Forget about politics; the recent Georgia special election teaches some very interesting lessons we can use about marketing. Mainly, the Democrats spent many times as much as the Republicans, and still lost.

There is a belief among run-of-the-mill ad agencies, as well as marketing and political organizations, that spending more money gets more results. That is true, up to a point. However, as history has proven time after time, there comes a point at which humans act like humans instead of herd animals, and they don’t like being pushed, and they don’t like special interests trying to control the dialogue.

In the end, however, people get a sense of what is fair and true, and who is working for them and who is trying to play them for dupes.

 

The secondary wood-processing sector in America does not have an active marketing organization that represents its interests, so we can’t look nation-wide and find any sense of perspective. Even our own trade media, for the most part, became monotonous voices for a handful of advertisers, lost the attention of their readers and failed. It is a simple fact that any medium that has any value will survive. No value: no survive.

But imagine this. What if we had an association and a media that could buy advertising and advance a public relations campaign designed to educate and elevate – educate the American public and elevate the market for all producers.

Looking back over the past 15 years or so, the mainstream media picked up on the mantra that China is a juggernaut of low-cost/low-value goods that will change the wood industry forever. And, of course, that happened. Now, however, the question is whether the media was clairvoyant or whether they created a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, there was no opposition and no debate.

Not to pick on China, but the name comes up, so let’s see if there is a debate to be had. In the first place, China has no forests of any size. Therefore, they have no saleable fiber. If they are selling fiber into the U.S., they are buying it elsewhere, no matter if it’s cabinetry, bedroom furniture, flooring or toys.

The obvious conclusion is that we, too, could buy fiber from and “elsewhere” the Chinese can, and likely at a better price, especially since much of our available fiber is home-grown, and most of us can buy raw oak, walnut, cherry or maple, not to mention particle board and plywood, within a hundred miles of home, just to pick a round figure. To buy the same fiber, the Chinese have to ship it across the Pacific twice.

But you know all that. And we can go into currency manipulation, dumping, kickbacks and so on…..

 

But what if we had a PR program running in key states that promoted wood from known sources, just for an example? Not “sustainable,” necessarily, but known? Or how about after-sale service? Or replacement parts? The list of ideas may not be infinite, but it’s also not small. And, for a fact, Ikea competes against China quite handily, based largely on adding pizzazz (value) to low cost.

Another area we are being beat by marketing is in labor. If you check with your local, regional or national skills-training institutions, you will find that seats in wood processing go wanting, while there is a line-up for parks, ambulance techs and forensics.

You may wonder what that’s all about, since we all know that young people are wasting away at their parents’ homes, unable to pay their student loans and bemoaning the lack of jobs for bark-chip spreaders, health heroes and homicide geniuses.

The fact is, most kids enter career training based more on what they see on television or hear from their friends than they do on career potential.

 

How do we compete against fads? Back to imagineering, Kansas City last weekend hosted its Maker Fairs. There, we can see the predictable litany of 3D whatever, alternative energy, drones, mobile devices, fashion, gaming, etc., along with one lonely entry under the wood industry. Congratulations Chelsea Shelton for keeping the lines open. Also, congrats on the first original “selfie” we’ve seen in a while.

A strong national, independent voice would be able to intervene on regional issues of regulation, labor, compliance costs, complaint resolution, legal advice and more. The issue of regulation is particularly poignant, since the current administration seems much more inclined to rule on behalf of manufacturers, and we are not positioned to move the wheels.

Anyway, we don’t have such a voice. Only the slow, monotonous churn of news releases, “new” product reports and stories of peers that recently got a discount for featuring a purchase in an interview. Same old, same old.

 

As for anything new, AWFS is upon us. Every show is a new show, if that’s what you want to make of it. New people to meet, new ideas to hear and new markets and competitors to learn.

Wood Industry US will be there with bells on. Drop by our Booth #9774 and say, “Hi.” We would love to hear your ideas of new topics, new ideas or new directions you would like to see addressed on a national or international basis. Who knows? We might even find something new that works in changing the slow, shrinking flow of industry.

