The American diplomat (1923–2023) appears in these dialogues almost entirely as a figure McLuhan uses rather than as a subject in his own right. He is the name in the last paragraph of "A Media Approach to Inflation" (1974), where McLuhan makes him the "triggerman" moving among the intervals of the four worlds and the type of the new role-player who is several offices at once. Bob reads that placement two ways at once — as McLuhan's tell about where power had migrated, and as an early sighting of what Bob calls quadrophrenia. Start with dialogue 57, where the whole op-ed is read aloud.
Across the dialogues
Enters through someone else's sentence — not as a subject the pair chose but as the name McLuhan reaches for when he needs a figure for the post-national operator, which makes the diplomat a piece of media theory before he is a piece of history
McLuhan casts the diplomat as an operator of gaps rather than of territories — what he moves among are the intervals between the four worlds, so the figure of power is redefined as someone who works the spaces between blocs instead of governing one.
"Henry Kissinger seems to be the current trigger man in this planetary game among the intervals of first, second, third and fourth worlds."
The passage Bob claims as his own term's ancestor — McLuhan describes a man holding several incompatible offices simultaneously, which Bob hears as quadrophrenia arrived at from the other direction, "We're all playing these multiple roles."
"He is neither a bureaucrat nor a professor nor a politician, but all of these things at once."
Connections
McLuhan's 1974 New York Times op-ed names Kissinger as "the current triggerman" and as the type of the new multi-role player.
Neither bureaucrat nor professor nor politician "but all of these things at once" — Bob takes this as McLuhan describing role-plurality before he had the word for it.