Dinner Table Operations

Dinner Table Operations

 Gordon S Fowkes, LTC USA RET

July 9, 2017

 

Chinese PRC National Day celebration in Sugar Land Texas

There is no better arena in which to observe the values, beliefs, behavior, and norms (VBBN) of culture than in the realm of the formal meal, be it Lunch, Supper, or Dinner (I never knew which was supper). It is here than the games of King of the Hill are played, and the Headspace Adjustment of the players is displayed. It can be said that the decorations, jewelry, exotic textiles, and hairdos and all the finery of pomp and circumstance are at the center of human adventure.

The Hats in Bogota, UPORFA meeting

The formal meal is traditionally the center of life for the nuclear family, the extended family, and greater family such as clan and tribe. Its extension into corporate and military life replicated the social role with often significant political and economic life. In the latter business sense, all the rules of a medieval dining hall remain.

As place and importance in life, the current score in King of the Hill as played out in accordance with the collective and individual’s headspace adjustment is played out in the placement on a dais or main table. The quarterly sales meeting at the local pricey hotel is the place where the current ranking is displayed for one and all.

Argentina, Ganaderos Regimental Diner

The Culture Trooper can gain pre-meal intelligence on the current or last standing of who is one what hill, and some clues as to the headspace adjustment by studying pictures taken of recent events, plus the advice of a friendly player.

 

Army Culture Center on Horn of Africa Food

Plastic Food in display window of Japanese Restaurants

The pre-meal cocktail or coffee warm up is useful in the same sense by breaking out the Suck Up Clusters (SUC) that mark the existence of competing, winning and losing clusters of people bound together by a sense of togetherness or search for approval by and of the main players in the cluster. SUC detection is one of human’s earliest developed social skill which is developed by age six and evolves to a matter of life or death (socially) in the mid-teens.

Warsaw CIOR

The geometric array at the school bus stop and seating order on the school bus is learned early in life. It continues in corporate life, and it takes a well-balanced person to operate independently of them. A quick sketch on the back of an envelope, or cocktail napkin, supplemented by digital photography can be used as order of battle (OB) files.

Vienna 2004 CIOR

The body languages of deference and domination are strongly influenced by culture, but such standard mannerisms as the Look Down the Nose at Lesser persons maneuver is widely used. The hand steeple is a similar mark of dominance.

 Those who fetch and carry are active seekers of approval from the favored few. While often lampooned in cartoons, and derided in literary works of great popularity. A#$ kissing is a more reliable route to fame and fortune that brilliance, bravery, and/or bounty. History is replete with the demise of great warriors, artists, bureaucrats, and kings undone by the gilded roaches that infest even the best of societies.



La Falda, St Joan

The position of Chamberlain, as in the United Kingdom, originally started as the position of the person who emptied the King’s chamber pot. This gives the ambitious the access to the Great One, that few others get. The role of Prime Minister began as the go between the king’s council or parliament, the rationale being to elevate the king above the messy business of dealing with contentious lesser folk..

Likewise, the position of body guard gains access to and trust by the Great One. The downside of this arrangement is that many revolutions and coups were carried out by the Favored Few. Al Capone rose to prominence by being body guard to Johnny Torio.  Saladin got his start that way.  The Lone Crackpot is still the most dangerous assassination threat to the powerful. They have organization that leaks, nor know ambition to power.

Famous Chinese Actress now in Houston

The score card of important people needs to keep tabs on those in the SUC and AKC.

CIOR in Italy

 In addition, those who handle the less glamorous assignments such as taking notes, keeping the records, and counting the dues, but it is those positions that the truly ambitious take on as they are they control the nervous system of the organization. The position of personal secretary is vital to control access to the boss.  Therefore, many secretaries are the real power of the corporation, a relation often cemented by marriage with the boss.

Who sits in the role of parliamentarian, normally a chairman/woman whose formal power is far less than the real power exerted by the ability to control the flow of communication to and from the Boss. It is no accident that the rules of communist states are typically a chairman, or a secretary, while the office of President is symbolic.

UPORFA - The leaership

There are great numbers of cultures outside of Texas that do the same. Africa and the Middle East are predominately of this sort except that one knows which of the clans, great families, or tribes have the insider track. In Texas, if you don’t know who they are, you don’t have a need to know.  It is also typical that the person who makes the presentation is not the lead actor, who in fact often sits in the back.

Mexico, table setting

 In any event, it is more than polite to enjoy the show,

 

Senor Tango in Buenos Aires

ChChi Club in Shanghai courtesy the Greater Houston Partnership

The Intelligence Gap Gap

The present spectacle of President Elect Trump’s evasion of the daily briefing system used for the Presidency may appear to be pure arrogance, however, this gap is extremely common amongst the Insecure.  And insecurity in the Executive Pottery is very common to the point that all who read here, know of it personally.  One does not tell the spouse that the favorite attire is nasty, brutal and short.