 

 

Right-wing icon and conservative-radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh delights in goading his detractors by regularly claiming to be “almost always right, 99.7 percent of the time.” Well, I want to challenge that record and show that, at least in one manner of speaking, Limbaugh is either wrong, or is at least viewing a life-threatening issue as if through the wrong end of a binocular.

According to Limbaugh, today’s mainstream media is simply an arm of the Democrat Party. But is it? I don’t agree. If anything, it’s vice-versa. At the moment, the mainstream media has been ruminating of bygone days when they single-handedly took down an American president, they smell blood in the water, and they are going to do it again.

Strong words? Maybe. But let’s avoid a rant and look at some facts and reasoned observations from the context of history.

First of all, who are these people we call the media?

From appearances, they are almost all employees of fairly large corporations, with virtually all editorial functions performed by lower-paid echelons of varying job titles, and virtually all of them answering to bosses that come up from sales. As employees, they have greater or lesser latitude in decision-making, up to the point of conflicting with the larger goals of the corporation. As such, they can be described as writing either what they are allowed to write, or what they are told. There are enough recent examples of editorial conflict within major news organizations and their subsequent firings that I don’t think we need a list. It happens.

A recent study of journalists turned up some (we think) unexpected results. According to the study, journalists operate at a lower functional level than average, they drink too much and their brains show a lower-than-average level of executive functioning. This will become important in a minute. For now, while I admit the description is unkind, it also affirms my own perception over the years. My own observations have been that journalism students tend to be people that lack power and resources. They can’t become lawyers or doctors, but they want to have control over others. They witnessed or heard of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein taking down a sitting U.S. president, with hardly any training, and they want to do that, too.

As we discuss the profession of journalism, we need to look at what defines that profession. In most cases, practitioners point to the First Amendment as their “enacting clause,” but what does the First Amendment really say? We all know it protects freedom of speech, but if you start writing down cases you will discover that contemporary speech freedom covers three specific areas, those being obscenity, vulgarity and profanity, although most journalists cannot tell the difference between them. I can tell you that the founding fathers are spinning in their graves to see their hallowed First Amendment protections of exchange of political and spiritual thought turned to protecting pornography, while true debate on politics and religion has been cast as “hate speech,” and has been actively barred from every form, if not every instance, of mass media. There is no doubt that free expression, as it was intended, is dead.

 

Historically, this was not the case. When we look at the foundations of free expression, certain names pop up with regularity. From relatively recent history, these include John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine and others. In each of these cases, the demand for free expression was made by the principal on his own behalf, and was exercised on his own behalf. Consequently, the risk was made and the consequences were taken on his own behalf. This, of course, is a far cry from today’s media protestors, whose main risk is 99 weeks on unemployment or a seven-figure severance package.

A primary standard claimed by the current media as support for their far-reaching positions and attacks is what they reverently call objectivity. As an observation, put “objectivity” in the context of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. King George III put a price on the head of the publisher of Poor Richard, should he ever be found. It is clear Franklin thought King George had plenty of publications of his own, and we can assume Franklin would have died rather than put “the King’s side of the story” in his paper. None of the principals above ever proposed a concept called objectivity, yet it is cited today as a formulary, and anybody challenging its validity is damned.

The major point to be observed, here, is that the founding fathers saw a journalist as something quite different than what we see today.

What are their tactics?

Suppression by political correctness. For years I have been trying to find the origin of politically correct mandates, and I found I was looking too hard. They are right there in plain sight, typing away on a rainbow of emotion and polishing their disposable Associate Editor office-cube name plates. One dreamer picks up emotionally that it may be offensive to mention “dog hair,” for a silly example, and decides to “blog” it. The blog post gets picked up by another wordsmith and the next thing you know somebody is accused of hating Chihuahuas.

In fact, without a mass communications system, political correctness could not happen. It is a bullying phenomenon, and it requires both bullies and toadies. It does not require thought.

Another thing journalists do is to interview each other. Where does that come from? The most valuable asset a real journalist has is his sources. If I ever found two of my reporters interviewing each other as experts, both would be fired.

