KICKING
ASS WITH THE DONALD
Is he here? Is he not here? Trump does the Schrodinger's
Cat thing in Vancouver (2007)
“You
need to take action to kick ass.” - Bill Zanker, president
of The Leaning Annex.
Last weekend I went on a sublime-to-ridiculous journey at
Canada Place. The last part of the trip first.
For weeks, pictures of Donald Trump have been plastered
across Vancouver media, in ads for The Wealth Expo
organized by The Learning Annex. And like anyone else, I’m
a sucker for celebrity, even if it’s just a self-inflating
magnate with a ‘do from Bizarro World.
The Learning Annex, according to Wikipedia, is a private
continuing adult education school based in New York. The
organization has offered a wide range of classes, on topics
as diverse "Intro to Pole Dancing", "How To Talk To Your
Cat", "Make Contact with Lost Loved Ones", "How to Shoot
Your Own Live Adult Video", "Discover Your Past Lives - Who
Were You Before?" and "How To Marry the Rich".
My wife received free tickets to The Wealth Expo through
professional connections, but she didn’t have much interest
in attending. But this is Trump,
I
protested. Not only does he represent the most virulent
strain of self-promotion on the planet, he’s the guy who
took the unofficial mantra of the shrinking, outsourced US
economy – “You’re Fired!” – and turned it into a pop
culture mantra. No one living has done more with less than
Trump, and to prove it he’s slapped his name and face on
everything from casinos to colognes.
The Donald’s latest book is called How
to Think Big and Kick Ass. I had to
admit, while I’ve tried to think big thoughts before, I’ve
always been somewhat reluctant to deliver physical or
emotional injury to someone to get ahead. Whose ass do you
kick to make it to the top, and how hard? Do you use the
heel of your shoe, or do you go for a more surgical strike,
using the toe of a Prada or Manolo Blahnik? Do you deliver
a warning, or do you go for the element of surprise with a
pre-emptive ass-strike?
As it turned out, truth is a taffy-like substance to The
Learning Annex. The ads for the Wealth Expo were worded in
such a way that it wasn’t clear Trump would be physically
present. Under pressure from my partner, the kid at the
registration desk reluctantly admitted it would be a video
feed, and pre-taped to boot. It was only “live” in the
sense that some underling pressed ‘play’ on a DVD machine.
With our green sticker badges stuck to the lapels of our
coats, we entered a large, loud hall decorated with a few
perfunctory Mylar balloons. Hundreds of wealth-seekers
mingled as the onstage entertainment system boomed out the
opening sequence from The Secret, that multimedia shout-out
to moneymaking and magical thinking.
The first speaker we chanced to see, Lee Brower, was
introduced as one of the “Secret Teachers” from the The
Secret. In his southwestern drawl, Brower offered some
folksy metaphysics about moving “from victimhood to
victorhood,” and how he learned to read a few pages of the
Bible a day through sheer will. (Actually, I would have
preferred to see him to bend a waffle iron with his mind.)
Pounding rock music and sirens were employed to inspire
wealth-seekers to buy the four-figure “learning materials”
on Internet stocks and real estate. Feeling somewhat
nauseated, we left after the first few presenters, so we
didn’t get to hear a talk on how to “Profit from the
Foreclosure Boom.” The collapsing US real estate market
still offers one last cannabalistic feeding frenzy, through
the purchase of foreclosed properties. The foreclosures are
mostly spawn of the variable mortgage rate scam, the
greatest white-collar criminal spree since the savings and
loans collapse of the seventies/eighties. So sometimes you
don’t have to kick ass to profit: there are people out
there who’ve had their asses pre-kicked for you.
On to the sublime part. The previous evening at Canada
Place, I had a chance to hear a talk by Eckhart Tolle,
author of The Power of Now. Tolle’s ideas are the precise
inverse of those presented at the Wealth Expo. If you’re
always struggling for happiness “in the superficial
dimension of experience,” you’re doomed to disappointment,
he told the audience. You need to dig deeper. In contrast
to presenters at the Wealth Expo, who prowled the stage
like dapper monitor lizards, the author slumped in a chair
in a cardigan sweater, suppressing indigestion. Here was a
middle-aged guy who hasn’t done much to tailor his
appearance to his message, perhaps because the message
needs so little window dressing.
While “Secret Teacher” Lee Brower spoke of “banking
experiences” and using them to your later benefit, Tolle
talked about quieting the mind, and appreciating the moment
for what it is. As far as I’m concerned, a message
endorsing peaceful equanimity certainly “trumps” a message
pitching bruised backsides and disaster capitalism.
Geoff Olson
