Marketing Fail! or a Failure in Marketing?

So my birthday is coming up in a few weeks, and today in my mailbox I got this little flyar from a shoe store.  I'm in one of those rewards programs and so occasionally (like on my birthday) they send coupons saying that I can get $5 off or something like that.  Fine.

But look at this picture for a moment, sent as one side of an advertisement for shoes, sent to a straight man.  Is this picture supposed to make me rejoice?  Will it give me a thrill that my relationships will be as exciting as this?  Do I dream everyday of about having 'my day to sparkle'?  Did (national seller of shoes here) actually commission this picture of two middle-age lunatics thinking that their ecstasy at buying a pair of shoes would translate to me?

Yes, it's marketing.  They want me to come and buy shoes.  But this reminds me that for all the analytics and algorithims that now go in to marketing, this company failed miserably when it came to knowing their audience, ME.  We complain all the time that companies are selling our private personal data (that we have given them willingly, BTW) and that no longer can we make choices on our own.  Surely, we think, this is the end of the world.

But as long as actual marketing campaigns are run by people stupid enough to think that this picture will appeal to a straight middle-aged white male, maybe we shouldn't be so worried that we are losing our souls.  Because this picture almost makes me NOT want to buy from this company, just as the guy selling cars from the local Ford dealer who screams into the camera makes me NOT want to buy Fords.

Of course, I do like a new pair of kicks.  And I do like money off...that should have been their message.  As it is, I've got to hold onto this picture of these orgasmic morons until I finally get around to getting my new shoes.

I pledge allegiance to...the confederacy?

This past weekend we had our annual little small town festival.  Having lived in a number of small towns in my adulthood I see that they are mostly the same...a few carnival rides, a craft show and a car show, bands in the park, a beer garden.  The names may change the reason behind the show may change (though almost always there is some nod to the historical background of the town), but they are almost always the same. 

My kids, who have lived in the same town their entire lives, really enjoy our festival.  I don't care for it much, but then again I'm an introvert and so don't enjoy all that much which involves huge crowds of people.  But I do always walk through it for awhile, mixing among deplorables and hippies alike that seem to populate these things.  I'm always fascinated and a little bit disgusted at my fellow humans, such as the huge guy in the tank top with an arm tattoo that said 'Hello Bitch!' in large letters, or the guy wearing the t-shirt saying 'If I die delete my browser history'.  99.9% of the people at these shows are my fellow caucasians, and it makes me realize even more so the stupidity of racism.  I mean, if this is the best white people have to offer, then surely we need some more DNA in the gene pool, right? 

One thing that I notice in the craft shows is the marketing of the confederate battle flag almost as much as the American flag.  T-shirts, wooden decorations, coffee mugs...while I don't live in a former confederate state, I find a lot of people here in Kansas are still fighting the lost cause.  They will fly their confederate flags proudly from the back of pickup trucks or wear it on their favorite t-shirt.  I'd like to think they are honoring some kind of southern heritage of family values...but more than likely, a lot of those who wear these things really do think that fighting to preserve slavery was really a pretty good idea.  Yes "I have black friends" they will say...but really, the confederacy was about slavery at its core, and such a way of life would be perfectly acceptable to many people in Trump's America. 

Because here's the thing: I find it interesting that many of the people who proudly wear the stars and bars at the same time are likely also Trump supporters who get enraged that Mexicans want to come to this country and hold onto some of their Mexican heritage.  Even as they drive around with a confederate flag in the window, they have no qualms about disrespecting the Mexican flag on the car of another.  Even as they tell other people that this is America, love it or leave it, they are still more firmly rooted in an entirely different nation, the confederacy.  What a weird kind of patriotic fervor.

"Beware Those Who Deal Falsely"

One of our little Church of Christ papers that gets sent here each month (not because we asked, but because we have a lot of Paper Popes in the church) had an article that caught my attention.  It began like this:
"Something has gone terribly, undeniably wrong.  When those in lofty positions of authority speak lies, deceptions, and pseudo-clever half-truths, rejecting the clear path of truth for carefully parsed, semantic mazes, something is just not right.  And it should disturb us all.  Doesn't it bother you to hear untruths presented, promoted, and then defended as true?  Doesn't it fuel your fires of righteous indignatino to stand by and witness this constant, relentless campaign of calculated subterfuge?  It seems every day--day after day--truth is forced take a backseat to outright lies, being spun and spun and then spun some more until little is left but the crums of what once was." 

Wow.  Somebody in Churches of Christ is going to come out and talk about Trump!  I'm sure that many who read these words thought much the same thing. 

Unfortunately, the author wussed out.  Nope...it's about false religion.  Everybody but us (and some of us, in fact) are the ones he gets angry about.  Our various interpretations on certain issues, important are not, are held up as sacrosanct, and everybody who disagrees with us is a liar.  He finishes with the oft-used Scripture from 2 Timothy 4:2-4 about 'itching ears' people have that keep them from truth. 

Sigh.  I know, it's a religious paper.  And I know that there is a lot of false religious teaching out there. 

But when much of Mr. Trump's support comes from people of faith, who digest his lies and spew them back out as being true...when they call anything they don't like (itching ears, anybody) as 'fake news'...when they continue supporting a man whose immorality and hatred and self-indulgence as 'God's man'...aren't they doing things just as bad, if not worse, than false teachers in the church? 