Worse is the phenomenon of the anonymous source. The anonymous source is a valued and necessary tool in a journalist’s toolbox. I have used it once, because the source was authoritative, had inside information that was necessary for the public and would be severely damaged if I identified him or her. A recent New York Times story attacking Trump had about a dozen.

Contemporary reporters make a practice of deliberately misconstruing a target’s words and throwing them back as an accusation. This is evident in the news every day, but for an example you can take President George W. Bush’s statement on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, in which he declared the Iraq war, “Mission Accomplished.” Any fool should be able to see he meant the military offensive, the mission, was accomplished, not that every criminal and fifth column assassin had been tried and sentenced. But the press had its heyday.

Why are they acting this way?

The overwhelming majority, 80 to 96 percent, of newsroom respondents to a number of recent surveys reply they are small-l liberals. If you are a small-c conservative in a liberal newsroom, you do not provide “balance” to the agenda of the masses. You either keep your head down and shut up, or you are driven out.

As self-avowed liberals, the content of the media occasionally moves past mere liberalism and into areas known by other labels. And, as we have seen, the activist press actually involves itself in the news and attempts to direct events to create news.

Jumping right to the chase, I was debating once with a fellow editor that was a self-avowed communist. I asked him if he could provide an example of a country where communism had succeeded.

His answer, without pausing for an instant, was, “It hasn’t been done right.”

 

So it appears that a definable left political group is dominating the media. At this point, however, it is difficult to determine whether the corporate structure, directed by such people as Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post or George Soros functioning through any number of non-governmental organizations, are calling the shots, or whether the shots are being called by the raft of junior editors that write up the politically correct assertions that others go along with. People that write frequently about communism and other social movements often use three classes to help categorize the way those movements are populated: true believers, fellow travelers and useful idiots. It is my sense that there is a smattering of each class all up and down the media line, from ownership to freelancer, so you are free to assign specific individuals to the class of your choosing. Just remember, the primary rule in reporting is to follow the money.

Bezos, of course, is worth billions. It is useful to wonder why he bought the Post. It seems obvious to me, given his conflicts with Donald Trump and the posture of the Post in this cycle, and it’s not for ad revenue.

Others have money, too, and are attacking Trump like a pack of small, beige, yippy-dogs. Others ascribe political motives to the attacks, but what about money? If you look at it, Trump spent a fraction on political ads compared to his competitors, got by far the most press and skirted all protocol by pushing his message through Twitter. The math on that says the mainstream media stands to lose hundreds of millions in ad revenues simply by the way Trump is choosing his marketing media.

In this model, it is clear the media is not who it says it is. It is not doing what it says it does. And it is not defending what it says it does. It is not independent, and it does not promote free expression. In fact, it is clear the greatest threat to freedom of expression is journalism, and it is clear the most accurate descriptor of the current status of the press is “fake news.” Fake intentions, fake actions and fake results.

 

From time to time somebody will remark that a business magazine should shy away from politics. I obviously disagree, but isn’t the shoe better on the other foot? Shouldn’t a business magazine be exactly about politics?

Some of you probably noted that last Saturday was the final curtain, forever, on the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. Its death is attributed to a long political fight, culminating last year in the circus’s having to end its elephant show. Politics. And if you aren’t fond of circuses, check with pork producers, medical researchers, or your own personnel department and see whether politics plays any role in costs and compliance in your own company. To the degree that we all aren’t already asking permission to own our own desks, the program of power simply “hasn’t been done right.”

And for now, the Democrats, energized by the melee or not, may not be the authors of Trump’s so-called gaffes, but the eager recipients of the bounty of the mainstream feeding frenzy.

What happens if the media, once again, succeeds in unseating a sitting President? Well, that depends on whether you are asking a True Believer, or one of the swamp dwellers, doesn’t it?

 _{___________}

It’s only eight weeks to AWFS, which is shaping up to be a great show. Wood Industry US will be on the floor ― see you there!

For the most part, controversial and political issues in the U.S. are framed as moral issues, which then leapfrogs to the conclusion that all religions are the same and Americans are immoral, so damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

However, there is a case to be made that the biggest controversies and political movements are not moral, at all, but money. Plain old lucre. And all the maneuvers boil down to business.

