"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into." -- Jonathan Swift
Forgive the extended absence, but even a would-be Galactic Dictator with unlimited powers occasionally needs a break.
Anyway, today I wish to talk about biases and some recent experiences I've had with them.
By the way, let me stop you now before you start thinking to yourself "I don't have any", because, yes, you do. We all do. Some of us are more intellectually honest about it than others. Some never manage to discover them. Some, even when the biases are pointed out to them and given sufficient evidence to support the accusation, refuse to admit them.
Now, I guess bias serves some psychological need we all have, but fuck me if I'm about to delve into this sort of thing because, well, I don't want to. What I wish to do here is to point out some recent examples that have come to my attention and then make fun of the mentality (or lack, thereof) that can hold them, because in my opinion, you'd have to be a cosmic moron to do so.
I'll start with an example of one of the most-common biases of all that has crossed my radar recently, and then ridicule the lower-IQ mindset that can believe it. This would be Antisemitism, which has become -- I won't say "more prevalent" -- these days, because it was always a staple of the radical left and they just hid it very well for a very long time.
Unfortunately, the Left is now in such a state of high menstrual dudgeon that it has lost it's collective marbles and can hide it no longer.
And to be fair, it isn't just an affliction of the Left, either. There is a certain brand of crushingly idiotic Right-wingers who are echoing the cri de coeur of the so-called "Progressive" Left. In fact, on this particular subject, they sound exactly like the typical lefty. For many years, I have called this particular brand of douchebag the "Wraparound Conservative" -- he's gone so far to the right that he begins to act and speak like a leftist.
Antisemitism has it's roots, for all I can discover, is a variety of truly stupid ideas. There is the religious basis -- the Jews are the reason why Jesus was crucified, for example -- which are patently false. While some Jews (the Pharisees) had an issue with Jesus, the truth is the man condemned himself with his own fat mouth, what with all this "Render unto Caesar..." and "My kingdom is not of this world..." nonsense. It was the Romans who executed Christ -- not the Jews.
But then Rome made Christianity the official religion and gave Christians extra-special rights and privileges, and so all was forgiven, because if there's anything any good Christian likes more than to look down his nose at others, it's being bribed and feeling himself virtuous for having taken it. For God and his immortal soul, of course.
There is business jealousy, stretching back 2,000 years, when Jewish middlemen made themselves quite the fortune acting as brokers and go-betweens for the European (Christian) consumer and the dominated-by-the-Arab/Muslim trade routes of the East. Jewish bankers and merchant families had most of the Crowned Heads of Europe deep in debt and beholden to them, until the Crowned Heads (Christians, too. Funny how that happened?) decided they didn't want to pay their debts (or couldn't) and then turned on their former financiers.
And then there's the long history of separatism among Jews, who often stayed apart from their European (Christian) neighbors in an effort to maintain their religion and culture, that made them easy -- and outnumbered -- targets for robbery, often accompanied by murder.
So, when I have a discussion with a couple of complete idiots over the subject of the recent saber-rattling with Iran, and the first worlds out of their mouths is "we will only go to war with Iran because the Jew Bankers make us", and this is buttressed with "evidence" of Jewish conspiracy in government, academia, media, business -- I mean, according to these mental giants, the Jews have infiltrated everything from the IMF, to the CIA, not to mention Wall Street, the Girl Scouts, the 4H Club, the Freemasons, The Shriners, Hell's Angels, and your local "Pink Ladies" group -- I want to kill someone.
I worked on Wall Street for 25 years and didn't see too many Jews. I mean, they were there, but most of the suits had names like Percival M. Van Schwanstucker IV, were all members of the Harvard scull team, and ate pork with reckless abandon. I never saw a yarmulke for sale in Barneys or Brooks Brothers, either.
According to this brand of retard, all the recent kerfuffle with Iran is because Israel needs to be saved from the Iranians and has tricked/bribed/manipulated Uncle Sam into doing so. Why the Joooooos should trick/bribe/manipulate America into a war with Iran -- a country hundreds of miles away and incapable of launching much of an attack on Israel, in a conventional military sense -- and not, say, the Palestinians living next door, is something I haven't quite figured out and which makes absolutely no sense.
Naturally, if Trump does not go to war with Iran, the same fucktards will tell you it's because the Jooooos suddenly changed their minds, and have tricked/bribed/manipulated this outcome, as well. Why they should do this, too, goes unexplained.
