Apr 252012
 
 April 25, 2012  Posted by at 9:32 pm Finance

The following brief article + videos were sent to me by a friend via email. Let me give you a fair warning before I post it’s contents here – the whole ordeal may make you sick to your stomach, so keep a bottle of Pepto Bismol and a trash bin nearby. And if it somehow manages to make you drool instead, then I seriously recommend that you take some time to reflect on your eating habits. Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, here is Mary Beth Quirk for The Consumerist:

Nothing Says Stuffed Crust Pizza Like Cheeseburgers and Chicken Nuggets

 

We’ve already slobbered over Pizza Hut’s hot dog-stuffed crust over in the United Kingdom, and now yet another non-American outpost of the chain is getting something we are downright turning green with envy over. Well, jealous or slightly nauseated: Pizza Hut Middle East has smushed cheeseburgers and chicken fillets into its crust.

 

Eater.com blows the delectable lid off this hot story, explaining that not only is the Crown Crust a delight on the mouth, but that the toppings that go on the pizza are all part of the theme. So the cheeseburger-stuffed crust pie has special sauce and burgery toppings, while the chicken one has barbecue sauce and green peppers.

 

Pizza Hut Middle East has a long record of blowing our minds and its customer’s tastebuds. In 2010, it put meatballs and cream cheese balls in their Crown Crust.

 

It’s kind of beautiful in an artery-clogging way, don’t you think? That’s rhetorical. It IS a work of art.

 

Check out the video evidence of each offering below.

 

 

 

You may now be wondering what the point of posting this literally heart and gut-wrenching article was. Well, to explain that, I have to turn to the very humurous and equally insightful comments of another friend that were emailed to us in response:

“This is a triumph. I think the hot-dog stuffed crust pizza takes the top prize. It does make sense that these wonderful products are the brainchildren of thinner nations. Americans have gotten so fat that we have lost the wide-eyed hunger needed for getting fat. The American ambition has now turned to staying fat, which requires a very different and less imaginative skill set.

 

Addendum: We had our day though. The Big Mac, the Double Decker Taco, the Choco Taco, the (blase) cheese stuffed crust pizza were all products of the Red, White, and Blue back when we gave a damn about getting fat. Now we just eat 10 of them a day for maintenance.”

That’s a description of the last stages of a bloated Empire in a nutshell – it diverts ever-more resources from innovation and expansion into simply maintaining the unsustainable extravagance that it has built up over many years. This is true regardless of what specific aspect of the American Empire we are talking about – the resources forcefully stripped from peripheral “colonies” have been used to fashion an elaborate insitutional framework in the sectors of government, corporate business, education, agriculture, healthcare, etc., and now it takes everything we have (or get) to prop these mindlessly bureacratic institutions up.

Obesity in America is deeply symbolic of this underlying reality, as it is perhaps the number one factor contributing to skyrocketing costs in the “healthcare” industry. As my good friend says above, the food industry can’t even innovate and market new grossly unhealthy produts in the States anymore. They just keep churning out the same old crap and we keep eating it, because no one knows how to grow their own food, team up with local farmers/distributors and/or shop for healthier foods without breaking their increasingly strained budgets. It is all a tragicomic reflection of an All-American Empire in decline.   

Home Forums The Imperial Symbolism of Pizza Hut

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  • #8551
    ashvin
    Participant

    The following brief article + videos were sent to me by a friend via email. Let me give you a fair warning before I post it’s contents here - the
    [See the full post at: The Imperial Symbolism of Pizza Hut]

    #2802
    SueBee
    Member

    “That’s a description of the last stages of a bloated Empire in a nutshell – it diverts ever-more resources from innovation and expansion into simply maintaining the unsustainable extravagance that it has built up over many years.” ***Wow. ***You have a knack for finding salient commentary. “Tragicomic” indeed.

    #2803

    Funny. The last issue of Adbusters had a 7 decker cheeseburger on the cover with the caption “Are we happy yet?” The mass psychology of capitalism is that of constant culturally-induced striving for perennially unsatisfiable desires that often conflict with basic bio-cultural needs. It’s a mentality of addiction.

