Captain Obvious

There are times when you listen to something and pause because it strikes you as profound. That happened when Susan and I were watching an old episode of Madam Secretary where a reporter was writing an exclusive article about the Secretary of State and was shadowing her through a few days of her work and personal life. He attends dinner at her home, interacts with the kids, and then enters this conversation with her husband Henry who is a theologian and professor of theology at the War College in DC.

Henry McCord: “You know, I’ve read a lot of your work. You’re very good at uncovering injustice.”

Reporter: “It keeps me busy.”

Henry: “Let me ask you something. Do you ever think that sometimes you find dishonesty and hypocrisy because you’ve already decided it’s there?”

Reporter: “Well, I prefer to think of my work as a search for the truth, right?”

Henry: “Well, then, as a Catholic, I would have to say we’re both searching for something elusive, unreliable, and prone to bias for a story we’d like to believe.”

I asked Susan to pause the video after exclaiming that this was profound, we rewound it several times for me to write the interchange above down. Please reread this carefully.

I think we are all searching for the truth, but how often do we remind ourselves that it is elusive, unreliable, and prone to bias? How often do we consider carefully the testimonies of so many in the world, in our lives, and within ourselves and admit that we see through a mirror dimly as the apostle Paul says and that we are looking at the knotted side of the tapestry in Corrie Ten Boom’s model of life’s mysteries.

Social media coupled with AI are feeding us things that we want to see and hear. The result may be good for the marketers and politicians behind these actions, but they are driving us away from carefully listening to one another.

Shiny pennies grab our attention. Clickbait makes us click on things that are not what they were claimed to be. Our attention spans are shrinking as we are bombarded by messaging specifically designed to capture our time online.  I’d like to believe that a pill would restore my hair, flexibility, and strength of my younger years. It is hard to resign yourself to the reality that stories about that are false.

We should be approaching each day with a special sensitivity to those with whom we have important relationships. And as we face it with our eyes and ears wide open, we should be wise like Henry recognizing our limits to know the truth even though we seek it intensely.

For those of you who want an excellent explanation of the root problem, please take a close look at the graphic at the beginning of this blog which has two lights shining on a cylinder in such a way that one wall appears to show it as a square and the other as a circle.  Both views are true, but the best insights come when you step back and see the whole picture.  (And a bonus question for the geeks out there … email me and tell me what the true color is for the cylinder itself?)

The key to better conversations seems to rely on humility and a sincere interest in learning more by listening.  I was struck by a recent Frank Bruni article in the New York Times and the author of the book “The Age of Grievance.”  This snippet from the Times says it all in my humble opinion:

“And I’m going to repeat one phrase more often than any other: ‘It’s complicated.’ They’ll become familiar with that. They may even become bored with it. I’ll sometimes say it when we’re discussing the roots and branches of a social ill, the motivations of public (and private) actors and a whole lot else, and that’s because I’m standing before them not as an ambassador of certainty or a font of unassailable verities but as an emissary of doubt. I want to give them intelligent questions, not final answers. I want to teach them how much they have to learn — and how much they will always have to learn.”

I hope this holiday season offers you many opportunities to savor the elusive, unreliable, and biased world all around us as we remind ourselves once again of the “reason for the season.”

Do you remember the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin? It is an old fairy tale about a musician who was hired to rid the town of rats by charming them with his flute playing. But, when the townsfolk refused to pay him as they had promised, he exacted his revenge by leading all the town’s children away as well. Is Taylor Swift a modern-day Pied Piper? I suggest we take a closer look at Swifties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swifties

Outside of this group, it seems that most Americans don’t have the appetite for and interest in seriously paying attention to anything. We seem to be a sea of mindless and braindead citizens following whatever grabs our limited attention? The movie Idiocracy is on point. Our culture is so riddled with soundbites and frenetic messaging scientists now claim our attention span has dropped from about 2-3 minutes 50 years ago to something less than 8 seconds. Watch how short modern commercials are compared to when you were young.

