About

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In 2003, The Global Language Monitor (GLM) was founded in Silicon Valley by Paul J.J. Payack on the understanding that new technologies and techniques were necessary for truly understanding the world of Big Data, as it is now known.
Today, from its home in Austin, Texas GLM provides a number of innovative products and services that utilize its ‘algorithmic services’ to help worldwide customers protect, defend and nurture their branded products and entities.  Products include ‘brand audits’ to assess the current status, establish baselines, and competitive benchmarks for current intellectual assets and brands.

These services are currently provided to the Fortune 500, Olympic Partners, leading Higher Education institutions, high-tech firms, the worldwide print and electronic media, the global fashion industry, among others.

Contact GLM directly ay  001 737 215 7750 or pauljjpayack@gmail.com or @languagemonitor.

Paul JJ Payack lecturing on Big and Ephemeral Data in Shanghai

Payack was cited as the first Shanghai International Creative City Think Tank Master.

GLM foresees a time in the near future where data doubles every hour, every minute, then every second.

To address this unfolding reality, GLM created the tools you need to address an enterprise in a world never at rest, where the facts can change before you locked your strategy into place, in the world where the social media of today is but a hint of what will emerge in the coming months and years.

GLM’s specialized products and services have been built from the ground up for Big and bigger data,  for a marketplace ever in flux, where the only constant changes.

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To address this unfolding reality, GLM created the tools you need to address an enterprise in a world never at rest, where the facts can change before you locked your strategy into place, in the world where the social media of today is but a hint of what will emerge in the coming months and years.

GLM’s specialized products and services have been built from the ground up for big and bigger data,  for a marketplace ever in flux, where the only constant is change.

 global Language Monitor’s proprietary algorithms (including the PQI and Narrative Tracker) are used to plum ephemeral data on any topic for any industry worldwide, quickly and accurately.  Many organizations have used GLM as an additional input to their already robust analytical solutions.  Call 1 (737) 215-7750 or email PJJP@Post.HarvARD.EDU.

Subprime Meltdown (New York Times)

In 2006, The New York Times worked with the Global Language Monitor to assess the state of the New York City real estate market.  GLM’s used its proprietary POI technology, which The Times described as “an algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet in relation to frequency, context, and appearance in the global media.”  The study has been hailed as presaging the coming Financial Meltdown, now known as the Great Recession.

The New York Times featuring GLM’s PQI
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GLM’s Founder on BBC America

GLM as a Source of Record

GLM continues to be cited hundreds of by the leading print and electronic media the world over. In fact, the worldwide print and electronic media have come to rely on The Global Language Monitor for its expert analysis on cultural trends and their subsequent impact on various aspects of culture.

Worldwide print and electronic media have come to rely on GLM for itS Trend Tracking and analytics-based analyses.

BBC Cites GLM for Words of the Decade

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the BBC used two global experts to choose the words that would sum up the decades,  represented English as spoken in the UK, the other English as spoken in America, Australia and the rest of the world.

The Global Language Monitor’s president was chosen for Global English as shown below.

A representative sampling includes:  CNN, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Associated Press, United Press International, Knight-Ridder, USAToday, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Charlotte Observer, Minneapolis Star Tribune, San Jose Mercury, New York Post, NPR, FoxNews, ABC, NBC, CBS, ChinaNews, Peoples Daily, The National Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, The BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Company, The Canadian Broadcasting Company, The Cape Town Argus, El Pais (Madrid), The Daily Mail (Scotland), The Hindustan Times, The Gulf News (Qatar), and various electronic and print media on six continents.

About Paul JJ Payack

Paul JJ Payack has served as a senior executive of three Fortune 500 high technology companies (Unisys, Dun & Bradstreet, and StorageTek), and three Silicon Valley technology companies (Apollo Computer, Intelliguard Software, Legato Systems) that were acquired by four other Silicon Valley giants (EMC, Dell, Oracle, and HP), as well as numerous start-ups and re-starts.  (For Payack’s Linkedin bio, go here.)