Last week at this time, the media-sphere was in an uproar about sexual allegations against Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Then he was gone, and we didn’t even get to hear the banging of the screen door on his way out.

To be clear, I don’t think I ever watched an entire episode of O’Reilly. He just plain exhausts me. I recognize he earned that ego, but it is nonetheless tiring. Both him and Sean Hannity seem to pad their guest lists with celebrities, and then spend an hour interviewing themselves while the guests watch on in dismay. I think O’Reilly could outtalk James Carville.

Of course, other people like him, or he wouldn’t be taking his retirement with a nest egg some rate at $80 million.

But here’s the problem. Like him or not, predator or not, O’Reilly has joined a long list of men that have lost their livelihoods and reputations without ever being tried by a jury of their peers, and without ever being able to face their accusers. And that is no small problem, since the opposite principle is the foundation of the system that gives us our liberty.

At this point, there is likely one guy out there in western Massachusetts that is asking what does all this have to do with the wood industry in America? The right answer is “everything,” and I’ll get to that.

However…., Many years ago, I was asked to write editorials for magazines. At that time, there was huge commercial pressure to publish nothing that certain advertisers would not like. The result in the broader press was to revert to absolute pabulum and the end result has been a sea of magazines that publish nothing but restructured news releases and portraits of advertiser “leads.” This, in my view, has led to the death of magazines as a preferred medium. The internet has nothing to do with it.

These letters are not “what I did on my summer vacation,” or why I think such-and-such an article on page 18 is a must-see. I write them more as a “letter home” to our readers – people that manufacture and install secondary wood products across America.

 

As with any family, not everybody sees, votes, spends or entertains in the same way. Yet our surveys, which we take very seriously, indicate the letters home are very popular.

Certainly, some people don’t agree with one letter or another. And why not? I don’t, myself. I have been writing these letters for 40 years (GADS!!!) and currently am writing more than five a month for different audiences. Sometimes I wonder, myself, why I don’t just shut up.

However, society is lacking in credible, identifiable, accountable information. Our magazines are of a dying breed of publishing that actually pays for top writers, and we demand industry-consciousness. We provide original editorial content on labour, safety, economics, design, law, import/export, environment, business and a dozen other areas. Importantly, we respect and support our advertisers by keeping a clear distinction between what is editorial and what is commercial. This is in keeping with the publishing standards we post and follow on our websites.

In one area, my letters, I talk about what is interesting to me at the time. It is a diversion. If you can imagine you and I having a conversation by the river, we might talk about kids, politics, religion, business, media or just about anything. Therefore, I deliberately avoid focusing on one single sector of our industry. My letters are a break from work. Some find them funny, some find them educational, some find them touching and some find them irritating.

Naturally, I would like to avoid irritating people. However, that is simply not possible. Let’s say you go to your church and look around. Is everybody there of the same political persuasion as you? I doubt it. Let’s say you are at Thanksgiving dinner. Does the whole family vote the same, go to the same movies and enjoy the same sports? Again, it’s not likely.

I have to confess, there are times at family gatherings I would like to tell one individual or another to shut up, but I usually don’t. I can’t say whether it’s because I respect freedom of opinion and freedom of expression, or if it’s because I think it would be poor manners. On the other hand, I sometimes do tell people our opinions are not in agreement, and they seem to feel free to tell me the same. Failing that, Thanksgiving would devolve, as has in publishing, into nothing more entertaining than the sounds of people eating mashed potatoes.

So where were we? Oh, yes. O’Reilly.

If you followed the reporting behind the story, you saw that the sexual allegations were linked to advertiser punishments, much the same as how Roger Ailes was pushed out, or Trent Lott, or Anita Bryant for any old fossils that remember that actress and how her later-career endorsement of Florida orange juice was ended because she had an opinion about homosexuality.

I have to say, I’m with Anita. Not so much on the style of sex, but the fact. I mean, I always thought it was just plain rude to open a conversation with people you have never met with a statement about sex. In fact, I am quite certain I have never done it. Therefore, I think it’s offensive when the first thing I need to learn about a person or a group is what they do with their glands, and I am quite certain I would feel the same if they had a penchant for advertising their spitting.

Sorry about that…. O’Reilly….

