand that the war of narratives is less important that just plain listening to people and getting back to basics.
Maybe Eugene Ionesco was on to something with this exchange between two characters in his play The Bald Soprano.
Mr. Smith: The heart is ageless [Silence]
Mr. Martin: That"s true. [Silence]
Mrs. Smith: So they say. [Silence]
Mrs. Martin: They also say the opposite. [Silence]
Mr. Smith: The truth lies somewhere between the two. [Silence]
Mr. Martin: That"s true. [Silence]
Whatever the narrative America, the truth does lies somewhere between the two. At the time of this writing, the weekend before the electoral college vote, the president is touting a narrative about Russian election interference, and how talk radio and “fake news” were the deciding factors in how about 120 million people voted.
Really, you want people to buy that narrative when they already now know, it’s just the next in a long list of convenient narratives with a list of talking points attached to it. Last time I checked, they didn’t replay the Superbowl when Russell Wilson dropped back to attempt a pass on the one yard line with Marshawn Lynch in the backfield. That was what they term, “a bad call”. The Seahawks took it on the chin and everyone claimed their share of responsibility and nobody threw anyone under the bus. They did not blame the Patriots either. This is the sort of fair play decorum we come to expect from Americans in their politics as well.
The democrats rode with the narrative that Hillary Clinton somehow was the best democratic candidate even after a Bernie Sanders showed he was not push over and had a lot of grassroots support. That was also a bad call. Funding Jill Stein to run a recount effort, pushing electoral college voters to change their vote, these are the kind of narratives that turn people off.
