Givens.

One of the worst things about the human species is that it seems each human born is born with a relatively empty hard-drive. Until some tech non-tax-paying trillionaire figures out how to do brain implants to give their own kids and no one else's an advantage so they can be quadrillionaires or quintillionaires, not just trillionaires, and also skirt taxes, all new people have to start at essentially the same cognitive blank slate.

No one is born knowing how to talk, "toilet" themselves and with the ability to harness AI for the generation of more sextillionaires. We all have to learn to mama and dada. We all have to learn to teeter and walk. We all have to learn a certain corpus of knowledge that allows us to order a grande half caf soy pupik at the local coffee oligopoly.

Of late, and this may be a function of my rapidly advancing age, many things that I thought were knowledge "givens," that is learnings that I believed we could posit that everyone accepted are no longer accepted.

Of late it seems like saying things like, "the earth isn't round," "all people aren't created equal," or "certain citizens deserve more rights than others," is considered by more and more perfectly acceptable.

Things we used to take for granted, things we used to accept have been abnegated by millions and millions. We question things that were once unquestionable. 

Before long there will be online fora for those who believe the sun rises in the west. We're already seeing the words of the Second Witch in Shakespeare's Macbeth ring truer than they have since the days of kissinger and macnamara. Our battles now--just listen to the felon-in-chief about the Iran war he started, our battle's are "...lost and won." And, as all three of Macbeth's witches said, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair..." Or in the roughly similar words of Chico Marx, "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

The undoing of what we thought was signed, sealed and delivered is the hallmark of our era. Cue the three witches: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair..."

The below is from Times' essayist, David French. An account of questioning things that we used to posit. Little things, like equality.

vance-isms like the below are so anti-amerikkkan, they'd probably even make our slave-holding founding fathers emancipate the shit out of human chattel.

A Heritage American, in their formulation, is someone who can trace his lineage back to the founding of the country, preferably even before. You get an A grade if you’re “colonial old stock,” meaning your ancestors came here between 1607 and 1789. You get a B if you’re “antebellum stock,” a C if you’re an “Ellis Islander.” You get a D if you or your ancestors arrived after World War II....

It’s a short trip from inherited virtue to inherited entitlement. And at its most extreme, the Heritage American idea bears an eerie resemblance to the so-called 14 words of white supremacy — “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Of course as behavior in advertising is merely a microcosm of how we behave in amerika, there are many similarities in our business.

We no longer posit the need to breakthrough, to get attention, to communicate clearly, or to persuade people. We no longer accept as givens the power of repetition, the power of mnemonics, the power of differentiation and the saliency product attributes. Those attributes, which have been communication mandatories since humanity began, are no longer accepted as truths.

Instead we gallop down today's one-size-fits-all shibboleth that the only thing advertising must do is "become part of culture." There's so much I don't understand about that goal--what it means, for one, and what culture even is, for two. Not to mention the idea that my culture is the same as yours.

The basics of communication, like the very basics of Enlightenment thought have been thrown out by big-money know-nothings who propagate the "hot," without proof or ballast and by spending billions on propagation of their untruths have destroyed both advertising and democracy.

For instance, much of the ad industry looks to martin sorrell, who's destroyed two holding companies, WPP and S4 Capital as some sort of sage. As we look to fascist enablers as upholders of democracy. Soon we'll look to bernie madoff for financial advice or buy elon musk's guide to fatherhood or the holding company's guide to stopping ageism. Or adolph's guide to Judaism...

Remember, the same people who have abnegated impact, clarity, persuasion and repetition are the ones who have sold us programmatic, digital first, AI, divestment of media, consolidation of agencies and a whole host of other troughs of tripe.

I don't very often work with a big holding company agency, but I read what's left of the trades and I see it 21 times a day. What. passes for advertising no longer moves people, it merely assaults them. Impact has been replaced by inundation and reason replaced by trendiness.

Certain things, like the spherical nation of our earth, should not be questioned.

We should be beyond questioning the need to get people to notice us. We should be beyond questioning the need to tell people why a product is better, needed or different. But we're not. Those characteristics of communications are now considered trite and outmoded.

No wonder just as more and more people question the very viability of amerikkka--what Lincoln once called 'the last best hope on earth,' more and more people question "creativity." That is, what Bernbach called the "last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors."

There's nothing wrong with capital d democracy that decency, fairness, representation and equal justice won't fix. And kindness. There's nothing wrong with advertising that good advertising can't fix.

Except the agenda of those who seek to profit through their destruction of it. 

Their sowing doubt where there should be truth.