 

So it seems to me as a society we have simply become too rich for our morals, and we can afford to let people smoke pot, quit work, receive welfare when they are also self-employed, e-mail psychiatric prescriptions to entitlement clients from havens in the Bahamas, run prostitution rings of any old sort from out of their basements and make certain the only thing stopping numbers runners from reaching chronic gamblers is that the state lottery has to get there first.

All this is because we can afford it. We can afford to let O’Reilly check out with his tail between his legs because enough money crossed enough palms and now both sides want to “move on” without letting society read, understand, debate and decide whether the claims and the settlement had merit.

The problem is, while society seems to be able to afford an unlimited amount of debasement, not all sectors can afford it. In particular, the wood sector cannot afford it. Not, that is, except the consumer-paper side which has the wealth of Procter & Gamble behind it.

We can’t afford false accusations, and we can’t afford wanton settlements. For an example, I saw a report recently from the Wood Manufacturing Council in Canada that a study had been commissioned about women in our industry, and that study found that women fear us. In the first case, I call foul on the study because it is not consistent with my experience, the methodologies are faulted to the point of being intentionally false, and it would be a lot more credible had the study not been done by a “consultant” that happened to be married to WMC’s president. Or let’s be accurate and say the consultant has the same last name and the WMC refuses comment and is shielded from reporting through the Freedom of Information laws how they spend public money intended to advance, not retard, the industry.

How long do you think it will be before some “association” takes up that “study” as “evidence” of sexual harassment, submissible in court for any offence, real or perceived, that occurs in the next 20 years?

We can’t afford for petty politics to affect our associations, our trade shows and our magazines – the three entities that actually define our sector as an industry. Here’s how that works: an association’s members are the magazine’s readers are the trade shows attendees, and the trade show’s exhibitors are the magazines advertisers are the associations supporting members. All tied up with a bow.  These can rightly be seen as the infrastructure of the industry. They are the roads and bridges of commerce.

Without one or more of these modes of interaction, we are not an industry, but just a bunch of people scattered around, all doing the same stuff but in random ways.

Pressures from the small number of dishonest suppliers and larger numbers of dishonest special interests are actually the same, when it comes to information, and both fall under the legal definition of commercial, versus independent, speech. And you can see the results without me lining them all out for you. As with the sex survey noted above, it hurts the honest suppliers, it hurts the honest associations and it hurts any manufacturer that gets slammed with a spurious lawsuit based on trends and fads.

 

One last interesting fact, though: the special interests seem absolutely driven to call Fox, Hannity and others “Nazis.” You could see it almost every night on the shared-e-mail section. But in pre-war Germany, the modus operandi of the Nazis’ Brown Shirts was to attend rallies of the other parties, shout down their speakers and beat up their supporters. As an MO, that fits the accusers, and not the accused.

Anyway, we have one of those big “interaction” things coming up – the AWFS show in Las Vegas in July. This is a big deal for producers in the West, and it could be a bigger deal for the East, as well, given the clearly changing politico-economic (business) tide in America this year.

I look forward to this being the most active AWFS in years because it should be, and we will have a booth there and look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new.

 

 

 

It’s not as if our country was never polarized before. Those of us that remember the ’60s also remember Selma, Ala., killings at Kent State, the 1968 Chicago Democrat Convention, “freaks” versus “jocks,” and so on…. However, it is strange that the left of the ’60s for the most part preached and practiced non-violence. This is not true today, and people are being singled out and attacked in person, in social media, at work and, especially concerning, at political rallies.

One tool of the left that has morphed and grown is the boycott. Only a few years ago, we saw the left and the media rise up against various individuals that they saw as “offensive” and call for national boycotts. That tactic has grown so far that it’s a rare month that another one doesn’t make the news.

Having a political, social, economic or religious view is now having the same social effect as smoking. Smokers go to this place; non-smokers go to that. We saw an attempted boycott of Chick-Fil-A a few years back boomerang on the boycotters when the “other side” decided to patronize the franchise in a show of support.