    #2804

    So we can rewrite Randy Newman now and say “Fat People got not Reason to Live”?

    RE

    #2810
    Babble
    Participant

    In the US we are constantly told not to call people fat, to not make them feel bad about body image. What is really needed is to tell fat people not to have kids (quit passing on bad genes) and to make being grossly overweight a shameful thing. This would be far cheaper and healthier than letting this epidemic continue. The slimmer people are the ones that pay in the end.

    #2812
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    Ok, I give up. Can somebody clue me into whether this is a real Pizza Hut campaign or just an elaborate joke by some talented pranksters?

    #2814
    ben
    Member

    this article is feeble. the humor is tedious and it’s also full of shit:

    It does make sense that these wonderful products are the brainchildren of thinner nations. Americans have gotten so fat that we have lost the wide-eyed hunger needed for getting fat. The American ambition has now turned to staying fat, which requires a very different and less imaginative skill set.

    the reason for crown cheeseburger pizza is because american culture in the middle east is fake as fuck and super dorky. just like american culture in europe is fake as fuck and somewhat less dorky. it’s more dorky because it’s more earnest and less jaded. non-american market gimmicks are just dorkier because like with the noveau riche such consumption requires less irony be attached to it. that’s all. it’s embarrassingly honest. tragically hip. this is not to say of course the late, ironic variant that is post-dorky isn’t also dorky. on the contrary. it’s just dork in denial. which of course brings it all the way back around the vortex as the redux of dork, and embarrassing honesty, and tragic hipness. the recycling never ends. until it does.

    there are no imaginative skill sets anywhere – it’s just industrial light and magic. it’s got nothing to do with just saying some bullshit and it getting posted on TAE just because it’s trendy-funny and supposedly rings true.

    reddit alert.

    #2815
    Bot Blogger
    Member

    I heartily disagree Ben. This is the kind of article that provides insight into the new ubiquitous urban culture of the world. More people live in cities now then ever before. Having dinner out at Pizza Hut is an extraordinary luxury for many. Dorky has nothing to do with it.

    This also has nothing to do with American culture. It’s corporate culture. This ad campaign cannot be judged by standards of hippness. All ads are simply selling some idea of luxury attained. Remember those pizza pop ads that looked like scenes from a sam peckinpah film? An age old story of teenage excess. This is a Middle Eastern version of the same excess and outrageousness. Just a lot more tame. But still it’s the same. The food looks like shit but the article is ok IMHO

    That said I liked your rant.

    As for fat people… well people don’t have to eat ‘American Food’ to get fat. Indian food, can be incredibly fattening. So can Thai food. ‘What They Deep Fry in Other Countries’, that’s going to be the name of my restaurant. Fat equals wealth in many countries. Corporate fast food places have isolated the secret ingredients down to SALT, FAT, SUGAR. oh yeah and bread and alcohol (both also convert immediately to sugar). Most people don’t have any idea how much salt they are consuming in a day or even what excessive quantities of salt tastes like. Just keep drinking beer! Chips, spaghetti sauce, ketchup, mustard, chutney, anything processed tends to have massive quantities of salt. Check it. And BTW, you have to double the sodium quantities given on the label.

    #2817
    ben
    Member

    Bot Blogger post=2426 wrote: I heartily disagree Ben. This is the kind of article that provides insight into the new ubiquitous urban culture of the world. More people live in cities now then ever before. Having dinner out at Pizza Hut is an extraordinary luxury for many. Dorky has nothing to do with it.