Because to this sort of dummy, it doesn't need to be explained. The fact that they're Jooooos makes them evil, deceitful, vile, criminal little creatures of pure, unmitigated evil.
Because Christian.
Now, let's give them some credit: they may hate Jooooos, but don't dare to call them Antisemites. It is here that they play some very interesting psychological games that are clear indications they never matured out of Freud's anal stage. They will explain to you that they aren't Antisemitic (even though Joooos are evil bastards who deserve to die); no, they are really anti-Zionist. Presumably, if Israel didn't exist they would love Jews? Ask that and see what sort of answer you get.
I mean to play that sort of semantic game over Antisemitism is a backhanded (and probably unconscious) admission that there is something unseemly about being an Antisemite and they try like the dickens to avoid being called out and embarrassed by it. And much like the leftist, if you simply rename the disgusting behavior it suddenly becomes respectable, they labor under the mistaken impression that even their hatred is justified, provided you can split enough hairs to obscure it. And yet they can't recognize it.
Press them on it, and they wrap themselves in the mantle of their Christianity. As if that were a defense. I guess Christ's admonishment to "love thy neighbor" falls by the wayside when your neighbor doesn't celebrate Christmas.
By the way, Jesus was a Jooooooo, too.
Then again, most of the people I've met that can behave in this mentally-diseased fashion usually also turn out to be conspiracy theorists, which is another species of deep brain injury.
All the Communists were Jews (point out that Stalin was a Greek Orthodox Seminarian, and you're called a liar). "Bolshevik", you see, literally means "Jew" (actually, it doesn't. It refers to all members of the Russian Revolution). Here's 500 videos from a whack job still off his meds , living in his mother's basement, surrounded by HAM radio gear and Nazi paraphernalia, explaining how the Holocaust was a clever ruse designed to allow the Jews to continue their evil behind a screen of sympathy. Make the case that the Antisemite is speaking of the Jews just as Hitler did and how dare you call them a Nazi.
So, let's simplify this for you, okay? If the Jooooos really had that kind of power and influence, Doofus, they wouldn't be fighting an existential battle for a sandy piece of land nor hang around Europe for 2,000 years to be occasionally slaughtered en mass.
So, Dumbass, if you need a conspiracy, try this one on for size:
It is known that former Secretary of State John Kerry, and many of the former Obama foreign policy team, has been coaching the Iranians on how to avoid American sanctions for a year. Considering these people could not beat Trump at the ballot box, they could not depose him with the Russian Collusion garbage, they could not mortally wound him with the manufactured Kavanaugh witch trial, they could not pin a string of fake rapes on him, nor make hay of the fact that he paid a porn star for her silence, perhaps the only thing left that could derail Trump in 2020 is a war, and if it goes badly or widens in scope, then at least, maybe, one of the 206 sacrificial lambs now lining up to be slaughtered in that election MIGHT have a chance at victory.
But then we couldn't share hyperlinks from David Duke's website or recycle the tired and provably-false Protocols of the Elder of Zion routine.
The next example is one of pre-programmed and manufactured outrage.
A news story (it was the Washington Post, which should be ashamed of itself) appears online concerning a pharmaceutical company. According to the article, this company has a diabetes drug that is supposed to be "a cure" for Alzheimer's and Dementia. However, the company in question refuses to spend $80 million to study this phenomenon further, because it's making far more money dispensing drugs that don't cure Alzheimer's and Dementia.
Why, there's outrage! There's hysteria! There's accusations that Big Pharma doesn't care about human beings; only profit$$$. They are evil, despicable, douchy people who only live to profit off the suffering of others.
My friends and relatives are in uproar; these greedy oligarchs in the Pharmaceutical industry (which never did anything good, for anyone, according to those who are now cancer-free, have had their illnesses cured with antibiotics, who sport artificial knees and hips, have seen their children grow up free of diseases that routinely kill millions elsewhere on this planet) do this all the time: they "withhold" cures, all in the name of making money. They are sub-human pieces of shit who should all be shot.
And then a day later the truth comes out.
It turns out said company reviewed the medical records of 127.000 patients who took their drug and had dementia. Some of them (a whole 412) seemed to have some slight improvement in the severity of their Alzheimer's symptoms. They shared this data with an outside party for peer review on the off-chance they may have stumbled onto a wonderful discovery.The outside party did some math and some science (none of which the newspaper that originally posted the article ever did) and came up with similar numbers. Also, the data was inconclusive as to whether this was an actually viable treatment, or a statistical anomaly, or just plain coincidence.