I personally believe the lengthy exposure of screen time with its toxic soup of videogames, social media, and AI generated personalized content addicts us and capturing our eyeballs and is a part of why today’s children and young adults have higher incidents of ADHD and other difficulties. I grew up without TV since it hadn’t been invented yet. I had a radio and could read books. Of course attention spans then were longer and necessary.  Against this backdrop, I suggest you look carefully at the behaviors of Taylor Swift concert goers. The following extended video summary of her recent tour is chilling:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2024/12/05/taylor-swift-eras-tour-reporter-personal-journey/76711565007/

If you watched even a small part of the video segment, and you are a conservative older person you probably will say it reminds you of the Beetles Tour or Elvis Presley. Yes, in some ways that’s true, but the size of the crowds and the range of audience demographics should be a wake-up call to anyone in modern marketing. Plus, the way Taylor Swift creates community experiences is a Harvard Case Study in modern social interactions.

If you just watched the referenced video and shrugged your shoulders in disgust, you are vulnerable to those who know what has happened and why. If you can’t figure it out, hire the ones that have … or you are toast in this new world. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it is your key to success in how others are redefining brand identity, awareness, and loyalty. Her fans are fanatics. She has not merely upped the game … she has reinvented it.

Here is an article summarizing how fans felt about her 3.5 hour concert: https://wapo.st/4fi6dRq The formula she used to connect with such a wide-ranging audience not only delivered the experience of a lifetime, but it also moves these same individuals to be in an ongoing relationship to her.

Look at the financial impact of this. It is not just about her ticket sales that have redefined the online ticket selling business because of its intensity. Look at the impact on the local economy in the chart below summarizes. She generates about ten times more than the prices of her tickets … which are also incredibly high … bordering on the absurd:

If you are hungry for more economic impacts, take a look at this article in the WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/economy/taylor-swift-fan-economic-impact-eras-tour-revenue-a9c00005?st=E1Wonm&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

It is so easy to just dismiss this young lady or to chalk this up to an otherwise bored modern youth element. No … there is something profound going on here. Her fans know the words of her songs and sing along during the 3+ hour concert. Their antics actually create seismic impacts!  When I started my engineering career we studied the Tacoma Narrows Bridge failure. Could a new rating for safety now include a Taylor Swift Concert rating?

So, if you don’t know what’s been happening and why … you may soon be “paying the Piper!”

The recent cold-blooded killing of a health services company president has triggered a response that should send chills up your spine … but for way too many Americans it hasn’t. In fact, it has spawned social media stardom to the culprit and a level of support and praise that harkens to the days of Hitler in the early 1900s about acceptability of killing Jews.

When people become so conditioned to accepting hate towards anyone or anything that they condone murder, I must wonder where we are going. Read this:
https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/insurance-executives-murder-sparks-online-praise-hate-rcna183017

As you carefully read the article, you will see an underlying digital technique driven with AI algorithms that foster anything that will garner attention, even by promoting hate. So, we have social media platform technologies that are harvesting and promoting ideas that tear society apart from within. Social media and especially AI are polarizing and intensifying what would otherwise be fringe points of view.

My previous blogs have highlighted the deterioration in our social fabric where doing the right thing is increasingly going out of style. Gaslighting is so common on far-left ideologies that even mainstream American called it into question as evidenced with this most recent national election. So, there is hope that America is waking up.

But the attitudes toward the not yet tried and convicted suspect in this recent murder tells me we are in an incredibly dangerous place. How can we openly voice such hate? Where has our respect for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness gone? What is worse here, is as I talk to those who feel this way they have no remorse about their hate!

Please step back and compare this article to what you are seeing around the world in what we like to call radical hate groups such as Hamas and others? We say we reject hate speech and phrases like “death to Israel” yet this NBC article points out we harbor hate at the same levels. Notice that no one in the article points out this is all hate speech!