The Gapped does not want to hear what does not fit the Gap’s Preconceptions particularly if already Tweeted. Hitler’s famous temper tantrums were his style to evading the issue of a challenge to omniscience.  Everyone is gapped in some way, boss or blue collar, but particularly in the ranks of the Corporate Eunuchs (Suits), the Assistant to Roaches (fake suits), and courtiers and courtesans of corporate courts (the dressed) thousands of years so far. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZZhhA87d6g   (Robocop Glitch Clip)

I fed my family for a decade when I was an IRM manager in the City of Houston on exploiting the Gap’s Gap, filling the Gap with Actionable Intelligence, instead of Glittering Gossip.  This was the continuation of a bad habit I learned in the Army, in Combat, and Behind the Green Door.  The trick was that the Gapped, could understand and intelligently use the data provided, and as such said actionable intelligence became addiction, and my paycheck was dependent upon said addiction.  

My mandate was called the “Chinese Lesson” based on the keen grasp of bureaucratic baffle noted in the Characters of the Chinese language

The "Chinese Lesson: about not building temples in my empire.

In the Case of the Donald, whose firm grasp of complex data is essential to effective management and leadership is a clear and present threat to his Suits, Courtiers, Dressed, Jackals and Roaches.  Powerful leaders know this game and keep the Gilded divided against each other.   FDR put two bureaucrats in charge of the TVA project requiring his interface.  Hitler divvied up propaganda between Goebbels, the Radio/movie studios and Leni Reifenstahl.  Stalin had his closest advisors dance like bears in his place late at night.

The real center of power in a Gapped Regime is often wielded by whomever has the Gap’s Ear, such as the Horse Master (Tudor), Body Guard (Capon), Pheromone Mistress, often the Spouse.   The position of Chamberlain was of the Golden Crapper Emptier, hence the name.  This is the position of the Trump team between rival egos, appetites, and billions where he thinks he can control by Firing. 

The Witch and the Pendulum

The Dark Side of Mom and Dad often is a domestic screaming match between a Manipulative, Vindictive Bitch and a Murderous, Vicious Bastard.  Heard often against the clicking of an over worked air conditioner floating in trailer parks, and gated communities as well.  Aggregated it represents itself in politics in just about everywhere.  Here, in God’s Country, it is the core difference of the angry side of the Democratic and Republican Parties, and replicated within in many a contentious fragment.

The Bright of the Mom-Dad dichotomy is the Nurture and Protection of the Family with a dramatic variant of the Knight, Nurse and Infant.  Kissing babies is a political must.  And everything a politician does is “for the children”.

So swings the Pendulum between the light and dark, between mom and dad from extreme to extreme.  Sometimes there is more than one pendulum swinging and from different directions.  That’s called LIFE.'

Pardon the mixed metaphors but there are True Believers of each slice riding upon the blades hurling bolts of bullshit and veracity at each other, with the throwing oft more valuable than hitting.  That’s called propaganda (as in propagating the faith).  In Transactional Analysis, it is called Stamp Collecting, Games and Scripts, all of which are useful in political analysis.

While there appears to be swings of the blade each decade, the current swipe and America has taken about fifty years to reach full force, starting in the Grey Flannel Days of the Fifties, triggered by the Sixties, tripped out by the Seventies, indulged in the Eighties, and beginning with Orange Juice the counter attack began against the Psychedelic, Tie died, Daddy Hating Progressive Left by the Commie/Mommy hating, Retro Fixated Isolationist Straight and Narrow. 

Then there are the neighbors, bill collectors, employers, and busy bodies whose purpose in life is to make your life a benefit to theirs, by adding or subtracting.  Meddlers from afar have included the French, the British, and the Russians.  The United States used to be called a Republic until the United Kingdom sold the idea that the UK and US were democracies…Republican was not an Irish option. 

Since then the People’s Democratic Republics have been undermining the Republic in the name of something that is not in the Constitution.  This time, the Tsar has returned without the Democracy defect and seeking to drive the US from foreign soils, water and air that threatens Mother Russia.

The Left has been abandoned by Russia, and the underlying purpose of Progressivism to undermine the US, has been shifted to the Straight and Narrow.  It is time for the rest of us to get off the swing and get down to work.

From Russia With Love

The principal problem facing the US electorate for principally the next election cycles is the polarization thingie.  And that goes back to Alexander Nevsky to the Oil Patch to the Rhine.

 

That we have AltRights crawling out from rocks long since forgotten is the direct result of AltLefties who failed to crawl back under theirs leaving choices with nothing in between, sounding like a domestic squabble between a stoked-up nag and a drunken braggart.  Even judging what was being argued over drowned out by the echo chamber on steroids. 

 

The Pro-VietCong of the Sixties and Seventies



The Bitch Cycle to Trade Psycho Stamps to Cash in on a Free Terror

The breach in the sanity cycle for this old soldier was when the Communists on Campus came out of hiding back in the Sixties and effectively sapped the will of the people to fight Communism over there where I was, and done with the same methods used on the French in 1940 to support the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Stalin and Hitler.  At that time, the commies in the US were sabotaging US war production and blocking shipments to Britain...which was suddenly reversed when Hitler invaded Russia. 

