“Deep State Swamp” – John Fraim – Diorama, photo & website post – 5/11/15
In A Silent Way / Miles Davis (1969)
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One of the pieces of literature that worked to distract my attention from schoolwork was the magazine Mad. I would anxiously await its arrival each 2 months.
The section I would go to first in the new Mad magazine would be “Scenes We’d Like to See” where you could find probably the best satire and political humor one could find anywhere. The two pieces below, both contrasts to each other in many ways, in effect, something created by me in 2018 and one created later in 2024 (today).
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the two scenes I created (along with posts to our site) might serve as a reminder of a huge swing in things over the decade period from 2018 when the words “Deep State” and “Swamp” were circulated. A satire on DC at both the times. Candidates for a new“Scenes We’d Like to See” section from a new satire publication like the old Mad magazine. Two satirical images of America at two times.
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Both from a satirical perspective more than anything as well as visualizing images for the two words, attempting to put them together in one scene. The absurdity of things via images is the type of images that don’t make sense today and therefore are out of place.
The Deep State piece was in my “diorama period” where many posts to Midnight Oil appear in 2018. One of my favorites is “Deep State Swamp” a little model of the FBI Building and glued it to the top of a piece of wood I found and then poured in a swampy water and put a dinosaur wandering around in the swamp (suggesting the deep state is made of a lot of dinosaurs). Shot it against an image of a storm I downloaded from the Internet and had it on my computer screen behind.
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In the late November of 2024, there was news that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would head up a new department its named based on the oxymoron words “government efficiency.” The two billionaire world business leaders will work together in the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) tasked with reducing government waste in government.
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The scene and link to Midnight Oil titled “Washington DC 2028” envisions America at an opposite end of a spectrum: from a deep state and swamp, to a peaceful, pastoral country scene. Both imagined scenes and created scenes by me. The “Washington DC 2028” scene took just a prompt to Magic Studio AI. I had the scene in about five seconds.
I could have taken more time to smooth things out but this looked pretty much like I envisioned it in my mind. I wanted a few cows grazing in the scene. It is almost Huck Finn-like.
But for me it would make a wonderous transformation of life if things could get better for our all in our nation. I know a stupid thought but the two thoughts in the images are pretty stupid too.
Anyway, I am halfway to making a little diorama of the scene below. I ordered a small White House off EBay (3D printed of course) and it looks perfect at about 1/500th scale or so. I’m putting a grass matt to a piece of wood and then scratching a few roads in the matt. A few cows grazing (impossible to find in 1/500 scale) and trees placed all around. I can make the model foliage look to scale and I start on this soon. The diorama for “Washington DC 2028.”
“Washington DC, 2028” – John Fraim – AI Image & website post – 11/26/24