Clearly, any person should be free to patronize any establishment he or she chooses, but that’s not the way it’s playing out. There is a difference between an individual choice and a street gang. By appearances, a group of activists identified a bakery as being “offensive.” In that case, rather than patronize any one of thousands of alternative bakeries, they decided to sue the offending bakery out of business. From my perspective, it could be argued that your freedom to patronize that bakery or not was removed by the actions of a very small minority.

 

So where does this all end? What is the objective? I see Ivanka Trump’s clothing line has benefitted by being boycotted. Arguably, her detractors were shooting blanks (an old agricultural term), and people that normally did not focus on Trump clothing suddenly decided to make a statement.

Obviously, we are headed toward global ghetto-ization. I doubt we’ll get there. I believe sober heads will prevail. However, the road we’re on points to restaurants for this group, and other restaurants for that. Clothing for this, other clothing for that. Doctors for this and that. Schools, buses, beaches…. “Step onto our turf and we beat you up.” Or it’s corollary, “Step onto our turf and we’ll kill you.’

It is not politically correct to identify people as stupid, but if that’s an accurate depiction, what else can you do?

For example, I was considering the issue of punishment again. Hypothetically, if the U.S. created Guatemalan-style prisons and incarcerated Guatemalan felons under Guatemalan conditions, would that constitute “cruel and unusual punishment?” Similarly, how about Iranian-style prisons for Iranian felons?

Clearly, I think too much. But if you think about it, it does raise a few points.

Of course, if you go down that road, then people like me, assuming I became a felon – say, by calling idiots idiots, – people like me should be stuck in Danish-style prisons. So I read up on Danish-style prisons and decided we definitely need a few. They could even be useful for paying customers as a retirement resort.

Let me tell you about the underlying philosophy of Danish prisons, as reported by one analyst: “There is no punishment so effective as punishment that nowhere announces the intention to punish.”

How about that? All of us could apply this prison precept to our work places. Let’s say you have a problem with employees coming in late. You could immediately slap them with an unknowable penalty, and then compound the agony by not telling them. Clearly, we Danes can be indescribably vicious.

 

Back to the topic at hand, I understand some companies have restricted political talk during company hours. I have no problem with that. As an employer, you own their time (at least in theory). However, are we looking at employees being polarized, too, with this political viewpoint working at Company A, and that viewpoint working at Company B?

The Guelphs and Ghibellines were two political parties in medieval Italy. To avoid offending anybody by identifying them as idiots, and to equally punish them under the Danish Protocol, we’ll say Company A is Guelph and Company B is Ghibelline.

Assuming both companies are architectural millworkers, does it follow that people who boycott the products of the Guelph company also boycott its customer base? That is, if A&W buys millwork from a Guelph shop, does that mean Ghibelline professors will suddenly refuse to drink root beer? Will Ghibelline teaching assistants kill or maim the off-campus professors?

Six hundred years ago, they did.

In fact, this is the way countries are born. You get a gang of Guelphs and you beat up a gang of Ghibellines. That goes back and forth until one group or the other draws a territory line, and they kill each other over that for a while until the cost outweighs the benefit and they let the line sit where it is. Guelphland/Ghibellineland. Crips and Bloods. Republicans and Democrats.

Fortunately for us, we have recognized the problem and have applied the Danish Protocol. And I hope they have learned their lesson.

 

 

If we understand nothing else about the commercial media, we need to know if we listen closely, they will tell us who they are. For example, last Wednesday, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, speaking of President Trump, said, “he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that, that is our job.”

Setting Trump aside for the moment, did you catch that? Brzezinski said the job of the press is to “actually control exactly what people think.”

She is serious, by the way…. I went to school with these people, sat in the same classrooms, fielded the same seminar scenarios. I must say, most were lacking in acuity, as if they wanted to have power over people, but couldn’t qualify as lawyers or psychologists. I think reporters come in two types: one wants power, the other wants to tell the story of his or her beat for posterity.

I remember when one green-haired lad got so frustrated with me he had to leave when I pointed out that reporters are just employees, and that “free speech” belongs to the publisher. This is a point the unwashed mass media still fails to grasp. Free speech attaches to the owner. Check your library for Ben Franklin, Tom Paine or Jonathan Swift. The owner has a position, the owner has a press and the owner damned sure does not have to obey the whims of his devils. (That was what they called employees back in the day. Printers’ Devils. I must say I like it.) Of course, I suppose a few readers might not like referring to printers’ devils, the name carrying the old, negative connotations that it does.