Currently, GLM’s President and Chief Word Analyst, he also was the founding president of yourDictionary.com. These two language sites attract millions of page views a month. He founded GLM in Silicon Valley in 2003 and moved it to Austin, Texas in 2008.

Payack taught scientific and technological communications at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Texas-Arlington and Babson College, the Federal Reserve Bank (NY), GM/Hughes Aircraft, and many others.

He is a frequent guest on the media circuit including CNN, the BBC, NPR, the CBS, Australia Broadcasting Company and Chinese Radio and Television.

Payack is the author of some eighteen collections (seven currently in print), including  A Million Words and Counting, Kensington (New York) as well as co-author with Edward ML Peters of  The Paid-for Option (Tower Oaks Press), an analysis of the healthcare crisis in the USA.  (For a sampling of Payack’s creative work, including metafiction, flash fiction, and collage art, go here.)

Payack studied philosophy and psychology at Bucknell University and was graduated from Harvard University where he studied comparative literature and classical languages, also publishing his first collection of metafiction, A Ripple in Entropy.  Later he earned a CAGS with a focus on fine arts;  his thesis being a Play in Seven Episodes.  Worlds to Shatter, Shattered Worlds.

He currently resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, Millie, and family. Contact Payack directly:  001 737 215 7750 or pauljjpayack@gmail.com or @languagemonitor.

 

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“Dispatch From the Front Lines”, Paul JJ Payack’s Historic 9/11 Collage-Narrative Now Available for Download


Austin, TEXAS.  September 27, 2021 — On 9/11/2021. the Global Language Monitor, released a free, downloadable edition of Paul JJ Payack’s historic “Dispatch from the Front Lines” collage narrative series.

Payack created the series in the immediate aftermath of the Bush Administrations’ debriefing in Washington, DC just days after the 9/11 attacks. Payack’s creation commemorates the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a third target, presumably the White House or the US Capitol Building, which was thwarted by the passenger uprising on Flight 93.

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Such was the overwhelming response to the offer, the Global Language Monitor has announced that it will continue to encourage free downloads of the document as a public, historical, service. Also, signed, numbered editions are now available for a nominal fee. And NFTs of the original, historic documents, individual collages will be made available in the coming months.

  • Paris is the Reigning Top Global Fashion Capital


Background: Immediately after Payack and his wife Millie attended a closed-door, invitation-only, private briefing by the George W. Bush Administration. Payack sought to encapsulate all the thoughts, hopes and fears encapsulated in that particular moment,

“Dispatch From the Front Lines” was created by Payack, working deep into the night on October 27th, 2001. That evening the Payacks were escorted through hermetically sealed tunnels from specifically outfitted, bomb-proof and poison gas-resistant vehicles to the scene of the debriefing and then to their secure accommodations.

Payack had prepared for this moment by assembling the tools he would need to create the collage narrative, the night before in Danville, California. In D.C., he proceeded to create the collage narrative under the watchful eye of a waxing Autumn Moon overlooking the White House and the piercing, haunting vision of the Washington obelisk in the crisp autumn air.

Rise and Fall of England as an English Language Word Generator

England Once Accounted for a Majority of English-language Neologisms.

New Research Shows that the Number of New Words Generated has Fallen to Fewer Than 10% of the Total

Excerpt from the Report

AUSTIN, TEXAS, UNITED STATES, August 16, 2021 — The Sun might have set on the British Empire but the language continues to expand its global dominance though with fewer contributions from the ‘Sceptre’d Isle’.  This is according to a new study to be released later this fall, by the Global Language Monitor.

English has been hailed as the first truly global language inserting itself into nearly every nook and cranny of modern life, thanks to its conquest of science, technology, education, film, fashion, and communications.