So, the pharma company decided not to spend $80 million to study the question further.
Because 412 out of 127,000 represents only 0.003244094488189% of the patients screened.
Would you spend $80 million (of other people's) money on those sorts of odds?
So, what we have here is a wonderfully manufactured piece of "Creative Journalism" (aka "Fake news", otherwise known as "Total Bullshit"). It has all the elements: an easily-vilified entity (Big Pharma is sort of the Jews of Modern Industry), a vile and venal motivation (profit), and a sympathetic victim (people with Alzheimer's). All the J-school graduate (who are all morally superior to we mere mortals, btw) had to do was leave out the facts, and you had a Lifetime Movie of the Week.
It was clickbait.
And then all of our outraged, hopping-mad, thoroughly-disgusted, would-be executioners all had a collective brain fart, and rather than be angry that the press deliberately lied to them (for profit! Those outraged clicks, shares, likes, and re-posts make them money, after all), suddenly decide that it's the internet that is to blame.
Not that they were pre-disposed to believe something. Not that they were too lazy to look for the facts, themselves. Not that they had ignored their responsibilities as thinking individuals to make a more-reasonable judgment to await more information before forming an opinion. Fuck, they weren't even pissed off that they were -- easily -- emotionally manipulated. No, they simply found another scapegoat -- the internet -- to blame for their stupid.
Finally, a truly stupid argument to be involved with.
Starz network is running a show called "The Spanish Princess" which purports to be a semi-historical account of Catherine of Aragon. Obviously, shows like this (think "The Tudors", "The Borgias", "The White Queen", any recent film/series about Elizabeth I) take a great deal of artistic license. They are pitched as "history", but they certainly aren't. Usually, the history serves merely as the backdrop for either Feminist Bullshit or soft-core porn, and usually both.
Being a history buff, I gave it a chance and when I wasn't laughing at the farcical historical take (which usually includes characters who do not appear in the actual history, or characters which are based upon historical figures who are dressed up and subtly altered to match the politically-correct attitudes of the week so that they resemble their real-life inspirations not at all), I was vomiting at the poor acting on the screen.
Obviously, these sorts of shows are aimed at women (it's not like I didn't know that going into it), but apparently skill at acting, being entertaining, creating an engaging personality for your character, are not pre-requisites for the actors/actresses who get these roles.
They are typically universally bad, and when you do get a decent performance, it's typically a character who dies early in the series or who is presented as the villain.
Anyway, the show sucks. It often goes beyond sucking into swallowing. And then it goes all the way and sucks itself in and swallows itself.
But, hey, other people like it. Someone must, because they kept making more of them.
And then you encounter a pair of vaginas who can't stop talking about it. They love it, because it's full of feminist tropes that usually revolve around Cognitive Dissonance -- Catherine is both "a victim" and "a strong woman"; she needs no man in her life, and yet is all-too-often influenced by her sexual desire for them; she is ambitious (she wants the throne of England), but the Patriarchy (a bunch of men who get to be Kings) stands in her way; she is a pawn in the game of dynastic marriage and yet somehow you know the pawn will come out on top (even though history says otherwise), she is an innocent and a master of political knife-fighting.
And just because we need a Vagina O' Color in it (because Diversity), Catherine the Superheroine has a black sidekick.
She's like the Renaissance Green Hornet.
Listening to the cackling hens, I started to giggle -- at first -- and then break into laughter. They wanted to know what was so funny. So I told them. Just what I've told you in the last two paragraphs.
Now, because I don't like something they like, I'm a sexist who suffers from a deep-seeded fear of losing my White Male Power (incidentally, when women and minorities speak of "lacking power" in our society, what they really mean is "lack of personal initiative). This makes me laugh more. I have gotten their goat, so to speak. And there is nothing funnier than a sputtering vagina going all Full Frontal Femtard on you, particularly when they are under the mistaken impression that what they are watching on television actually happened in the real world at some point.
Now, do I have any biases? You bet I do. Prime among them is believing that most people are idiots. I sometimes have to check myself and tell myself that this is not really true, and that it is arrogant of me to believe otherwise.
And then they speak.
And what do we get?
Antisemitism presented as a virtue.
People who easily fall for hoaxes because they've been conditioned to.
Women who believe the 16th Century was full of soft-core porn in frilly clothes.
Bias confirmed, Motherfucker.
UPDATE: Cleaned up some spelling/grammar.
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