Yes, you can say this is in response to wrongs by the healthcare company … but … killing a person just because you disagree with their business dealings crosses an ethical and moral line that I thought was not acceptable in this country. Perhaps not. I would hope that our politicians pass laws against AI that condones and/or promotes hate speech.  And, should you think I am exaggerating, please take a careful read of this: https://wapo.st/4g7vyPd

Hate speech is not acceptable within our freedoms of speech.

The recent pardon of Hunter Biden along with the media’s forgetfulness of what we learned on his laptop are truly frightening. Doesn’t everyone remember the details that proved both father and son were doing illegal international dealings?  Could it be that by President Biden pardoning his son he was attempting to avoid that he himself would be charged at some future time for those dealings?  Why hasn’t anyone pointed this out as the blinding flash of the obvious?  Yet, that laptop seems to have been forgotten by the press. This also is especially hard to stomach given Biden’s repeated insistence he would not pardon his son if convicted.

Biden’s sweeping pardon recommendation goes so far beyond the customary presidential pardons.  You would think this would strike an immediate rage in the press.  This complicity makes me truly wonder whether the press have any ethical backbone. It is refreshing to see some Democrats breaking rank, and even some in the media are crying foul. But most of the press are still confirming my prior blog’s criticism by gaslighting the American public. They have gaslit for decades now, but Americans have learned to see it.  But now it is just getting ridiculous.  The consequent loss in public confidence and trust is tragic.

Some bleeding-heart liberals will quote the biblical stories Jesus told about mercy and forgiveness.  Anyone teaching Sunday School struggles to explain Christ’s repeated illustrations of how mercy and reconciliation trump equity and what we define as justice. Whether it is the laborer who is hired at the last hour or the prodigal son, many Christians will cry out (if they feel they are safe in doing so) “that’s not fair!” How can someone who just works one hour be paid the same amount as the person who worked eight? It is not fair, but the story is not about that at all. It is about the redemption of people, not being fair. After all, from God’s perspective, the person who is redeemed at the last minute is still that, lest they boast.  I don’t see parallels to this in the POTUS actions.

Explaining these stories requires a much deeper understanding of the concept of redemption vs. the simpler concept of justice. Jesus was emphasizing the end state that restores the person and the situation to harmony in the eyes of God. Jews refer to this state in their word shalom and the act of getting to it in the word chesed … which translates to unmerited favor. That is, the person doesn’t deserve it. This is not about fairness. The best illustration of these Jewish ideas is in Micah 6:8 answering the question of what the Lord expects of us: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

But, Joel, the word justly is right there in plain sight, and it is not justly correct to pay the laborer who only worked that one hour the same! Let’s take a closer look at the word justly.  In Micah 6:8, the Hebrew word for just is mishpat. Tim Keller from Uncuffed says “mishpat’s most basic meaning is to treat people equitably. It means acquitting or punishing every person on the merits of the case, regardless of race or social status.

Anyone who does the same wrong should be given the same penalty. But it means more than just the punishment of wrongdoing. It also means giving people their rights. Mishpat is giving people what they are due, whether punishment or protection or care. So, this term is to put the actions alongside the concept of mercy, obviously implying God is the final judge of the outcome.

We can clearly see the injustice in America’s past with native Americans, blacks, Jews and others. We repeatedly state this is the land where everyone has the same inalienable rights: The right to enjoy and defend one’s life and liberties, the right to acquire, possess, and protect property, the right to seek one’s safety, health, and happiness in lawful ways.  The details are important: We have freedom of speech, to worship or not, the right to travel anywhere in our borders, the right to self-defense, and the right to privacy.

Inalienable rights are different from legal rights, which can be removed by the government under certain circumstances, most notably the offense of crimes against another citizen. Yet here we deal with the concept of mercy and the pardoning of criminals by a president. The pardon by President Biden is illegal and unfair. It sets a precedent that will haunt us all for decades if it is allowed to persist.

Will any religious leaders weigh in here? Will the politicians use this as an excuse to use the pardon for almost everything they want to hide in the future? How is that justice and mercy for the average American?