According to GLM, a new word is created every 98 minutes, about 14.7 words a day or 5400 words a year.  As of today, GLM’s estimated number of words number is 1,066,095.9 words.   Google’s Ngram word count of millions of English-language books also lists a similar number of words.  According to a study with Harvard University, the count was 1,022,000 English-language words in 2010, within 1.6% of GLM’s estimate at the time.  The study estimated about 8,000 neologisms/year joining the language, while GLM’s analysis put the number at 5400.  Nevertheless, it is a large and growing language.

English über alles?

One problem with the UK maintaining proper ownership (and dominance) of the language it begot) is that it is becoming a smaller and smaller portion of the English-speaking world.

As the number of English Words has grown, so has the number of nations that have a large number of English-language speakers, each generating unique neologisms to suit their particular needs.

Today, tens of thousands of English-language neologisms bubble up from all corners of the planet each year, but only about 5,000 to 8,000 have enough staying power to make into any of the standard dictionaries, e.g., the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Collins, Macmillan, Webster’s Unabridged, American Heritage Dictionary, Macquarie Dictionary, among others.

The Global Language Monitor has three distinct criteria that each new word must meet to be included in the English-language corpus, which GLM refers to as ‘depth’ and ‘breadth’.

  • The word must appear in a minimum of 25,000 citations in a variety of media (Internet,  books, newspapers, research, television, radio)
  • The word must appear in geographies dispersed  across the globe
  • The word must appear in differing cultural segments, industries, and/or  demographic groups

According to the latest available statistics, the UK now stands in sixth place on the list of English-speaking countries, as shown below.  Nevertheless, the list below does raise some interesting questions, for example, the UK is No.6?  The U.S., of course, reigns in the top spot, and perhaps, India is in a well-deserved second place, but Pakistan, Nigeria, and the Philippines at Nos. 3-5?

List of Countries by Number of English Speakers

[Note:  due to variations in statistical methods, some totals can appear slightly out of sequence.]

English-Speaking  Nations By Number of  English Speakers

If you are looking at this list from the perspective of a champion of the former British Empire, you can think about this in two ways:

  • Well done good and faithful servant, or
  • Good riddance, fare they well, the Sun has indeed set upon thee ….

As shown below, Modern English, itself, is an amalgam of dozen or more Proto-Indo-European-Languages, Continue reading “Rise and Fall of England as an English Language Word Generator”

The Tangles of Time: A Brief History of Chess

A Brief History of Chess

Author’s Note: I wrote this aimost fifty years ago, during the Bobbie Fisher- Boris Spassky World Chess Championship held in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1972.

This was the beginning of the chess boom that continues to this day. You can’t call it a revival, because previous to this, chess was a fringe activity, at best, played by old men on park benches arguing in Yiddish, nerds before they were known as such, and pipe-smoking, well-to-do elder gentlemen player one other on seculded leafy estates.

I was captivated by the match and who wouldn’t be: the ‘Free World’ vs. the Soviet Communists, a brash, ill-mannered young American vs. the gentlemanly Grandmaster of old-school ways and traditional chess thinking. I went out bought every chess book I could find in Harvard Square and at the Chess Shop on Newberry Street (including the infamous Blue Book of Chess. At that time, the Blue Book recorded every move in evey championship match from the days of Lasker onward.. I also picked up a championship-scaled chessboard with the requisite ivory-styled pieces, a chess clock, and the like. But the one thing I could not find was a definitive History of Chess.

So I decided to write one myself. After countless hours of research (no internet, nor on-line journals, no Wikipedia, just Harvard’s Widener Library’s dusty stacks, I drafted The Tangles of Timee: A Short History of Chess over that summer and now present it to you here.

 — Paul JJ Payack

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Chess yields us, when we need them most

Companions in our loneliness.

—Mu’ Tazz

As masterful a player as Emmanuel Lasker regarded chess as neither an art nor a science but rather a war in which the pieces served as troops and the players the generals. This stemmed from the notion that chess was invented as a war game and so, that is the manner in which it should executed. Undoubtedly reality is reflected in the idea that chess originated either as an aid or substitute for warfare.

