I'd Rather Die Than...

What an election. Passions continue to roil out of all proportion to the difference either of the two nominated candidates would attempt to make in our lives.

On the Democratic side, we have the polished, corporate-approved candidate Hillary Clinton, who is sure not to upset the apple cart. Granted, her campaign swung left, but only because Bernie Sanders was nipping at her heels.

However bitter and cynical my posts make me appear, there is absolutely no way I could ever vote for her opponent and continue to sleep at night. Hillary's staff is likely aware of this, which is reason to wonder how far left she will continue to lean freed of Sanders' influence.

On the Republican side, we have Donald Trump, the reality TV star and billionaire real estate developer. Donald is in love with two things: power and Donald Trump.

His calculations led him to the Republican party, where he has proven all that is required to be that party's nominee is to be the most obnoxious drunk in the bar. Pushing white America's buttons is a time-tested strategy that a sizeable segment of the population will fall for over and over again.

With a platform as devoid of ideas as reality TV is of Proust, his campaign is an agonizing exercise whose sole success is peeling the scabs from America's wounds. I have never been darker nor more cynical than when I say Donald Trump would be the perfect President for twenty-first century America.

In a full-body embrace of the neutral-to-nuclear dynamic, we are collectively shrugging our shoulders at these two when we aren't slinging the verbal equivalent of rotten produce at them. No presidential election has ever featured two more widely-despised (or apathy-inducing) candidates.

Which is why the following was such a breath of fresh air. It is the obituary of a Virginia woman who passed in the middle of last month.

Enjoy.

Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15, 2016 at the age of 68.

Plotting Our Obsolesence

The BBC reports that Chinese electronics supplier Foxconn has allegedly eliminated 60,000 jobs through the use of automation, which I think is just great. 

To grow a consumer-based economy, isn't it clear that eliminating potential consumers is the best path forward? While we're applauding, we should also acknowledge that this protects at-risk executives from starvation.

Genius!

After swallowing my morning bowl of corporate propaganda, I wonder how much less your next iPad will set you back as a result of this cost-reduction. Or your next Samsung Galaxy phone. Or your kid's next Sony PlayStation. I mean, isn't that why companies use automation? To lower costs?

One-hundred years ago, automation was touted as an expressway to affordable consumer goods, the most famous exponent of which was the Ford Model T. The economies of scale made formerly unavailable products available to the working man, exponentially increasing the depth and breadth of America's collective wealth.

In the twenty-first century, automation seemingly serves another purpose: to cull people from their jobs. Automation is a tool, a merciless efficiency intended to swell profit margins while it removes enormous swaths of the population from consideration of anything but the barest, most marginal existence.

Again, let me know how much less your next iPAD costs, OK?

Corporate spokesmen will argue that as opportunities close at one end, they open at another. Which is only a self-serving repeat of Alexander Graham Bell's famous quote. Like the Reagan administration's fantastical explanation of trickle-down economics, it sounds wonderful and entirely plausible on paper.

But with opportunities for living-wage jobs (not to mention access to higher education) diminishing every year, this is more public relations swill than reality.

Instead of these new profit margins being shared by a wide demographic (i.e. workers), the resulting wealth is concentrated into an ever-shrinking sliver of the population, giving them power and control not seen since the sixteenth-century heyday of the Catholic church.

As corporate titans seek to marginalize the human being, perhaps now would be a good time to take this to its logical extreme and ponder the development of robots who consume. We've already replaced the worker with technology. Why not replace the consumer, too?

In a short-sighted world whose unthinking embrace of technology is best described as we should because we can, it would be entirely appropriate.

Feudalism is a growth stock. Invest now.

Mini Searches for the Perfect Shade of Beige That Nobody Doesn't Dislike

I really don't understand it. But then, there are so many things I don't understand.

When BMW assumed control and revived the Mini nameplate in the early years of this century (2001 to be exact), it was an accomplished update of a much-loved original that immediately commandeered the hearts of car-lovers everywhere.

At the center of its appeal lay a surprising degree of utility and a playful sense of whimsy, that when combined with traditional automotive attributes like nimble handling and robust acceleration, made the Mini that rare sports car which appealed to men and women alike.

And when a 6' 3'' individual could sit inside with posture to make a teacher proud, well, the Mini became something truly unique. The critics loved it, the public loved it.

What could go wrong?

In a word, businessmen.

Before long, BMW was succumbing to the most-tired cliche in commerce: bigger is better. The Mini's singular appeal was then diluted by model variants, including the ridiculous Countryman, whose very existence contradicted the ethos the Mini was created to serve.

The latest Mini's bloated appearance evokes memories of cladding-encrusted SUVs of a not-so-long ago vintage, the clean lines of the original replaced by a lumpy, bulging exterior that is a fun-house mirror distortion of the original.

