Does anyone know what "Eminence Front" is about?

[Paragon]

My dark horse pick for favorite Who song...and I still have no idea what's Pete's trying to say. :(

[Pale Blue Dot]

1. It's a put on.

Duh! :-)

[Itchinjim]

5. Damn it you beat me!

[jobycom]

2. A pretence of eminence

People pretending to be impressive.

[Paragon]

3. Oh, look who knows the song's meaning, Mr. Smartypants!

;-)

[jobycom]

7. Or maybe

I just bluff well... ;)

[Radical Activist]

4. I've wondered that too

Great song

[Hailtothechimp]

6. The snow packs as the skiier tracks. People forget.....

Forget they're hiding....

Behind an eminence front, a eminence front, a put on!

I think Townsend is saying that people believe their own hype and lose track of the bullshitters that we all are.

[jobycom]

8. You got it. nt.

[Fovea]

9. People go about daily life, not realizing that security and order

are propped up by little more than bluster and cultural trance.

People forget they're hidin behind an eminence front.
A wonderful example from the time of the song is the old Soviet Union.
The trance lifted when they lost a costly asymmetrical war on a far smaller scale than * now prosecutes costly asymmetrical war.

Of course, the Soviet system was riddled with corruption and cronyism, meritocracy was honored in suppression. The soviets collapsed maintaining an increasingly ineffective military, whose structure and materials no longer matched its strategic goals.

The fearsome armored juggernaut and huge MAD arsenal were unequal to the task of holding and pacifying Afghanistan and the US backed future al Qaeda and Taliban. The front collapsed with a whoosh, taking the East European Communist Bloc with it.

We were, pardon the term, pre-eminent after the cold war ended, and we did not just hide behind it. We bullied, lied and cheated the same true believers who destroyed the Soviet Union in battle from behind it, in the form of the smart bomb of shock and awe.

The soviet military, overextended by the threat of NATO and westward deployment, choked badly on Afghanistan where armor sucked. The system collapsed politically when it was percieved as not able to control Afghanistan, a backward nation. Threat of Hungary scenarios were the cohesion of the Soviet Bloc.

The American military, supposedly better equipped, but not supporting a draft, will not be able to continue prosecuting war in the two theaters, and a likely third in Saudi Arabia without completely stripping all other major foreign postings and essentially moving the guard and reserve entirely offshore. By failing to kill Bin Laden, or completely destroy either the taliban or al qaeda, we have failed equally spectacularly, Iraq is icing on Bin Laden's cake.

As a side note, it might be argued that this situation would be a complete triumph for China's desire to re-unite/conquer a nifty chunk of territory. But the CCP is a highly ritualistic eminence front, and their trance is fading quickly.

And in case you hadn't seen this coming, global corporatism is most assuredly both an eminence front, and a put on.

[dbt]

10. Big stacks of cabinets across the stage,

All of 'em loaded with Eminence speakers! (Made in the USA.)

:smoke:
dbt