The Revolt Against Overwhelming

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Make a loose fist with your hand. Now press the thumb against the interior of the index finger. Or let it stand on. It should seem as if he were giving someone invisible cash. Excellent. You are doing Clinton’s thumb (or Obama, Blair or Cameron thumb). Use this gesture to emphasize a point when speaking. It transmits firmness and resolution, without arrogance that is implicit in a finger gesture.

There concludes our first policy lesson before Donald Trump. Next week: Discipline Message. Use a memory phrase, as “we are all together in this”, and prepare to repeat it, regardless of the context.

Young readers certainly think that I am exaggerating how robotic and overcome was politics in the recent past. Well, Tuoutube, friends. At least, Trump’s rise has exposed a generalized public fedness with uniformity and standardization. I wonder if the same revolt is spreading to other fields.

Let’s take my own world, the media. Why are podcasts so well? Because, in the end, they are confusing, elliptical, digresive and everything that hate the widespread theory. (In the case of Joe Rogan, perhaps the most important media figure in the Anglophone world, there cannot be much difference between his speech in the air and out of the air.) The strict professionalism of the linear radio is now, for millions of us, which, which They were raised in it, unscuchable compared.

Even the favorite sport of the world, which for so long was under the intellectual control of perfectionist Pep Guardiola, could be loosening. The Arsenal, trained by one of its apostles, is impressive, as is the interior of a Swiss watch. The space between players is the same. Free throws and corner kicks are choreographed according to ballet standards. Even at open play, fans know that a sequence of rehearsed movements will take the ball to the right flank, where the opposite defenders will then go, at which time a diagonal pass will release the Arsenal leftover striker in the depopulated area of the center-left.

It is the most “designed” football in the world, more or less that of Manchester City of PEP, another team that is easier to admire than to love. But both are having disappointing seasons. A slightly freer Liverpool is thriving, with a team that is not obviously better. If they achieve the Premier League, the era of excess training – the nightmare of modern fans – should go back.

Years ago, this column lamented the “death of the nonconformist.” The argument was that in most industries there are so many data on what it works that everyone converges in the same way of doing things. Composers know that they must put a hook in the first 30 seconds to prevent Spotify listeners from skipping a track. The new construction apartments have the same room-cocina design. Soccer had become rigid. My mistake was not to anticipate that people at some point would rebel. How strange that politics, which so often will rely from trends in other places, go first. When observing the distressing effectively inaugural discourse of Trump, I felt a comfort. Its success sends a signal to other overcome sectors: there are rewards for deviating from strict forms.

I am writing this in Los Angeles, where I once lived. It does not have a dominant architectural style. It does not have an obvious center. (“Center” is a somewhat inappropriate name). A gloomy shopping center could contain a restaurant or gallery jewel. In his lack of pattern, he looks more like life, more to the flow of experience, than all the cities of the rich world except one that occurs to me.

After the great fire of London in 1666, several geniuses presented plans to rebuild the place from the first principles. Most wanted to bring some Euclidian order to the labyrinth. His designs, full of straight angles and other atrocities, did not reach anywhere. Otherwise, London would now be a frightful grid or (idea of Christopher Wren) another European place and boulevard configuration.

Well, Los Angeles, the only rival in London as the least designed in the big western cities, will have to change in many ways. Even before his recent trauma, he had problems. In the end, however, while something in human identification irritates the structure and regulations, the attraction of this place cannot be attenuated.

Send an email to Janan to Janan.gaanesh@ft.com

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