    This also has nothing to do with American culture. It’s corporate culture. This ad campaign cannot be judged by standards of hippness. All ads are simply selling some idea of luxury attained. Remember those pizza pop ads that looked like scenes from a sam peckinpah film? An age old story of teenage excess. This is a Middle Eastern version of the same excess and outrageousness. Just a lot more tame. But still it’s the same. The food looks like shit but the article is ok IMHO.

    it’s not urban culture that we’re talking about here in the context of pizza hut. it’s american culture. american corporate culture. dorky has everything to do with it. dorkiness is the condition of being out of touch. with one’s cultural roots. i’m not making an argument for industrial hipness. there’s no such thing. i’m making an argument against industrial hipness/sophistication. hence the supposedly arty ads so prevalent in the west that signify the cooptation of indie/’high’ art, which was itself a negative reaction to fully-developed industrialism. joking about how fat americans face diminishing returns in conjunction with the marketing that facilitates obesity is a form of industrial sophistication and dependent itself on intellectual gimmickry.

    dorkiness is living in riyadh or jeddah or, god forbid, beirut, and eating out at pizza hut instead of at a local foodcart or restaurant. dorkiness is doing the same in america. the difference being that to the american dorks the middle easterners look dorky but to the middle eastern dorks the american dorks look super cool.

    also, having dinner out at pizza hut is not an extraordinary luxury for pizza hut’s target demographic, which is people with adequately disposable income to become repeat customers, like those in the ad. the pizza huts of doha aren’t courting the indonesian construction workers.

    #2821
    william
    Participant

    spinning out of control the situation is circular reasoning

    Feeling stressed and wipe out one grabs the bucket of ice cream and engages until the tummy gives one back the good vibes. After drugging oneself in this method and the high is gone one is left with the same stressed feeling and just a little bit heaver. Of course the cure to this is all to obvious – grab the bucket of ice cream and consume just a little more than the previous time. That should fix everything.

    This is incredibly similar to governments who get a great high by creating money. Of course there will be no bad side effects to creating trillions and everything will be just fine (until the high is fading)

    Maybe eating oneself to death is a viable option after all.

    #2822
    Bot Blogger
    Member

    Ben:
    Thanks for defining ‘dorkiness’. I agree with the definition. And I see the Dork as a strawman to the Uber Geek. Perhaps the apex of your industrial Art Ad. In advertising these are distilled characters of some target demographic. They are a middle slice out of the bell curve of human behaviour at a particular age. Looking cool and being hip is an issue for youth. This is something 20 year olds concern themselves with. This is not a real issue. This is what pseudo sophistication in advertising is all about. Being able to say you’ve left the ‘Pizza Hut’ demographic. I’m a big boy now, I eat at Mortons! Pizza Hut is courting whoever will cough up the money to buy their crap. They don’t care what demographic you are from. They just want you to self identify. BTW I’m not really sure I’ve seen all these sophisticated industrial ads you’re talking about where I am. I just see lots of dorky ads. I guess that’s my demographic.

    Why American Culture? Are there any Yanks that can explain this. Is American culture, corporate culture? I remember when Walmart came up to Canada, there was a bit of surprise at the cultishness of the corporation. The raw raw we can do it, lets stalk those shelves! Let’s do it for Jesus! What might be described as a real Can-Do American attitude. Is that what American culture is? A corporate jesus cult? Is the fact that America raced so fast into industrialization with the oil economy fueling an exploding advertising culture that American’s have no culture to look back to? No roots? Personally I don’t have a problem with not having roots. I’ll make my own. Ultimately culture is simply the group of people you have fallin’ in with whether you like it or not. (And hopefully you like it and them)

    As Jesus said: ‘The dorks will always be with us’.

    #2823
    Bot Blogger
    Member

    William if you’re planning on eating yourself to death don’t do it at Pizza Hut. You’ll throw up before you get the job done. Here’s a better solution:

    Le Grande Bouffe:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsxLoR2pGqY

    #2826
    ashvin
    Participant

    ben post=2425 wrote: the reason for crown cheeseburger pizza is because american culture in the middle east is fake as fuck and super dorky. just like american culture in europe is fake as fuck and somewhat less dorky. it’s more dorky because it’s more earnest and less jaded. non-american market gimmicks are just dorkier because like with the noveau riche such consumption requires less irony be attached to it. that’s all. it’s embarrassingly honest. tragically hip. this is not to say of course the late, ironic variant that is post-dorky isn’t also dorky. on the contrary. it’s just dork in denial. which of course brings it all the way back around the vortex as the redux of dork, and embarrassing honesty, and tragic hipness. the recycling never ends. until it does.

