The Idiot Problem Resolved.

My name is Howard W. Campbell, 3rd and I am a recovering advertising executive. Whatever you do, don't think of an elephant.

Today, I'm filing my report on The Idiot Problem. If you need to jump to the end, rest assured that the idiot problem is resolved.

My fellow Americans, I thank a merciful God... and I am sure each and every one of us... will thank that Supreme Power... whatever we conceive that power to be...

...that peace is at hand.

The threat of Idiot Domination has been quelled. You no longer are required to have a government liscence to perform magic. Magic shows you how your brain isn't working quite right. Magic is something I did for a living before I became a career ad man, I was a theatrical magician. Today, I do magic without cards. I'll take you to an altered state of consciousness from which you will never fully return. By reading my words you are buying your ticket, enjoy the magic carpet ride.

Warren Whitlock reminds me, "I'll tell you what the human soul is; It's the part of you that knows when your brain isn't working right." ~Kurt Vonnegut

I'm the guy companies hire to help them figure out how to rig a system, I treat point-systems with the irreverence I see them deserving. Can we all agree modern economics is the most subjectively sophisticated point-system humans have yet voted into creation by simple adoption? For a brief history of economic systems of our millenia please read Neal Stephenson The Baroque Trilogy.

Currently, as a performing philosopher, I've been invited to brainstorm with a broad cross-section of strategists; in fewer than 3-years as a qualitative researcher with Lieberman Research Worldwide I conducted more 1:1 depth interviews than most academic social scientists will in a lifetime which has given me a broad cross-section of American consumers.

Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a researcher and later as a philosopher, I came into close contact with American business affairs. With the inabilities that predictably come from a lack of listening, corporations would dispense me to tell them what they customers and prospects were saying, thinking and feeling about their named products and services. My observations on their stupefication was not only unsolicited, but unwelcome. Suffice it to say that I observed continual blathering and punishment for a lack of display of fake patriotism, and I began to realize that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming a famous magician or creating sustainable streams of income for myself: I wanted to help the downtrodden magicians. I have since recreated my definition of a magician to be those who recreate themselves to better serve themselves.

I was paid to conduct primary research on both American consumers and American business affairs. I was never hired to report on my meta-observations. I dropped out of a Ph.D. program in Media Studies at RPI largely because I didn't fit in. I withdrew before they spat me out like the cancer I am to their vacuous infrastructure. Cultures of humans appear to me as opperating along similar biological principles as our bodies, when an irritant appears inside the system it is best to put a wall of gunk around it and excrete it from the systems through whatever exit is closest. My time was well rewarded, I learned best practices of distance teaching from a sage academic researcher.

I'm more interested in studying braingasms than I am in learning the nuances of Academia's popular ken. Besides, have you ever attempted to make your way through something like Harvard Press' Value Migration? It's like Dan Kennedy made complicated.

So you, my dear reader, must be some sort of left-brain word fetishist to be dreaming into these multiple-braingasms. Or, perhaps you are paid to be here. Last summer a private investigator made $30k researching me, and telling his client what he wanted to hear: "Ben Mack is Salty Droid." If I had a nickel for every dollar Ben Mack has cost me I could already be living the four-hour-work-week. But from what I heard another so-called professional snoop is barking down my trail. So, for their dinner, dining and dancing pleasures do I write this treatise on The Idiot Problem.

Before we begin...

The Idiot Problem is bigger than you think. In order to help you think bigger, I want you to imagine that only a tiny sliver of society thinks like you. That's not hard for you to do because you know there are not that many people who think like you. So, where's the common ground?

WHERE'S THE COMMON GROUND?

Without common ground, us travelers on Spaceship Earth won't be able to embrace the oneness so many spiritualists profess. Common ground can come into striking relief when you speak with thousands of people one-on-one over a short period of time. I think of the time I spent doing consumer advocacy, advocating the emotionals needs, wants and desires of those prepared to give them money to those who can sell them what they want.

As a branding guy, I also reminded the corporations they are supposed to give the people what they need. That's really the secret to making gobbs of money... Sell people what they want and give them what they need. Brands are named products or services that command irrationally high premium prices. I see advertising as spell casting. Many puritans who work in advertising have told me personally that my seeing ads as spellcasting makes me a Devil worshipper. I see them as morally presumptious and frankly what they think of me is none of my business.

