Fraters Libertas

Worlds Colliding

The award for Worst Luck in Naming a Trade Association’s Annual Convention and Exposition goes to….

NeoCon

For years this little office furnishings trade show minded its own business while presenting the latest advancements in design for bulletin boards, in-baskets, and self contained, modular working environments. And it’s been something of a success. Odds are the very pencil cups, stapler cozies, and paper clip tureens now gracing your desk were once featured at NeoCon.

But now, because of a Democrat-driven media fixation with demonizing a supposed shadowy conservative cabal in control of American foreign policy, it’s all shot to hell.

NeoCon West 2004 is scheduled for early February in Los Angeles. Sure, there will still be scads of sales reps from Office Depot and The Cubicle Barn and Just Stapler Cozies in attendance. But now they’ll also be attracting scads of guys looking to hear what Richard Perle has to say about knocking off the fascist mullahs in Iran.

This mix can’t be good for business. Call me old fashioned but, when I’m browsing the latest developments in 3-ring binder technology, the last thing I want to hear is someone trying to convince me of the long term benefits of a preemptory, interventionist policy towards totalitarian regimes with ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. (Yes sir, that’s a fine point about Syrian defiance of established non proliferation standards, but can this thing really hold 30% more paper before crimping!?)

And the political neo-cons are sure to be disappointed upon finding out the exhibition’s key note address is summarized as follows:

David Oakey describes how nature can become a mentor for business and design and a model for the way of life. David will offer examples of how the design approach can shift away from seeking to control the process, the product and the outcome, and can instead mimic the natural processes premised on a self-organizing feedback system.

Since I think the only self-organizing feedback system Paul Wolfowitz is familiar with is the muzzle of a 120mm smoothbore on an Abrams tank, I predict mass chaos at the event.

Perhaps only to be surpassed by the chaos that will be experienced when the American Society of Paleontologists and Pat Buchanan’s America First Brigade go head to head at PaleoCon 2004.