    Are you seriously asking us to believe that you have completely decoded the nature of American culture, as well as its application in all foreign cultures, and how none of that has anything to do with the economic realities of American imperialism? It all comes down to which culture has decided to me more dorky than the other, as the word has been so carefully defined and teased out by ben?

    The comment from my friend was clearly intended to be more humorous/sarcastic than an exact description or summation of why corporate food commercials are different elsewhere, unlike the dorky-hip spectrum TOE that you have provided us with. The reason I re-posted it is because I thought it was very symbolic of how empires operate when they are in decline.

    There is also a literal (and very obvious) connection between the shift of American corporate innovative/marketing resources and strategies from the developed world to “emerging economies”, as well as the rapid cultural shift (which is not independent of capital shift and corporate manipulation), and the decline of the American empire. But, apparently, that’s a bit too radical of a claim for you to handle.

    #2839
    ben
    Member

    Are you seriously asking us to believe that you have completely decoded the nature of American culture, as well as its application in all foreign cultures, and how none of that has anything to do with the economic realities of American imperialism? It all comes down to which culture has decided to me more dorky than the other, as the word has been so carefully defined and teased out by ben?

    blah blah blah.

    The comment from my friend was clearly intended to be more humorous/sarcastic than an exact description or summation of why corporate food commercials are different elsewhere, unlike the dorky-hip spectrum TOE that you have provided us with. The reason I re-posted it is because I thought it was very symbolic of how empires operate when they are in decline.

    an i thought it was gimmickry.

    There is also a literal (and very obvious) connection between the shift of American corporate innovative/marketing resources and strategies from the developed world to “emerging economies”, as well as the rapid cultural shift (which is not independent of capital shift and corporate manipulation), and the decline of the American empire. But, apparently, that’s a bit too radical of a claim for you to handle.

    if you reread what you quoted from me, and the content of my other comment, you will see that all i am talking about regarding my Theory of Dork (TOD) is that the only reason such a stupid fucking ridiculous Cheeseburger Crust Pizza can exist without irony in the middle east is because something of american culture was lost in translation. my high school buddy came back from italy in the early 90s with a shaquille o’neal t-shirt in purple and yellow because the image of shaq was from his purple and yellow LSU days. the funny thing was that whomever made the t-shirt was selling hegemony more than anything and framed the image top and bottom with MAGIC and JOHNSON because the los angeles lakers also wear purple and yellow. these examples are beyond kitsch, and they are everywhere. any expat living in america who has traveled back to his or her home country over the past twenty years is aware of this grotesque charade.

    what these wannabe cultures adopt is a bizarre facsimile of a sick culture. they don’t even get the real thing, which, for all its shortcomings, at least has an internal logic. at least americans are authentically fucked up. americana is in our bones. we might have a razor with six blades and three lubricating strips and give it a name but chain restaurants in america sure as hell know that a pizza and a hamburger can’t be combined and have commercial value because it’s just too fucking silly for anyone over the age of five to contemplate. but in the ME you can have a cheeseburger crust pizza and in england a hot dog crust pizza.

    it’s tragic. the same thing goes for the MENA revolutionaries and their industrial delusions. these people are trying to claw their way into the matrix because they watch television. it’s easy for me to say and obviously i don’t blame them for doing so in a world of nation states.

    #2841
    ben
    Member

    Are you seriously asking us to believe that you have completely decoded the nature of American culture…

    course not. what you quoted is just commentary on the, ahem, fundamental nature of the cheeseburger crust pizza.

    #2842
    ashvin
    Participant

    I have been to India many times and have seen their version of American culture. Yes, its obscene. No, it’s not anymore obscene OR dorky than the corporate crap that has existed over here in past years. Older people than myself can probably attest to this fact better than I can, but I remember the commercials from the 90s quite well, and even then they were dorky to the nth degree.