Of course, since SUVs and crossovers seem to be the Mini's developmental target, perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise.

Worse, quality control has taken a back seat to marketing. In this case, it means broadening the model range until it has reached the lowest common denominator critical mass prized by brand managers everywhere: a model for everyone.

Mini's handlers have decided it's better to be a car a large number of people could conceivably have a use for rather than be an automobile cherished by a smaller, but more-fervent target audience. Call it safety in numbers. Decentralization. Diversification.

Call it anything but successful.

Several car magazine's long-term tests have revealed shoddy workmanship apparent not only upon delivery of the vehicle, but which continues to assert itself as the car accumulates thirty and forty thousand miles. And despite the base car's MSRP, fixes aren't cheap.

Popular perception has yet to catch up with reality, as Mini sales continue to steam along (at least when they're taken as a group and not compared year-to-year on a per-model basis). But if consumer's unpredictable and ever-changing tastes don't doom the Mini, poor word of mouth and a blurry sense of purpose will.

Whether you blame German management or English construction, the Mini's fall from icon to also-ran has been difficult to watch. It only heightens one's appreciation for Mazda and their tightly-focused Miata MX-5, which has admittedly grown a bit larger and more-powerful over the years, also.

But Mazda has resisted the temptation to stray from its original mission statement and has only refined and sharpened the Miata's approach, which is why we continue to see the still-vibrant roadster show up on Ten-Best lists long after the Mini has lapsed into premature middle-age.

There's a lesson in here somewhere, if only someone would listen.

The Alexander Graham Bell Curve

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Early Exits

In keeping with the sort of lighthearted subject matter normally found on The Square Peg, we turn today to yet another—suicide.

A disturbing report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not only reports that suicide is up 24% since 2001, but that it is up across all demographics. Age. Race. Gender. The biggest increases were seen among middle-aged white men aged 45 to 64 and young girls between the ages of 10 and 14.

Of course, the overarching question is why? Why, in a country we are told from birth is the greatest in the world, are people voluntarily ending their lives in record numbers? Unrealistic expectations? The economic realities of post-recession America? Hopelessness?

Teens have traditionally suffered from a high incidence of suicide. At a stage of life that can be confusing and even terrifying, high hormonal levels can abet intense emotional swings which escalate uncomfortable events into tragedies.

Historically, the elderly have also suffered, the most obvious reason being declining health. Coupled with limited financial resources, an inability to live independently and a lost sense of purpose it can be a time of deep distress and despair.

The appearance of pre-teen girls and middle-aged men is new.

I will speculate that this group of girls may be extremely apprehensive about the onset of puberty, and whether they will be physically attractive and otherwise able to fulfill the increasingly high expectations our society holds for women.

Be a Nobel Prize-winning physicist-slash-model and raise Nobel Prize-winning children or risk being considered a failure. 

No worries. 
 

The last group I am quite familiar with. A group that constitutes 18% of the population now accounts for 33% of all suicides. In certain quarters, this might elicit muted satisfaction. Or even not-so-muted satisfaction. 

White men have enjoyed the best of everything and are to blame for everything, so it's only fair that now they kill themselves in record numbers, right? This is cultural payback. A societal market correction.

Before we sign off on this conclusion and move on to the next thing, I'd like to point out that the white men terminating themselves aren't the white guys you hate. The white guys you hate are still in positions of power, immensely wealthy policy-makers largely untouched by the ravages of the Great Recession.

The middle-aged white men killing themselves are being cast into the insidiousness of poverty despite spending 35, 40, or even 45 years doing all the stuff they were told would prevent it.

It's one helluva mind-fuck.

So. Our kids and our dads and just about everyone else are killing themselves in numbers never seen before, leaving behind a scarred and grieving trail of friends and parents and siblings and children.

Are we going to take a long, hard look into the mirror and ask why? Are we going to ask ourselves how do we stop this?

Or does this conflict with the 'It's all good' ethos? 

Just asking. 

In Memoriam

My favorite FDR moment arrived during a speech he gave in New York City just before the 1936 presidential election.

Addressing those who felt his New Deal policies served him better than they did the country, as well as those who simply disliked him on principle, Roosevelt thundered “They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

It was one of the strongest, most-galvanizing statements I ever heard a Democrat make. It reeked of defiance and purpose. Hearing it again in the midst of the Obama presidency, it seemed strangely powerful and provoked this question:

Given congressional Republican's abject refusal to even consider anything emanating from his administration, why haven't we heard similar words from the Obama White House?

Yes, Obama has faced protracted and entrenched resistance for most of his presidency. Obama could have invented sex and Republicans would just say they got screwed.