 

I used to dislike it when people threw around the word “witch.” That is, until I met one. It was a casual conversation. I was single at the time and had the chance to buy coffee for an acquaintance. The conversation ranged from here to there, and an hour or two passed. Then she spoke out: “I believe there is a power or spirit out there that is greater than us,” she said. “That spirit is Satan, and I am a witch.”

I have to admit, until that moment I did not believe in witches. Sure, I have seen the docu-dramas and watched people play with cards and Ouija Boards, but a real witch? Not a chance.

But this one made my blood run cold. I could tell with no doubt in my heart, my mind or my soul that whether she actually could cast spells and communicate through familiars was irrelevant. She believed she was a witch, and she was. She was what some of my friends of law enforcement have confirmed – a practitioner of acts that occur in reality, even if the intent of the act does not. That is, when you see that ritual sacrifices occur in Miami or in Mexico, somebody is doing that. Somebody that you might buy a coffee for in off-hours.

Does ritual sacrifice achieve a desired goal? Well, it achieves one thing. It shocks otherwise well-jaded cops, whether the sacrifice is of a newborn human, as occurred in Miami, or a puppy or a goat, as happened in Kansas City’s Swope Park and elsewhere.

According to my source, the reason people declare themselves witches is to discover rituals by which they can achieve power. Like to actually control exactly what people think. You see, it doesn’t matter whether you or I believe in witches. They do.

Wow. We certainly went dark this time. I suppose I was over-impressed with that news about control by the media coming out Wednesday. In the same news cycle a bunch of self-professed witches declared they are going to see if they can muster the power to destroy Trump. If so, it’s hard to imagine which group, reporters or witches, could manage without the other, although I know there is a bit of overlap. Love him or hate him, Trump sure brings out the best in people.

 

Right here is where I pull this discussion over to manufacturing. You see, all through history the media has worked best when it has worked for its audience, not when it has tried to use its influence to cause its own agenda to occur.

As I have pointed out before, Edward Bernays was an American PR guru in the ’30s that sold the Third Reich on the value of propaganda, moved to Germany and caused all kinds of grief before the truth came out. The truth? The truth is, using communication as a control measure does not work. Importantly, Bernays and Goebbels were not the first propaganda thugs, and, as we can see from Mika, they are not the last.

In its glory, I think the media functions best as a trusted advisor and information store for a focused and responsive audience. A publication of record, if you will. And when the small-shop, family-owned media got sold out en masse in the ’70s and later, the soul of the medium – the owner and editor of the publication – got sold right along with it, and lazy corporations dumped the audience and assigned the responsibility of leadership to the devils.

 

I had the great pleasure earlier this year to visit Costa Rica again, and stopped by a few furniture-manufacturing shops. Here, the people that love and create wood products respond to the markets around them. They are apologetic about their rough-hewn workmanship as opposed to the huge, First-World mega-corps that are deciding what we like to sit in and where we like to eat. They call their little shops “muebles rustico.” Which translates roughly to “peasant furniture.”

Yet I find the stuff enthralling. It is comfortable and not pretentious. In Costa Rica, nobody has beat the life out of the concept of chair or table, and each family is aware that any little change in design can mean a new and vigorous market for their customers. After all, neither you nor I can quantify how many possibilities exist in the concept of “chair,” or the concept of “table.” It is not so difficult to determine the number of SKUs in our top-tier (by volume) producers.

Coincidentally, the top-tier all seem to be corporations with the bloodstream replaced by the income stream, and the soul of the maker consigned to the cutting-room floor. “No sense risking new tooling and marketing on something so untried,” you can almost hear them say. If we make it, we can make them buy it.

Small- to medium-sized wood shops seem to have a great deal in common with small- to medium-sized publishers. We all seem to be growing, and that seems a good thing, but we wonder where our relationship with our customers ends and our relationship with our accountants (yes, and the government) begins.

I guess the devil is in the details.