    Have you seen some of the food products that are marketed here?? How about the KFC Double Down Sandwich:

    Of course corporations will tailor the specifics of their products differently in different countries, and will get away with different things over time. The only reason the crown crust pizza seems more dorky to you is because you think like an American. People in the ME are not fundamentally more dorky and more easily duped by crazy combinations of foods. They are victims of material excess and corporate propaganda just like everyone else.

    Given the fact that American corporations have hired 3x as many foreigners as Americans in the last few years, I would think it would be hard to miss the symbolism in these PH tactics. But what do I know?

    #2844
    ben
    Member

    for the record, ash was referring to a comment of mine i deleted because it wasn’t very good.

    i agree cheeseburger crust pizza is not more empirically dorky. if you reread my comment on the dork vortex (LOL) you’ll see that. in fact, i find the current, ironic denial of dork — dork is always denied in the present — more disgraceful. i reproduce it here.

    the reason for crown cheeseburger pizza is because american culture in the middle east is fake as fuck and super dorky. just like american culture in europe is fake as fuck and somewhat less dorky. it’s more dorky because it’s more earnest and less jaded. non-american market gimmicks are just dorkier because like with the noveau riche such consumption requires less irony be attached to it. that’s all. it’s embarrassingly honest. tragically hip. this is not to say of course the late, ironic variant that is post-dorky isn’t also dorky. on the contrary. it’s just dork in denial. which of course brings it all the way back around the vortex as the redux of dork, and embarrassing honesty, and tragic hipness. the recycling never ends. until it does.

    as for subjective dorkiness, i maintain that just plain bizarre cheeseburger crust pizza has more dork (LOL) than a double down sandwich in that the DDS is probably a reflection of the low carb movement.

    #2850
    Bot Blogger
    Member

    Ben I await your full dissertation on Dorkology. Perhaps this pie chart will help to clarify any overlapping definitions of terminology:

    https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1AgA_BSRr40/TE78PIoa3NI/AAAAAAAAALQ/4J5l5jABa2s/s1600/nerd-venn.jpg

    #2852
    ben
    Member

    Bot Blogger post=2461 wrote: Ben I await your full dissertation on Dorkology. Perhaps this pie chart will help to clarify any overlapping definitions of terminology:

    https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1AgA_BSRr40/TE78PIoa3NI/AAAAAAAAALQ/4J5l5jABa2s/s1600/nerd-venn.jpg

    LOL. nice find, BB. can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. doesn’t matter. here is your link embedded:

    a comic or zine on radical dorkology would probably be a good way to get to the kids. but they probably intuitively know it all already.

    my point in this thread is also that i disagree with ash’s premise that innovative marketing has gone abroad. if anything they are just exporting things they’ve learned here. new markets. and the hiring figures merely reflect that. it’s got nothing to do with an empire in decline. it’s not as if anyone in the biz with two synapses to rub together doesn’t understand the implications of a deglobalization.

    is it not safe to presume the hybrid entity in question — the CCP — was ultimately the staid product of tried-and-true market research, and not some unspecified innovation? i expect there’s very little true innovation in developing countries, black budget industries notwithstanding.

    the word itself, innovation – why are we even using it? until further notice, industrialism is a ponzi scheme.

    consumer culture evolves just like any culture, and marketing evolves along with it, because they ultimately are comprised of people, and span generations. it stands to reason that the West, probably with some exceptions like singapore, has the most sophisticated advertising market. and following the money, it still has the biggest consumer credit markets.

    n’est-ce pas?

    #2854
    Bot Blogger
    Member

    Ben thanks for embedding the pic (I’ll figure out bbcode eventually). Glad you like it. Seems strangely accurate, though perhaps panders a bit to geeks.