Lasker maintained that to understand its creation all that is needed is an understanding of the method of classical warfare. Lasker explained that opposing armies would take their positions in nearly straight lines separated by a nearly level plain. The generals, in order to make their plans comprehensible to their commanders, would sketch the original position and later movements of their pawns and men. Lasker was fond of using the Battle of Cannae, 216 BC, as an illustration. At Cannae, the Carthaginians under the command of Hannibal defeated a Roman force nearly twice their number with superior strategy.

Lasker thought that it was entirely possible that Hannibal not only drew lines and placed stones on a board to explain his stratagems, but did so on what would one day be called a chequer-board. This was given the now familiar shape of a square divided into sixty-four smaller squares, colored black and white alternately. Though Lasker’s contention that chess was invented as a game of war is undoubtedly true, he seems to have postdated its conception by some eight centuries and misplaced it by several worlds.

After a millennium passed in the Buddhist era, various references occur to a game that seems the direct forbear of present-day chess. According to Sanskrit literature, apart from the central king and counselor, the pieces represented the quadrants of the ancient Indian army: war chariots, cavalry, elephants, and foot soldiers. The Upper Basin of the Ganges, or thereabouts, was the locale where

this game first appeared. Since the area was a Buddhist stronghold, it is not unreasonable to assume that their monks had a hand in its inception. Since Buddhists oppose the killing of any form of life, it can be hypothesized that the game was invented as a bloodless substitute for war (by allowing men to engage in a combat of a higher sort).

In this version the infantrymen moved as pawns of all times and places, excepting the modern two-square debut. The cavalrymen were placed and manipulated in the same manner as the knight. The elephants’ movements were diagonal and limited to two squares, therefore they were inherently weaker than the bishops into which they were later transformed. The chariots were equal in every respect to the castles which through some ripple in history came to be called rooks. And the counselor, beside the king, moved diagonally also and only one square per move; as time passed its powers were increased to that of the bishop, thereby considerably enhancing the complexity of the game.

Chess spread rapidly (in historical terms) from the Subcontinent to the curiously diverse cultures further west, each leaving ineradicable traces of their time and culture. Persia bestowed the name to the game. Words, unlike mathematical formulae, both lose and gain in their sojourn through time and place. Aside from the usual etymological eddies, the development of the name flowed as follows. The Persian shah “king” came through the Arabic and the tangles of time to Europe as, among other variations, the Old French (e)sches, plural of (e)schek “check” derived from “shah.” From there it was but a minor simplification to the Saxon and Modern English word “chess.”

The culmination of this bloodless substitute for bloodletting is the murder of the enemy king, although the modern game ends euphemistically with the checkmate. This term, too, can be traced through a millennium to Persia. Shah mat “checkmate” means ‘the king (shah) is dead,’ where “mat” is related to the Latin stem mort- “death” found in “mortuary.”

Within a generation of the Hegira, the Arabs conquered Persia in the sacred name of Mohammed. As is usually the case, the two cultures became inextricably entwined and from that time forward it was the Islamic culture that became the primary vehicle of chess. As the game was carried from land to land it underwent a series of transmutations, some surprising and some not so surprising at all.

The Elephant was reduced to its ears. That is it was simplified (for reasons of convenience and religion) to a lump of wood, with a cut extracted from its center. An item of far more interest concerns the Arab rukh which predates the English rook for crow. It is still a matter of some controversy whether the rook was actually a chariot, a bird, or even a ship. It is highly probable that in differing cultures in differing centuries it was each.

In Arabia there seems little doubt that the chariot was replaced by a moderately prominent member the then-current mythology. In Arabian Nights the rukh was an enormous bird of gigantic girth which was inordinately wide of wing; a vast magnification of the eagle or condor. In most variations, the bird had the ability to carry an elephant, and sometimes several, in its talons. The thread of interest that lies about and through all variations of the rukh myth is that it was, whatever else, a deadly enemy of the elephant. (Later, with the aristocratization of chess, the elephant would be transformed into an ecclesiastic.)