And, I want to give you the two biggest observations I have. These aren't like amazing aha's or anything. However, they are what I see as the two biggest common threads running through these United States...

My meta-observations are two. When I hear common ideas describe across didn't populations, I call these ideas a common thread. I've observed two major common threads. The first common thread has to do with Americans describing Themsleves--remarkably almost everybody sees themselves as time strapped, living a hurly-burly schedule. The second common thread has to do with Others. To a lesser extent, people describe themselves as seeing their life infected by swarms of idiots.

Last spring I was invited to see a presentation by Walter F. Starbuck on The Idiot Problem. Please realize I was on tilt when I accepted the invitation. Ben Mack made a guest appearance in Boise, ID and I had to curry him out of town after the Secretary of Energy for The Sate of Idaho said to Ben, "You shouldn't have said that to X, he's CIA. He'll make you disappear." Three-days later the police came to my apartment. Self-reportedly they had an anonomous tip that I was attempting to hurt myself. With that story they don't need a warrant to enter my home.

The following week, I was invited to a strategy session of a group of people who called themselves Libertarians. They appeared to me as fascists. They were armed, they were scared of their secrets getting out and some of them wore uniforms. Personally, I think a Libertarian uniform makes about as much sense as military justice. Call it what you like, military uniforms appear to me as a force of hegemony, where the uniform makes a soldier the message and the messenger with a liscence to kill. Admittedly, I'm nervous. It doesn't help that I'm in rural Idaho and I was recently threatened by a State official.

Walter F. Starbuck extolled, "You can either see idiots as unwitting accomplices or as active, conceptive ideologists, who make a living undermining the collective good." That was the moment I knew I was in danger. I had never gotten myself into so much danger as being misinvited into this den. Shit. The trick is not to flinch, a lesson hard learned by our warrior protagonist in Shades of Grey. You train for this very moment, when your whole world changes around you and you are actually safe so long as you don't suddenly start flinching or getting weird. Sociopaths who kill for a living can smell your trepidation to murder.

Important safety tip #1 Pretend like you don't see what's happening. If you've blown your "clue-less" cover then... Important safety tip #2 Choose A or B, not both!

A) Pretend you don't care.

B) Pretend to root them on.

Important safety tip #3 If they offer you money, take it.

These are corporate safety tips. Please don't run corporate games on Jedis, it aggrivates the Jedi and he is less likely to gift you his best mojo.

Can we be real for a moment? If it is so rare as to create a run-away-profitable-trend, why would the best strategists want to work anyplace other than in entertainment? I'm just sayin' a lot of money gets spent on games and those who can generate sustainable temporary autonomous zones have a leg up on those who can't speak basic memetics. So it goes.

So, I get invited to mastermind with some freaky cats from time to time about how they can increase their profitability. The #1 problem is always what to do with all the idiots in the world. They have a wonderful product that isn't being bought because of all the idiots in the world.

The ones that feel merely icky are where I asked to spin a lesser financial vehicle. Yuck. Sure, we can use best-practices of parrity products... Like Gossages pink air campaign... but that aint right. Sure I whore myself out. I like to see myself as a high-priced whore, but I'm often more of a poet.

I'm better than most at being able to articulate how people see the world. The key is to simply listen for their visual metaphors. The key to research is to see the passions. We sell these as 'insights.' Here's my finding, when Walter F. Starbuck spoke in totalitarian terms of accomplices undermining the collective good, I found myself hearing a fascist. That's why I named this post THE IDIOT PROBLEM Resolved.

I want to difuse the energy.

Nobody is openly supporting fascism. Thank Goodness! That's an improvement, right? We can all agree that there is some fucked-up shit going on. Even the snoop getting paid to read this who more than likely has purchased a product on self-defense sold by a John Carlton letter and doesn't know what the heck kind of profiling doesn't make sense to him, to you I am sorry for making your head hurt. But not really. Dude, like fucking shit split the money a little, right? You made $30k studying me to come up with a false finding and you call that research? If I did what you did for a living I'm just saying I'd be better at giving my customer what they need.

What does the world need? It appears that we can all agree the world needs fewer idiots. There is only one book I have read on politics that starts with the premise of... I know they are smart people, so I know they can't possibly be the idiots I sometimes see them as being with their politics. It's a conservative book, posing as a liberal book. That's genius right? It leads democrats into a conservative agenda.

Advertising that looks like advertising is 3rd rate advertising...

... gar