    Advertising sophistication sounds like an oxymoron. It’s only sophisticated in so far as it’s effective at selling. The advertising awards are simply a way to keep the creative people who are in the industry from killing themselves. I’ve worked on a few commercial shoots in my day. When someone passing on the street would ask what the commercial was for, the auto response was, “Pampers”. This was code for “s#*& in a bag”. We were creating the bag. Sorry for the crudity.

    The declining American empire must mean something different for corporations. John Greer’s excellent series on Empire (Roman, English, American) over at the Archdruid Report has not yet addressed their role. I suspect they think they can avoid the decline part. Corporations have been parasites on the state of unis. They know that they can’t see continued growth in an economy that is saturated. Now they are attempting to move on to new hosts: China and India. After all GM, Ford and Corporate America are in the process of leaving America. They must detach their fate from the people of America and head to better waters while the USS America goes down. A new market is waiting to be sated with cars pizza etc.

    #2855
    ben
    Member

    fair enough, BB, regarding advertising sophistication being an oxymoron. i guess i was thinking of ads such as those of the greenwashing genre using several layers of manipulation in order to short circuit the mental processes of those who know better. but i think you’re right and it’s just the same old carrot on a stick. one that i stupidly became incensed over when it played before a movie at the theater some months ago:

    i do not share your views on china and india.

    https://www.thenews.com.mx/index.php/business/B01-21733.html

    h/t steve from virginia

    #2906
    einhverfr
    Member

    I am in Indonesia at the moment. I don’t know about the Middle East but I expect there are some of the same constraints there. I went to Pizza Hut once here and concluded it was bad.

    I think part of the problem is that the primary toppings we love in the US are full of pork, and pork is haram when it comes to Islamic dietary laws, so you have a company which is trying to serve American-themed foods in a country where adding pork is likely to make the food not sell. So they resort to gimmicks like this. Yes, I have seen “chicken” nuggets in the crusts of pizza over here, and yes they were as gross as that sounds.

    So this is part of what drives the innovation. Pizza Hut is selling Americanism to the rest of the world, and by that I mean corporate Americanism. I suspect we will see more of this to come.

    #2943
    ben
    Member

    the reason, other than dork, that they’re putting cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets in their crusts is to try and compete with the more popular burger joints.

    and thinking on advertising sophistication again, BB, I take back my acquiescence to your suggestion that it’s an oxymoron. after all, sophistication is a ruse. advertising is the sophistication of selling. by degrees.

    #2951
    Bot Blogger
    Member

    Ben:
    Damn I thought I had you!

    But actually we are getting closer to what is truth in advertising. Selling is the only measure of advertising sophistication. It is not indie art ads. So I take my point back!

    Regardless I like the Chipotle ad you use because it’s offers up an interesting test of theory. First, did it succeed in convincing you to go eat one of their tasty burritos? I imagine not, given your reaction, yet you deem it a sophisticated ad. Why? Well the ad plays on the very themes you hold dear. Industrialization…perhaps going back to the land, a more wholesome time…etc. But is that sophistication intentional? Or does Chipotle believe that is what their burrito does?

    I would say they believe. They simply believe that they are doing the right thing and that is what they are selling. One may imagine there are evil burrito bosses hiding behind the Chipotle curtain pulling your strings but you risk wandering into the realm of paranoia. I’ve been there.

    My comment about corporations was not expressing my views on China and India. It was a comment on corporations and whether or not they have a plan to disengage from the nation state, specifically the United States. They are after all transnational corporations. This is what the banks are doing with their debt obligations. They are handing them over to the tax payers of nation states and they will float above with no obligations to anyone other than themselves. The Catholic Church comes to mind as one of the first such transnational corporations that ran influence and power in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Perhaps some such arrangement is in the works. We will be obliged to align ourselves (across borders) to specific Corporate Churches.

    Personally I’m going to get my Chipotle T-shirt and baseball cap on right now so I can self identify and make my allegiances known.

    #2955
    ben
    Member

    Bot Blogger post=2564 wrote: Ben:
    Damn I thought I had you!

    But actually we are getting closer to what is truth in advertising. Selling is the only measure of advertising sophistication. It is not indie art ads. So I take my point back!