Soon chess was a commonplace throughout the world of Islam, from Andalus in the West to the Indus in the East. The Moors carried chess to the Iberian Peninsula during the eighth century of the Christian era, and the Eastern Empire in Byzantium also learned of the game before the century had waned. From Iberia it spread to the north of Europe, while Russia seems to have acquired the game directly from India. (In Russian chess bears its original name, shakh-maty.)

During the High Middle Ages chess became a leisure time activity of the feudal lords, and the pieces began to resemble the aristocracy. (The rukh became, curiously enough, a castle.) A knowledge of ‘Nights and Days’ was considered a social grace for every genteel and parfait knight. Obviously, one reason for this was the connection between chess and war. Soon the powers of certain pieces were increased,making the game much more lively or, if you prefer, deadly.

That lump of wood with the split was not recognized in Europe as an elephant. This was understandably so, since to the folks of medieval Europe an elephant was just as much a mythological creature as the rukh, and possibly more so. To those who were unaware of its esoteric meaning, the elephant, also suggested a bishop’s mitre, an old man, a count or a fool. To this day in French the man is called Le Fou “the fool” and it is diagramed as a cap and bells.

The English, however, were the first to introduce chess diagrams to printing and since the piece remained a bishop there (and in Iceland) the bishop’s mitre would soon become the worldwide standard. However, Germans use this now universal symbol for their laufer “runner” while Russians use the mitre for their slon “the elephant.”

The evolution of the king’s counselor into the queen has been attributed to the similarity of the Arabic word fere “advisor,” to the French vierge “maiden” but probably can be more simply attributed to the make-up of the feudal court. A parallel between the historical liberation of women and the glorification of Mary by the Church could also have been factors in the metamorphosis.

And finally, a mention should be made of pawns; those so adequately named pieces which are even denied the status of chess ‘men’. They are, without exception in all cultures, represented by conveniently small and humble objects. For these there seems a universal need. History: read it and weep.

There are some 1.7 x 10 to the 29th methods of playing the first ten moves of this ancient and storied game. (The Greeks, clever as they were, didn’t even possess a symbol or number for any number larger than ten to the fourth, a myriad.) This being so, it becomes comprehensible why, while chess has ebbed and flowed through history, it has never been successful as a method of channeling the human mind to that combat of a higher sort.

To be sure, there have been wars of every possible description since its inception some thirteen hundred years ago, and when the number of possible permutations is envisioned even in this relatively simple game, it becomes obvious why there is more than adequate room for that phenomenon, war, in the universal scheme of things. This nightmare, even when contained by a square of sixty-four smaller squares, has the potential to continue in a million billion varying guises for eons on end (and still there would remain variations untried).

When one of the first Caliphs, Omar b. Al-Khattab, was asked if chess were lawful he replied, “There is nothing wrong in it; it has to do with war.”

The COVID-19 (Corona Virus) Calendar

The ThoughtTopper Institute

Projections from Published Numbers

The COVID-19 Virus
The COVID-19 Virus

March 29, 2020 Update

Beijing excluded 43,000 Positive Tests from the Published Numbers

COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Calendar

New: What You Need to Know & How to Protect Yourself

(South China Morning Post 2/21/2020)

This is being posted only to those who follow me; Please be discreet when distributing.

We are publishing this article only to show the extent of the spread of the virus IF LEFT UNCHECKED. All recent potential pandemics (including Ebola, SARS, and MERS) were stopped due to deliberate action taken by the worldwide medical community (especially the WHO, the CDC, NHC, etc.,) and the proper precautions directed by the relevant government bodies and heroic NGOs.

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ThoughtTopper Institute: The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Calendar

Overview: The news from China is not good. Most recently The South China Morning Post detailed,

Measures unveiled by the authorities in Beijing and Shanghai on Monday include stricter controls on the movement of residents and vehicles, compulsory mask-wearing and shutting down leisure and other non-essential community services … Beijing Daily reported on Monday that the capital, with a population of over 20 million, would step up efforts to further restrict access to residential communities and compounds and introduce a citywide registration system for entries into Beijing. 