French PoW's policed up by the German in their invasion of France

 

Now the Communist and the Hippy Dippy Campus Commies have served their purpose to Soviets by supporting Russian Defense and Energy industrial sectors, but have left NATO on Moscow's doorstep, the need of the Russian state for Lebensraum and restore the borders of Mother Russia to those held in 1914 and again in 1946.  The shift of the NATO borders 800 miles to the Right from the Oder to the Dneiper restored Russian borders last held in 1654 when the Ukrainians seceded from Poland. 

I was one of the guys in the front rank of the 3rd Amored Infantry Bn, 36th Infantry, 3rd Armored Division (Spearhead)

The destruction of American resolve tied to the Anti-War Anti-Energy Anti-Anything "Libtard" Democrats has run its course, and as such created a storm of Anti-Anti-ism which provides the Russians with a two gun approach to restoring the glorious borders of Mother Russia to the Rhine this time long desired since Muscovy is has no defensible borders at its core.

 

 

A little history is never too late.

 

The Muscle Hypothess for Trump

 

 

 

 

 

The issue is where is Donald to get the muscle to either stage a "counter coup" or "to clean out the mess". 

 The Game Plan: Putin Trump

 

 One starts after Election Day, the other after Inauguration Day.  The Presidency does not have the powers to do what he has promised to do.  While some agencies and some military and law enforcement may, like the FBI in NYC, act regardless of law, most will not. 

 

That presents Breibart, Putin and Donald Inc a shortfall in muscle needed to trigger these events and to purge the government of the enemies of making America Great Again, last tried in Prides Purge in  1648 and which the Constitution anticipated in Article I, Section 6:

 

Russian Green Men PMC

They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

 

Prides Purge of Parliament in 1648 to the Rump Parliament

 

As for the WingNut Conspiracy, these items have come to light:

 

 

If you didn't know it the war is already on?

 

 

The only source of firepower not tangled up with legal constraints or hesitancy is from "private" military companies of which there are many run by Russia and many that are equal opportunity mercenaries. 

 

The Best of the PMCs - Executive Solutions from South Africa

 

 

This is a hypothesis not a prediction

 

Gordon

 

 

 

It's the Village that Counts, not the Pitch

 It's the Village that Counts, not the Pitch

Benito Mussolini

The curse of the Enlightenment on Western values is that there is something called reason, rationality, and logic which govern action.   If an argument is not reasonable, irrational or illogical, it is invalid, and inapplicable.  Its underlying assumption is that everything is reducible into measurable, relevant, consistent and accurate labels for reality, that can be consistently added, subtracted, contrasted, combined, allocated, dispersed, and/or measured to good use.   

Descartes didn’t know ducks. The Irrationality of Reason

http://crossedculture.blogspot.com/2012/03/dna-ducks-and-descartes.html

It is concentrated into what is called, mental as in conscious, subconscious, and unconscious manipulations in a lump of nerves called the brain (cerebral cortex).  Were that true, decapitation would be an irritation.  Were that true, an erection would be irrelevant, and the flu clueless.  One cannot have a head without a tail.  And that includes the Autonomic Nervous as an example of one of many biological systems networked to keep us alive and kicking.

Or the need for “Stifficade”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w208VXxwZzI

The central function in all life is to survive, day to day, and generation to generation.  Breed and Feed, Dinner and a Date, Laid and Paid, and to ensure that, species develop Roles, Rules and Tools to make that happen.  Failure is starvation or extinction.

And that requires an audience of a critical mass of male and females who breed a critical mass of children to survive to puberty.  And that’s a family, and a village of families who have Roles, Rules and Tools to survive.  From the outside, the village is the audience. 

The Eternal Drama between Victim, Rescuer and Prosecutor

And some villages aren’t listening, some have heard it all, and others soak it up like a Magical Elixir (Beer).  This we have in terrorism, radical polarization, and drug addiction. Depending how the Rules and Tools serve the Roles related to Survival (Village wise).

Rules applicable to all forms of life, coded in culture and DNA.

 The core of the Trump audience is made of the inheritors of the Scot Irish driven from Scotland to Ireland to Appalachia because they didn’t listen to the arrogant, erudite, socially elite, and utterly corrupt.  The more erudite, arrogant, and elitist the arguments are, the more corrupt they must be.

17th Century Version of the MBA

And some villages, like families are dysfunctional and/or broken into competing parts.  The street gang, the drug den, high schools, corporations, and political parties are part family, part village, and a part of something else.  The more arrogant, erudite, and elitist the arguments be, the battered and beaten shoot back at. 

Selling soap to the Unwashed is problematic.  Selling the Oxymoronic eventually reaches Cognitive Dissonance, and every once in a while, Rage.  Selling the notion that some people are more equal than others became normalized about 1984. Orwell is crying.  The village is dying.

The Pitchfork and Torches are marching.  

ISIS

OBTW - Watch the body language which language is far more effective than words.

Mussolini

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOv-Ncs7vQk

Trump

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/07/watch_trump_give_a_startlingly_bizarre_speech_sort_of_about_running_for.html