    BB. “selling is the only measure of advertising sophistication” is a sophisticated statement. but untrue. so you can’t have it back! or not yet, until you elaborate in a more convincing fashion. i also find the “selling” usage unclear. “sales” would be preferable to me but even then it would smack of Admanspeak and everything Zen, everything Zen – i don’t think so.

    sales are obviously not the only measure of advertising sophistication. but i’m all ears.

    Regardless I like the Chipotle ad you use because it’s offers up an interesting test of theory. First, did it succeed in convincing you to go eat one of their tasty burritos? I imagine not, given your reaction, yet you deem it a sophisticated ad. Why? Well the ad plays on the very themes you hold dear. Industrialization…perhaps going back to the land, a more wholesome time…etc. But is that sophistication intentional? Or does Chipotle believe that is what their burrito does?

    I would say they believe. They simply believe that they are doing the right thing and that is what they are selling. One may imagine there are evil burrito bosses hiding behind the Chipotle curtain pulling your strings but you risk wandering into the realm of paranoia. I’ve been there.

    pffft. i do not believe in chipotle-brand puppetmasters running their ad campaign. this is a function of pathocracy.

    yes, they believe, in a sheeple kind of way. as you say, they simply believe. but if any of them followed the nature of the business to its logical conclusion — JIT industrial capitalism — then they would not believe. Farm Aid — of which chipotle-brand is a donor, which is why willie nelson, prez of Farm Aid, did the ad — is a well-meaning joke. if anybody doesn’t think it’s effectively a greenwashing arm of the one-party system i’d suggest that person think again. it’s a spectacle!

    wikipedia:

    The spectacle associated with advanced capitalism and commodity abundance. In the diffuse spectacle, different commodities conflict with each other, preventing the consumer from consuming the whole. Each commodity claims itself as the only existent one, and tries to impose itself over the other commodities:

    “Irreconcilable claims jockey for position on the stage of the affluent economy’s unified spectacle, and different star commodities simultaneously promote conflicting social policies. The automobile spectacle, for example, strives for a perfect traffic flow entailing the destruction of old urban districts, while the city spectacle needs to preserve those districts as tourist attractions.”

    — Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

    The diffuse spectacle is more effective than the concentrated spectacle. The diffuse spectacle operates mostly through seduction, while the concentrated spectacle operates mostly through violence. Because of this, Debord argues that the diffuse spectacle is more effective at suppressing non-spectacular opinions than the concentrated spectacle.

    on your view of paranoia: if you’re no longer willing to risk wandering into the realm of paranoia on occasion then i’d submit you’re displaying avoidant behavior. which is limiting. the cutting edge is where it’s at. i’m not claiming i’m on it.

    BB said:

    My comment about corporations was not expressing my views on China and India. It was a comment on corporations and whether or not they have a plan to disengage from the nation state, specifically the United States. They are after all transnational corporations. This is what the banks are doing with their debt obligations. They are handing them over to the tax payers of nation states and they will float above with no obligations to anyone other than themselves. The Catholic Church comes to mind as one of the first such transnational corporations that ran influence and power in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Perhaps some such arrangement is in the works. We will be obliged to align ourselves (across borders) to specific Corporate Churches.

    okay, cool.

    Personally I’m going to get my Chipotle T-shirt and baseball cap on right now so I can self identify and make my allegiances known.

    there’s no sex in your violence. you better go commando.

    #2956
    ben
    Member

    by the way, BB, as for ‘getting back to the land,’ permaculture is a half-measure at best. unfortunately it’s the best we can do until the bottleneck, and after that anyone who continues to practice it will probably be doomed because of their attachment to it.

    #2958
    ben
    Member

    #2959
    Bot Blogger
    Member

    Thanks for the images and links. Cool. You might like this:

    #2963
    ben
    Member

    cheers, BloB. funny vid. well written i thought. favorite part was when the director gave the blonde writer a referential hug.

    oxymoron it is. no, wait!

    🙂

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