The Stupidest Things Ever Said (Haven't Been - Yet)

ON a book shelf near where I type, there's a book entitled "The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said." The book has 220 pages.

On my computer, I have a file entitled S.T.E.S.O.I.T.- Stupidest Things Ever Said On the Internet and Television. Weeding-out for comparison the television stuff and arranging the file in the same format as the book, STESOI - STESOIT without the "T" for television - has 990 entries, on 600 pages. There are things like the guy who responded to my reference to Hans Christian Anderson's "the Emperor's New Clothes" by saying he hadn't seen the movie but George Bush was a tactical genius (or the like - I forget), the woman who snapped when I spoke of the turn of the century that she had better things to do with her time than study "old news" (history), so she - "of course" - didn't know what I was talking about, and the lady who excused her advocacy of guns bans by saying that "self defense never excuses killing somebody."

A fellow named Devonelle (I think he's a guy - how do you tell when it's only an e-mail and it's a name like that?) wanted to know "What difference does a few billion fucking dollars make - really?" And then there was Tom, who sniffed when I prefaced my proof of the existence of god with the observation that the question first required agreement upon the definition of the word "god" that my statement "begs the question." To my query as to how that was, he replied - using four full lines on his Yahoo e-mail - that it was "axiomatic, which means obvious."

Oh, and I'm a "wacked out, stupid fucking neo-con nazi nut case." Geez, Tom – that proves I’m wrong, and believing in god also makes me a conservative? Interesting.

Oh, and then there was the pièce de résistance - the guy who said President Bush wasn't a liar because Saddam Hussein "probably buried all his factories so we wouldn't be able to find them." Asked how he thought that might have been accomplished without notice by all the UN inspectors and U.S. Special Forces Teams there, the U-2 and "no fly zone" enforcing fly-overs, and spy satellite surveillance, he said "they can do a lot of things like that nowadays."

Several persons writing on the Truthout Forum website would also believe that, apparently. That's inasmuch as they also believe (stridently and obstreperously) that the U.S. Government was somehow able to accomplish largely the same kind of stealth when it brought down the World Trade Center by controlled demolition.

"'Splain dat one, Luci!"

That's right. The folks who know the President is lying because nobody could possibly have done something like make weapons of mass destruction without having been detected know that our own government was nevertheless able to conceal from literally tens - probably hundreds - of thousands of people the massive operation necessary to prepare and accomplish controlled demolition of a building many times larger than the biggest building ever previously demolished.

"Sure," says Baby Huey, "that sounds logical."

And, I suppose, these same folks also wonder how we came to have in the nation's highest office a man who says things like:

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.” (George Orwell, how right you were!)

"I was not pleased that Hamas has refused to announce its desire to destroy Israel." (Huh?)

"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." (We've noticed - George, that's as impossible was what you're supposedly trying to do there)

"One has a stronger hand when there's more people playing your same cards." (Reminds one of the Secretary of Education who said the reason our schools are in such trouble is that he "chickens have literally come home to roost" - that would do it, all right)

"Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the consequences of words." (Among other things, George - among other things)

"You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war President. No President wants to be a war President, but I am one." (What can you say to that?)

"And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." (Our President has a lot of trouble with pronoun reference, doesn't he?)

"I think that the vice president is a person reflecting a half-glass-full mentality." (Compliments will get you everywhere, won't they?)

"And one thing we want during this war on terror is for people to feel like their life's moving on, that they're able to make a living and send their kids to college and put more money on the table." (George, that's exactly how we feel . . . maybe; well, we guess - probably)

"The best way to defeat the totalitarian of hate is with an ideology of hope -- an ideology of hate -- excuse me --with an ideology of hope." (Oh, boy - what did he say?)

"Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die." (But George, the question didn't mention IRS at all . . .)

And so on. If you're laughing (you think this is FUNNY?), you might want to consider that today's Internet chatrooms, forums, and blogs are replete with the same kind of thing. Here are a couple, lest you think I jest.

http://www.useless-knowledge.com/
http://www.truthout.org/


Another site, featuring some interesting reasoning and science is:

http://www.proudtobecanadian.ca/index/writergroup/

An interesting headline there, for instance, is "Anna Nicole Smiths (sic) death blamed on global warming." As is all but invariably the case when I write to ask pointed questions having to do with subject matter - in this case meteorology, the Coriolis Effect or Force, formula for oceanic to atmospheric carbon dioxide transfer, and the like - I get either no response whatever (the case in this instance) or a swiftly hunted up and plagiarized dissertation the polemicist has just obtained from the Internet.

Like one character arguing for the conspiracy theory having to do with the Word Trade Center disaster and controlled demolition, they are caught by a computer program used by teachers everywhere for that very purpose. For whatever-his-moniker was, the impossible mathematical probability of his having picked literally hundreds of identical words, arranged in the identical order, as the original author was decisive. Pick a subject in the news, then peruse the internet forums and do the same, you'll get the same results.

Interestingly, too, pick a subject NOT in the news, anything otherwise esoteric, then ask the same people. Not a clue. Make it as dirt simple, mundane and commonly known elsewhere on the globe, as you like. Nothing. Point? The public here in "America" gets its opinions not from their minds, but from the media (their other mind). Until they've heard their favorite political pundit - or, presumably, otherwise - they HAVE no opinion. Usually, they knew utterly nothing about the matter before it became news.

Journalism, inflicted by both print and electronic media, isn't better. You wonder whose mind it is they listen to. As I've asked before here, how does a columnist come up with the same Conservative or Liberal viewpoint on every issue. Isn't one very definite possibility obviously so? Yeah, the government.