It makes me wonder … no it doesn’t really. The phrase that now comes to my mind is “I smell gas!” You eggheads already know the rotten egg smell in natural gas is added intentionally by gas companies to allow people to easily detect gas leaks, as natural gas itself is odorless.  Otherwise, their homes and businesses would blow up.

So, by analogy, gaslighting is getting pretty stinky. That stink should be a warning we are in real danger.  As the old phrase goes: “There is clearly something rotten in Denmark!”

I graduated college during the year that the most beautiful car ever created was introduced: the Jaguar XKE. It was a sensuous display of mechanical beauty and defined the color British racing green along with the intoxicating smell of tan leather seats and interior trim.

The car looked like it was sculpted in a wind tunnel, adorned with gauges and a stick shift that dignified that style of driving. It was not about how fast the car could go, but how good it could look even standing still. There was a reason it would be displayed in the Gugenheim Museum of Modern Art as the definition of automotive art.

Yes, the ignition was twitchy and unreliable, and you really needed a fulltime mechanic in your family if you owned one. Yes, you could get a hard top or even the 2+2 configuration to tote your small kids in the back seats. But, no … there was no other car on the road that defined the ultimate in raw sensuality … if a car can be defined that way.

Over the years, I have hoped that Jaguar would bring that car back along with modern technologies to make it reliable. I know there are electric versions of that XKE but I am not eager to hand out over $300,000 for one. Back when I graduated from college you could buy an XKE for about 2/3rd the starting salary of an engineer … about $5,000.

Today’s Jaguar line is good looking, and somewhat distinct. I do understand that modern brand management leaders are looking to find a differentiation, much like BMW did with their slogan “the ultimate driving experience” or Lexus’ “relentless pursuit of perfection.”

Somehow, in some dark room, a group of individuals crafted this for Jaguar:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/jaguar-rebrand-is-pink-diverse-and-doesnt-feature-any-cars-904d2d12?st=LTNAQs&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I can promise you they didn’t test this message against mainstream America. Perhaps they have identified their key demographic is somehow excited about this progressive abstract idea. It reminds me of the way the Infiniti car brand was introduced … without any pictures of cars. Here are those ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_a3fZVo12M Notice at least that the ads talked about it being a car. That ad didn’t work well then and doesn’t work now. People are visual. More so today than even then.

Cars are not commodities. They represent diverse perspectives, so yes, there are many brands that can be defined. Some will be utilitarian or even funky like the VW Beetle. Others will align with aspirations and personalities like the Corvette vs. the Mustang vs. the Dodge Charger, etc. Brand loyalties exist within each of these and make sense.

The rebranding ad from Jaguar just doesn’t do anything good, and it may be their ruination. As you watch the ad in the link below, look at the comment section below it to see the public’s reaction and compare that to Jaguar management:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLtFIrqhfng&t=1s

Here are just a few of the 29,000 comments when I watched the ad:

“Jaguar’s pronouns are Was/Were.” “As someone involved in the field of marketing and also from a consumer perspective this is one of the most embarrassing ads to study.” “This rebranding is going to be studied in marketing classes in colleges around the world for the next 50 years on how to instantly drive a prestigious brand directly into a wall at full speed.”

And, here are a few more:

“My Jag just lost 90% of its value.” “Who did this? The Paris Olympics opening ceremony creative team?” “102 Years Old Company… …Destroyed in 30 seconds.” “Jaguar is officially dead, they’ve been dying for like the last 10 years this just the nail in the coffin.” “This will go down as one of the worst marketing decisions in history.”

Now, some … a very few … have suggested this rebrand video was deliberately done to get Jaguar the attention to its new electric fleet with its edgy look.  I hope for their sake they are right, but the timing of a woke approach right after one of the most dramatic election rebukes of these woke ideas seems deadly to me.  

Stay tuned … we will see very shortly, won’t we?  I personally believe everyone associated with this at Jaguar is about to be fired.  Media outlets around the world are having a field day, all with utter condemnation.  

I find that comforting.  However, I really would like to see these new car designs.  Hopefully, the damage done by this ad will not destroy the market for them.