On the other hand, he too often played the role of Republican appeaser rather than the world's most powerful Democrat, and this was true before the GOP's takeover of Congress. Obama never grasped the dynamic at work, and squandered a fortune in political capital in the process.

It's no wonder frustrated Democrats (myself included) flocked to Bernie Sanders.

True, Sanders was soft on guns. And we're only too aware of his oft-ridiculed notion of free college tuition.

Yet Bernie Sanders was the sole candidate addressing the outrages perpetuated by our corporate banks and Wall Street and big business in general. Of the relentless march of corporate greed and its devastating consequences.

Sanders shone a very bright light on the corrosive effects of big money on politics and came thisclose to upending the conventional campaign model. Sanders moved Hillary Clinton's campaign decidedly to the left, which never would have happened otherwise.

He made Clinton a stronger Democratic candidate.

I am deeply saddened his campaign is all but over. He was that rare presidential candidate who inspired something as opposed to merely being the lesser of two evils. He was bold. He was different. He had ideas.

He wasn't the latest media-approved brand name our simple-minded culture could digest. If you believe Donald Trump is a rebel, and that by voting for him you are too, think again. He's a billionaire reality TV star. A celebrity. 

It doesn't get any hoarier. (Pun intended.)

Bernie was our best chance to slow the nation's unquestioning lurch to the right. Our best chance to combat what increasingly appears to be an emerging corporate-run police state, a dystopia fueled by slave labor yielding grotesque wealth for an even more-grotesque sliver of the population.

A nation which cuts the Three Musketeers' ethos of “All for one and one for all” in half.

Let's hope that Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign was a door opening, and not one closing.

Learning to Respect The Man

As a product of the late-sixties and early-seventies and witness to posters, t-shirts and bumper stickers offering variations of the era's don't trust anyone over thirty mantra, I was reluctant to admit The Man mattered.

I was more inclined to believe The Man was an out of touch, over-fed Republican intent on exploiting the masses for personal gain when he wasn't entertaining thoughts of shearing off my hair and packing my ass off to Vietnam.

Okay, so The Man was (and still is) looking to exploit the masses for personal gain. But as I would learn, he could also serve a useful function. 

One was reviving moribund sports franchises.

By the mid-seventies, the Chicago Bears were a pathetic sight. Offering some of the most anemic, unimaginative and uninspired football ever seen on NFL turf, the once-formidable franchise couldn't even lose well.

Their four, five and six-win seasons meant they weren't able to enjoy the restorative effects high draft picks could supply.

The watershed moment arrived when their once visionary owner looked in the mirror and realized what was wrong with the Chicago Bears. It was only then that George Halas stepped aside and hired a GM conversant in post-WW II-style football.

Jim Finks had masterminded the Minnesota Vikings' late-sixties rise to NFL prominence, after resurrecting the Calgary Roughriders of the Canadian Football League. He possessed an uncanny eye for evaluating talent and potential.

Just three years after Finks' arrival the Bears participated in the NFL playoffs, a once-unimaginable occurrence. Finks moved the franchise away from drafting players the frugal Halas believed he could sign on the cheap to drafting players Finks thought could excel at professional football.

During Finks' tenure Walter Payton, Mike Hartenstine, Doug Plank, Roland Harper, Dan Hampton, Al Harris, Otis Wilson, Mike Suhey, Keith Van Horne, Mike Singletary, Todd Bell, Leslie Frazier, Jay Hilgenberg, Jim McMahon, Jim Covert, Willie Gault, Mike Richardson, Dave Duerson, Tom Thayer, Richard Dent, Mark Bortz and Dennis McKinnon were either drafted or signed as undrafted free agents.

Castoffs like Emery Moorehead, Steve McMichael and Gary Fencik were signed as free agents. It's worth noting that twenty of the twenty-four starters on the 1985 Super Bowl team were acquired during Finks' tenure.

But The Man is relative. While Jim Finks appeared to be The Man for all intent and purposes, George Halas still owned the Bears and was still breathing. He had influence to exert and an ego to satisfy.

The first dent in the Halas-Finks relationship was Halas' hiring of Mike Ditka, during which the old man apparently forgot he had hired Finks. Further eroding the relationship was Finks' drafting of Jim McMahon, whom Halas didn't think highly of.

While history proved both decisions to be sound ones, the relationship was damaged beyond repair. Finks resigned shortly before the 1983 season began, and Halas died just two months later. The 1985 Bears famously won Super Bowl XX.

The raft of talented players Finks brought to Chicago did what players do. They got injured. They got old. A few held out and never regained their career momentum. Without Finks' unerring assessments to replenish the team, this talent was never adequately replaced, putting the franchise in a nosedive that, for the most part, it has never been able to pull out of.

Ironic that even The Man has to please The Man. It's always something.