The Problem of Gun Control

This weekend, in two separate incidents, troubled and terrorist white men went and killed 29 people in mass shootings.  We grieve and mourn and proclaim 'thoughts and prayers'.  And everytime this happens we seek to change hearts.  We continue to wonder whether we are next.  We hope that something, anything, will change. 

One of the things that is screamed anytime this happens is a demand for more gun control legislation. The blood is on the hands of the NRA and the conservatives who continue to resist these things, it is claimed.  Occasionally there will be some slight reform in background checks and waiting periods and in the particular types of weapons that can be purchased.  But it's still easier to get a gun in this country than it is to get many medications or health care. 

I don't know all the answers, because there are at least three main obstacles to real change.  First, it is estimated that 300 million guns already exist in this country, enough for every man, woman, and child to have one.  Outlawing the sales of guns tomorrow will not change the fact that these guns are already out there...and since they are made of metal they are not biodegradable.  The poison is already in the system.  We should have done something about this a half century ago when that guy went up and started shooting from the tower at UT-Austin.  But we didn't, and now we are reaping the fruit of our inaction.

Second, many of these 300 million guns are owned by people who love them more than life itself and will fight to keep them from being taken away.  For decades now part of the fear-mongering of the gun lobby is that 'the government will only take these guns from our cold, dead hands', and I fear that there would be dozens, if not hundreds of shootouts if law enforcement comes to seize guns.  It makes me think of our country almost two centuries ago...the 'peculiar institution' slavery was a cultural way of life for many to the point that an entire civil war was fought to defend it, and over half a million people died.  And even if we fought that war to take the guns away from the diehards, do we really think that we would get them all?  Because these guns have mostly not been registered and traced over the years, how many tens of millions would be hidden away in the meantime? 

Finally, extreme gun control denies the fact that some think that they genuinely need protection.  This may be a rural thing, in that many do not have effective law enforcement nearby in case of trouble...but even within the city, some hold onto guns not to kill but to protect their families.  I feel for those who live their lives in fear to the point that they arm themselves, and while I feel that many of the fears are unfounded (and arming oneself only exacerbates the problem, not solves it), people do what they feel is right to defend their property and family.  I can respect that. 

So, what do we do?  I do think that legislation banning most future gun sales is a better option than doing nothing.  I believe that we need to work on the hearts of the people who have been told for decades that violence is the best response to threat.  And I believe that we need to find ways to register and make traceable the many guns that are out there and make gun owners liable for their weapons, much as in the OT law people were liable for the violent behavior of their animals (Exodus 21:29). 

But one action that I think would be effective but I've never heard mentioned to me is the simplest of all solutions:  ban and/or severely restrict and legislate the sale of ammunition.  Guns don't kill people...ammunition kills people!  Yes, there are certainly billions of pieces of ammunition out there now, and any future ammunition must be easily traceable by law enforcement, again making it easier to catch future violent offenders. 

Let's go further:  Even if there are billions of rounds out there, why do we keep adding to the stockpiles?  Want to go and shoot off your guns at a range because you have the need to express yourself that way?  Every bullet you shoot is accounted for, and every bullet is heavily taxed with the proceeds going towards gun violence.  Police and military bullets?  Again, heavily regulated, with soldiers and police having to account for all their weaponry and severe consequences abound when they go missing. 

Perhaps someday all the stored up ammunition would be used up, and those who decide commit murder will have to return to the old fashioned weapons of stone and knives.  People will always still be killed, because violence is inherent in fallen humanity; but perhaps there will be a lot less killed if they can't shoot off 60 rounds in a minute because they couldn't find ammunition to purchase. 

Why does this have to be so hard?  Nothing we do will change things overnight...but we can at least start now so that 50 years from we don't keep having this problem. 

Duck and Cover and Die Anyway

My wife, who is a preschool teacher, spent her entire Saturday morning in a preparedness training session concerning gun violence.  She went through a variety of scenarios about parents holding children hostage or enraged gunmen storming her daycare.

My children regularly in their school have 'lockdown' drills.  Our high school this year will have new, stricter entry policies to reduce the possibility that gunmen or other undesirables are able to gain access to the interior of the building.

Every month at our bus driver monthly safety meetings we go over the many terrible possibilities that could happen on our buses.  We have lifesaving training that includes gunshot wound packing, violence de-escalation techniques, and other types of scenarios that hopefully we will never have to use.

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In the 1950s school kids across America were taught the technique of 'Duck and Cover'.  In the case of a nuclear detonation, it was thought that such outcomes might save a few lives, and in fact there is some evidence that having even the slightest shield from the radiation might well reduce the exposure and save a life.  Such techniques are today widely ridiculed, with the idea that 'if a nuclear explosion happens, what's the point of getting under a desk'?  Indeed, it seems quite ridiculous...better to not have a nuclear explosion.  Somewhere along the way as a nation things de-escalated to the point that I don't know that kids have to worry about nuclear annihilation.

But today, since the time that they were very small, my kids have been well aware that it's possible some nutjob with an automatic weapon could come in and start blasting away killing them or their teachers or classmates.  They live with this possibility just as much as I grew up doing tornado drills in Oklahoma.

It's a sad statement on our world that these realities are so possible today.  We live in a world of such horrific and sustained violence even as there is such an unwillingness to get to the causes of violence.  We'd rather have drill after drill to prepare us for their eventuality, and many believe that the best defense is a good offense.  Surely, it is thought, that teachers and citizens packing heat will deter the violence.  Give everybody a gun, they say, and we'll all be safer.

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Today a guy walked into a WalMart in El Paso, Texas and killed at least 20 people.