In addition, “Officials at the epidemic control and prevention centre in Shanghai said on Monday that “the vast majority” of the city’s 13,000 residential communities and compounds had instituted “lockdown management”, including entry restrictions and mandatory temperature checks.”

Confusion Abounds

According to the New York Times, “on Thursday, officials added more than 14,840 new cases to the tally of the infected in Hubei Province alone, bringing the total number to 48,206, the largest one-day increase so far recorded. The death toll in the province rose to 1,310, including 242 new deaths.

The sharp rise in reported cases illustrates how hard it has been for scientists to grasp the extent and severity of the coronavirus outbreak in China, particularly inside the epicenter, where thousands of sick people remain untested for the illness.”

Furthermore, some investigators have suggested that the number of new cases was leveling off and will, in fact, peak and level off in the next few weeks. One study actually picked a date (February 23); mark your calendar.

Projections from Published Numbers

The COVID-19 Calendar is based on the data provided by the British medical journal The Lancet working with data supplied to them by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and the National Health Commission (NHC) of China, among others. The Global Language Monitor is not responsible for any of the data — only with the extrapolation of the data.

Obviously, COVID-19 cannot expand indefinitely as in the extrapolation above. Typically, these pandemics either burn themselves out or a halted through Human intervention. The gravest predictions now top out at a 60% infection rate for the entire Human population. Rest assured, that that has never happened in all recorded history.

Note: Tip of the Ice Berg? These extrapolations in themselves are hypothetical and should be taken as such. These numbers assume that the number of infections has been substantially under-reported, due to a number of factors, as outlined in the Lancet article.

This data was gathered with an abundance of caution after studying the various numbers coming out of Wuhan. The projected numbers are published herein because these results have been assiduously avoided in the media in all forms.

Origin of Graphics, The Lancet

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This ThoughtTopper Institute publication was compiled by Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor.

About Global Language Monitor

Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor is a data research organization. For more information, call +1.737.215.7750 or email Info@languageMonitor.com

The Authority Behind The Top Global Fashion Capitals

The Top Global Fashion Capitals was created by the Global Language Monitor to provide a non-biased ranking of the Top Global Fashion Capitals using technology-industry standard tools to rank various entities from luxury automobile brands, to colleges and universties, and now to fashion capitals.

By Paul JJ Payack, Creator and Curator of The Top Global Fashion Capitals Program

Top 63 Global Fashion Capitals 2020 Edition

The fashion world is in a period of great flux. We created the Top Global Fashion Capitals™ rankings in 2007 when the global economy was reeling from a number of structural hits from which it has yet recovered.

Through our big data analysis of economic trends, we came to understand that fashion was and would continue to be, one of the few bright spots in the global economy. We also came to understand that it was a model of a decentralized, diversified industry with dozens of little- recognized centers from cities, nations, and cultural traditions.

Thus was born our effort to recognize and analyze the Top Global Fashion Capitals ranking them by their brand equity in the same manner as one would rank universities, luxury automobiles, and CPG brands.

GLM began with a few test runs and then published our first global rankings in 2007, which included the usual suspects and their immediate competitors, which we determined through global big-data analyses. We then ranked each city against three and then four different categories of fashion from which the final rankings would emerge.

Later, once we had gathered enough data, we included a trend-tracking ‘predictive element’ that had been used in GLM’s Narrative and Trend Tracking products and services.

The Top Global Fashion Capitals are now recognized as the standard in the fashion world, as you can see below. For the 2020 edition, we are tracking more than three-score established and emerging centers of fashion.

Our efforts have attracted an inordinate number of citations in the global media, as well as in academic, research and texts. For more than a decade now, the Global Language Monitor has employed its proprietary algorithms to cut through the world of Big Data establishing the definitive, non-biased rankings of the Top Global Fashion Capitals.

The result is a longitudinal survey that runs for three years, with its final updating in the weeks before the yearly announcement. GLM surveys. billions of web pages, millions of blogs, the top 300,000 global print and electronic media, as well as new social media sources as they emerge. In effect, any and all databases available on the web, including key proprietary databases for specific content.

