When an airport security woman seized the tiny Swiss Army knife on my keyring the other day, it brought back some nostalgic memories.
“This is a weapon," she asserted with a stare that seemed a little cross-eyed but … maybe my imagination. Maybe just myopic. She wore a tie and had a hair bun.
Her assertion was aimed at me with her idea that I might grab a stewardness and put it to your throat, demanding control of the plane, with a two-inch blade.
I couldn’t imagine anything like that, but they all had that horrific memory of how some box cutters fomented world tragedy and changed the course of history. Not funny at all. So let it go. I only used it to clean my nails, anyway, and there are useful little tweezers and a plastic toothpick embedded on one end that were handy to pluck briars and dislodge meat fragments. All of that utility was gone.
Of course, I had lost my nail clippers at Kennedy International, so I had that memory. Scissors are stabbing devices, separate the two parts and you can arm two terrorists.
And there was the loss of my Dad’s old pocketknife, a keepsake and heirloom, in Dallas. No room for sentimentality in Homeland Security, I thought. No room for mentality either.
There is no room or time to take any chance or bend any rules in Airport Security. A goofball put a firecracker in his shoe and now we all have to go barefoot through that line. Another cretin stuffed his crotch with explosive powder and now we get x-rays that we hope doesn’t affect our crotch activity.
But the greatest irony of history is how this simple knife inadvertently led this nation to become a global super power in Banking, with just about all the money in the world in one way or another.
It was the folly of the Swiss Army knife, a legendary irony, that started it all.
As an example of over-design, it packed aboard its frame an inordinate number of attachments, or features as they called it. While the soldiers liked them well enough, they proved to be a highly ineffective defensive or offensive weapon and the Swiss Army soon fell apart in futility and disbanded.
With no military power at all, the Swiss devised a clever plan to buy protection from other countries with militaries — all of them. By establishing a huge banking system, protected by snow-swept peaks, they found they could provide safe and even interest bearing storage for all of their wealth, especially the large portion begotten by evil means. They soon had 100 percent of that client segment.
So with this vast storehouse for world wealth, the need for military protection would be next to nothing. The excess Swiss Army knife could be shifted into consumer sales as a novelty item. There would be no expense at all for military given there were no enemies.
With a clientele stretching across hundreds of countries, tiny to huge, the banking industry in this remote little country became insulated from any world stress at all. Civilization even deemed it the right location for its only giant atom smasher.
So that misadventure with inefficient weaponry is now just a quaint memory. And so is the old time idea of making clocks by hand. It’s hard to get work today as the maker of a premium clock, as it was being routinely used in the days before stylish wrist watches and smartphones.
Some of the old clockmakers had to resort to making cuckoo clicks to survive. But that’s what the tourists in Geneva wanted, in addition to those starburst tie-dyed Haddron Collider! t-shirts.
Naturally some of the old Swiss artisans turned to cheese and they are credited in large measure for the sudden rise of the novelty cheese still called Swiss. Machinery malfunctions continued to turn out cheese with holes in it, but in the ensuing comical melee, the consumer seemed to get a good laugh and continued buying it — as long as the holes did not affect the overall poundage price in the transaction.
How many times have you heard variations of it: “That makes no sense. Your argument has got more holes than Swiss cheese.” Derogatory? Yes, But enough humor to keep Swiss cheese sales stable through the years.
Many, of course, have either sold out or succumbed to the conglomerate Kraft foods. Ironically, the ideal of ‘craft’ is worked perversely into the giant’s very name, but there is little craft involved other than adjusting the button that says: Viscosity every time the machine shudders and growls. The word could be different if the machine is made in the Orient.
I sure didn’t mean to get into cheesemaking but please know there is indeed life above and beyond corporate cheese. Traditional makers, molders, blenders, and aging administrators still offer a high level of cheese that could never be actually called Cheesy. These are handmade and necessarily rare balls of a kind of cheese that actually gets respect and reverence. There’s cheez-whiz at the bottom of the food chain and the Swiss artisans on top.
Same with Chocolate. Fine Swiss chocolates around the top and chocolate covered peanuts from the Dollar General store on the bottom.
Their fine cheeses and chocolates are certainly tasty, and well affordable to the many bankers who now fill the country and dominate their commerce. I believe there are people here who are not bankers or vendors for rich tourists, but I haven’t met any of them. They are likely up in the Alps.
At any rate, and looking way back, you can see that this mighty little country of Switzerland managed to get out of our endless cycle of war games by just holding everybody’s money. As long as you don’t take sides, you’re okay. They never have any casualties or even explosions.
Some say the Illuminati live here. Couldn’t find the name in any city directories of the area, either private residence, business or government agency. I especially checked the gigantic estates behind the stone walls who have all those wolves. There are many Rothschilds in the area, however, and they may be friends. If you are looking for the Illuminati, you might check with them.
Perhaps, though, like the Swiss bank accounts themselves, this ‘family’ may not be real. They may just be numbers. A symbolic name. It is just what it is, a secret container you own. But it isn’t you at all, but rather a numerical clone, a surrogate of storage.
A janitor told me good things about 44-956755-A, but I have no way to know if the contents are what he says. I know he also works for the CIA but … you never can tell. He may be spying on the CIA for the bank.
Better to keep your clock clean here, eat your cheese, indulge a little chocolate crave, and enjoy being a part of the World Banking Empire, with espresso coffee everywhere to help tolerate the snow.
Just know that that Swiss are wide-awake people. They turned the failure of a tiny knife into a worldwide scythe that swept across the world to take command of that greatest of products, money, and simply watch while the money-grubbing world powers continue to fight each other to the death for inexplicable reasons that don’t matter since you’re steadily making money off their grievances.
THE SWISS OLIGARCHY
Website designed by Gwendolyn Cleveland
Web-Master/Designer: Hensel Graphics
© Jim Cleveland 2017