It's interesting, too that the higher one goes in the hierarchy of news analysts and pundits, the more uniform - not only having to do with left or right politically, but having to do with what might be called supervisory control - "reporting" and "opinion" becomes. At the local level, things journalistic get pretty comical, for instance. "Children who have been artificially inseminated ought to have the right to know," a bloviating editorial in a Texas newspaper trumpets. Another demands a state-funded study to learn "why so many people in South Texas are born with half a brain" (what I want to know personally is how the otherwise unfortunate so often get elected president). Discourse, reporting, and debate on television is so riddled with so much of the same as to be useless for anything except derisive laughter.

But it's interesting that one finds that sort of thing, specifically, more often the lower down the pecking-order of the media one gets. What, only the national-level news media can write a good, and circumspect, sentence? Or is someone proof-reading - or censoring - more carefully. Or dictatorially.

Can anyone imagine finding a verbal pratfall like the "half a brain" quote in Stalinist-era Pravda? How about a Chinese newspaper during the time of Mao?

Mention of Stalin and Mao, however, reminds me that sometimes the polemicists and pundits aren't so funny. Have a look at these websites, then read the argument there.

The issue having to do with ownership of firearms is a representative example of any here in the Land of Free Speech. A visitor from another planet (or, unfortunately, country) would quickly make an assessment of the public's ability to solve problems or control their destinies by way of discourse and reason. Anyone who looks at the sites above, then does the research necessary to get an informed opinion must at once begin to wonder why proponents of gun control and legislation to that end find it either supportive of their dyslogistic point of view or their public reputation - at least among honest and honorable people - to lie. Obviously, they are not interested in informed debate, and not willing to let anyone decide intelligently for himself. Whether this is due political methodology or the responsible for it is a chicken or the egg question.

Before reading the various websites and blogs, you would do well to look up and understand the classic fallacy of irrelevant conclusion. Pick any debate today, you'll hear it argued again and again, ad nauseam. Here's one site:

http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/irrelev.htm

Once you know a "beside the point" argument, proceed:

http://www.goodbyeguns.org/
http://www.bradycenter.org/
http://www.stophandgunviolence.com/ (Read this one, then look up the statistics)
http://www.vahv.org/
http://www.spectacle.org/295/guns.html
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment02/ (Read the cases, then read the claims made elsewhere about them.)
http://www.guncite.com/journals/dowrkba.html (Copyright © 1982 Oklahoma City University Law Review.)
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=841 (Number of state laws referring to the issue.)

The other side of the issue, for one reason or the other (ulterior motives are possible, even likely, in an debate here), is as diametrically opposed in method as it is in viewpoint. Read the websites supportive of "the right to bear arms," then - once you've done the necessary research - count the prevarications. You'll see something very interesting.

I make no further comment. The conclusions are yours (let's see if you can, free of bias, do that).

Neither is self-deception and aggrandizement, sophist paralysis by analysis, the drive for power and political control of others, together with dysphasia and solecism, malaprop, and tangled rhetoric the only example of our nationally stupefied state. Tired almost to death of the bloviating B.S. and balderdash being foisted on the U.S. media by so-called analysts and pundits, those "nationally-recognized authorities" we hear from so often - to say nothing of what seems to be tens of thousands of politically-oriented "bloggers" who obviously know damned little or nothing about the "issue" they're yapping about - I considered briefly issuing a challenge here: "Let's debate. Let's see how the drivel you're peddling stands up to mathematical, scientific, and logical analysis."

I've changed my mind. It wouldn't accomplish anything. As a grandfather once said, "The only one who argues with a jackass is a jackass."

But I'm still going to peruse the blogs, the forums and what have you, picking out gems like those I've already written about here. In a kind of gallows humor manner, it's good for laughs (by the way, I've quite a collection of Bushisms from the George W. branch of the Bush League; maybe I'll start publishing them. Meanwhile, here are a few sites with a collection:
http://www.hud.gov/news/speeches/presremarks.cfm
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm
http://www.slate.com/id/76886/

Then, too, daddy George H.W. Bush was no slouch in the foot-in-mouth department, either. Check these:

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/funnyquotes/a/georgehwbushism.htm

The Media Matters http://mediamatters.org/ e-mails me dozens of example of fractured reasoning, goofy pronouncements, and outright falsehood of the calculated and deliberate kind from journalists, pundits, analysts, and the like. Mention of Media Matters, incidentally, sometimes drives FoxNews - especially Bill O'Reilly - to nearly incoherent diatribe. As I say here often, I watch Fox almost religiously, solely for study in order to stay abreast of the state-of-the-art where Bush League propaganda methods are concerned.

Rita, more emotional, can't stand to see Sean Hannity go on breathing and leaves the room. I don't know why she doesn't see the humor. Femaleness, I guess.

Anyway, I propose to begin a much more intensive perusal of the blogs. More, I intend to challenge the nation's political pundits. It's time someone did, and on grounds more varied than simply the lies and inconsistent statements noted by Media Matters. Much of this yields truth to mathematical, scientific, and logical examination. Much of "it's a matter of opinion" ISN'T a matter of opinion - it's mathematically, scientifically, and logically false.

Of course, most "Americans" - smugly corrupted and decadent as they are - don't care what the reality of their latest pet "issue" is (for examples of that particular syndrome, go to Archives here, find "ravenqueen," "vivi." "eyeswideopen," "amoeba," "TJ," and others).

But there are those who do. "Have gun, will travel," and these days, to do the one, you have to do the other. It's a very intellectual - cerebral, even - country.