“Since we are expanding to include a number of cities, each with emerging and burgeoning fashion scenes, we are quite excited about the 2020 Global Fashion Capital rankings,” said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of the Global Language Monitor. “Fashion continues to drive both economic growth for the region as well as a release of creativity that will impact their city, their region, and perhaps even the world.

To see more on the Top Global Fashion Capitals , go here.

Flashback from 2016: A New Model for the Near-mythical Rise of Donald Trump; this one from the Ancient Greeks

antaeus

A New Model for the Near-mythical rise of Rise of Donald Trump; this one from the Ancient Greeks

Donald Trump’s Source of Power is the People, OnlySeparating Him From the People Will Cause His Downfall

 

Austin, Texas, May 24, 2016 — After reading yet another in an apparently unending number of ‘Dump Trump’ plans, we noticed that the latest differed from all the others, only in increasing its level of desperation.

It is now ever more evident that the party establishments are destined like Sisyphus to push their particular rocks up hills (in the current rendering) of their own making.

We’ve witnessed the attempts at explication of the origins of the Trump phenomenon to become more and more, dare we say it, detached or even unhinged from the current reality.  After all, it is now a given that the ‘establishment’ had completely missed (or were oblivious to) the rising anger, frustration and contempt that was seething beneath the surface of the body politic over the preceding seven years. (See Nate Cohn’s of the New York Times Apologia here.)

We at the Global Language Monitor have been documenting this undercurrent since 2007 And, indeed, it has and has been recorded in the pages of The Hill, the news organization most frequently accessed by the White House, Congress and  key influencers, as well as here in the Global Language Monitor.  However, those disruptive forces appear to have been masked, for good or for ill, by the triumphal arrival of the Obama Administration and its immediate aftermath. Of course, we also tracked the highs over the preceding time frame, but were prescient enough to pay attention to the lows, thinking there might be an interesting story that would unfold in the fullness of time.

At this point, it begs the question as to why would we expect these very same thought and opinion leaders, to suddenly, as if by epiphany or the unseen hand of the electorate, understand the enormity of the disruptive forces now sweeping the nation?

Nevertheless, how to explain this miss of near mythical proportions?  How would the ancient Greeks have

They might have called to mind the story of Antaeus.  (Antaeus here standing in for Donald J. Trump.)

Antaeus, the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Gaia, the goddess of the land, the earth.  Antaeus was a giant who lived in North Africa.  He would challenge other giants striding across his land to a wrestling match to the death.  So skilled was he as a wrestler that he built a tower of skulls of the giants he had conquered in a tribute to father. This went on for ages until he encountered Hercules who was in the midst of the eleventh of his famed twelve labors.  The struggle was long, brutal and bitter; Antaeus and Hercules appeared evenly matched.

Then Hercules noticed a rather curious occurrence:  Antaeus appeared to gain a bit of strength every time Hercules (or Clinton in this case) threw him to the ground. So Hercules began to hold him in the air, for longer and longer periods, until he was weakened enough for Hercules to crush him until death.

Antaeus was finally beaten because Hercules came to understand that he gained strength from his mother Gaia (in Trump’s case, the people), whenever he was thrown to the ground.

In the same manner, many have noted that the more his opponents attempt to take Trump down, the more they thrust him to the ground, the stronger he becomes.  In the same manner for Trump, the ground, the earth, his strength are the disenfranchised, the belittled, body politic.

And the only way to beat Trump in this scenario is to separate the candidate from those who love him.

The question then becomes — is there a Hercules or Herculean team who can separate one Donald J Trump from his ultimate source of power — the people?



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This MetaThought Commentary was written by Paul JJ Payack, commentator, author, speaker and Big Data Analyst, and president of both the ThoughtTopper Institute and the Global Language Monitor.

MetaThought Commentary is a service of the ThoughtTopper Institute.

For more information call 1.737.215.7750