That Old Time Sophistry
Illustration by Mirna Wabi-Sabi
Well, here we all are. Worldwide, we now all have something in common. We are all sheltering from a rough respiratory virus, and we are all watching many world leaders fail at basic leadership while we are sheltering. Some are lucky enough to live in countries in which being incompetent is not a badge of honor, but one of shame, and so the virus was nipped in the bud in those countries before it got crazy. The United States is not one of these countries. I grew up in the U.S., watching ignorance, a rejection of not only intellectualism but of any type of intelligence or learning. What I didn't realize in my youth that the “Idiocracy”, as Mike Judge so aptly named the tendency we was lampooning, was actually just the set up. Anti-intellectualism was not the point of the anti-intellectualism, the point was to create the perfect environment for bullshit.
The program being pushed by the Authoritarians isn't just a program of anti-intellectualism, it is anti-intellectualism in the service of bullshit. Herein we will define bullshit along the lines of the eminent Princeton philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt thusly: That bullshit may not be, nor is it intended to be, an accurate representation of truth, nor is it falsehood, but instead it is words crafted entirely to convince the hearer to agree with or go along with what the bullshitter desires. The liar presumes to know the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter need not know the truth, nor do they have a concern for it. But bullshit is nothing new. Plato had plenty to say about bullshitters while wearing his teacher Socrates' identity as a skin-suit.
I imagine Socrates actual opinion of Sophists was probably a little kinder than Plato's, a little more forgiving. Even Plato couldn't hide his magnanimity too much, less he himself be accused of Sophistry. The Sophists were actually just paid teachers. They taught rhetoric, grammar, poetry, etc. Slowly over time, thanks to Plato, but also probably thanks to the prevailing cultural gestalt of the time, the Sophists became associated with what Plato called falsehood. I don't think they had any closer word to bullshit than that in his time. If they did, than Plato's description of the Sophists would have been shorter, you know, like he would have just said, “They lie, like all the time.” But what Plato describes is not lying. What he describes is, “the art of contradiction making […] that presents a shadow play of words.”
If you're familiar with Platonic thought, then that second statement is probably telling for you. It goes back to the allegory of the cave, which is basically Plato's best attempt at describing the Matrix movies without thousands of years of tech advance to use metaphorically. Plato is saying that the Sophists create a fake world, that has nothing to do with reality, with their words. Does any of that sound familiar to you? Like, a current, so-called super-power that is being run by someone who is constantly accused of lying? Donald Trump is constantly accused of lying, but I still don't believe it, just like I don't believe he is a fascist. You have to believe in things to be a fascist, let alone certain things. Donald Trump doesn't believe in anything. You have to actually know the truth to lie about it. Donald Trump doesn't know shit.
As you sit there in your footy pajamas wondering where the rent and food money is going to come from, because you know it isn't coming from the reason we all have to do this, I'll talk about the sophistry going on today. Some of it will be stuff that happened post COVID-19, some of it will be stuff that was going on before the world wide event that marks a harsh break with the cultural and social inertia of the 20th century. To give you a taste of the normalcy you'll never see again. Oh you'll go outside again, work at a job, hate the president. But that old world is gone, let it go and prepare for the new.
So, lets all go on a journey together, but not like literally, I don't actually want you guys near me right now. On the outside I'm ice cold and calm, but my wife has both a respiratory problem and an auto-immune issue, so on the inside I'm like:
ohmygodsthatidiotTrumpisgoingtokillmywifewithhisidiocyIcan'tlivewithouthersomeonepleasetellmeIdon'thavetosaygoodbyeyetpleaseletitbemeinstead...
But don't worry! Everything's fine, uh, we're all fine here. Uh, right, going on a journey.
Our Stockpile
Jared Kushner is 100% the product of Nepotism. You can tell by the way his is rich and famous but doesn't seem to know or do anything. I mean, he gets put in charge of a lot of shit, but then nothing happens and then everyone moves on because we all kind of secretly know that nothing happening is the best possible outcome we can hope for. The worst we can hope for is that a talentless man-child that married into a family of grifters tells us all that the stockpile of supplies literally meant to supplement state supplies in a time of crisis is in fact not for that.
“The notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states stockpiles that they then use.” I assure you the federal stockpile is the opposite of what JK Fuckhead says. They, meaning the Trump family, then edited the website for the national stockpile to match their bullshit. Like everyone wouldn't notice. And you just know that JK Fuckhead that the things he thought because he saw the abbreviation U.S., and thought “us”, as in the Trump family, because he is a dumbass. I honestly can't tell you what infuriates me more, the harm they've done to people, their bullshit, or how lazy their bullshit is. If there truly is any actual debasement of U.S. Politics going on, its been in the amount of effort being put into the bullshit these days. But what did you expect from Trump and his crew, they don't even aspire to be 90% bullshitters. They don't even want to work hard at crime and it's bullshit.
Sophist “Educators”
From Youtube videos feeding you pre-chewed bullshit to brick and mortar seminary mills, and all the way back to the internet for more secular degree mills, the United States has no shortage of Sophist “Educators”. Their goals are multitude. Some, like the secular degree mills, just want to shove some embossed parchment in your face after you buy so many classes and shove you out the door. You could have gotten a better education for cheaper with a library card and some desire, but you need that paper to show you fit the right metric for whatever company considering hiring you, there is no appropriate metrics for “self educated”. Self educated people don't exist, you have a degree or you have no skills, knowledge, or experience. Or at least that is what this technic bound world believes, and therefore, whether you believe it or not, you are subject to it... if you want one of their jobs that is. It's so bad in the U.S. that degree mills have their own accreditation mills! Yes, faking bullshit for the marketing of fake bullshit is its own industry now! Or maybe it always was! Does anyone remember not drowning in bullshit?
The degree mills suck, and are destroying what there is left of education in a real institution, with full of actual experts that do actual learning, instead of an overworked associate professor that would rather spend his time on the intellectual work that actually interests him, instead of teaching an endless phalanx of 101 classes and getting no research sabbatical for his trouble, let alone a decent check. What really sucks, in this context of degree mills and degree mill mills are the unaccredited seminaries. These schools sound like a place where you learn the bible (pronounced bib-el), about the bible, and what to do about the bible. But that would more likely happen in an actual school's history department than one of these seminaries. These seminaries are actually bootcamps for a, shall we say, particular type of world view. Lets just call it, for lack of a better word, Conservative-Republican. Compound words count as one word, right? Ah fuck it, no one's reading this. Everyone's busy licking their hands and handling produce in public.
Anyway, these institutions of some type of learning (operant conditioning maybe?) care more for the conduct of their students, and appearances, than anything else. They will routinely expel you for even looking like you might be suggesting that you are OK with being gay. Or if you look like you are challenging any of their other loads of bullshit, like the evils of premarital sex! The so-called reverend Falwell, (junior, not his dad, who I guess is now Fellwell) insists keeping his university open in solidarity with the Global Jayhawk/Market Liberal/Christian Conservative alliance that is the Republican party and the economic death cult these groups promote on behalf of their rich fascist masters. Wow, that was a mouthful. Let's shorten that up by referring to this whole clique as Fuckheads.
These Fuckheads have been running boot-camps for Fuckheadism for decades. Yet, everyone seems shocked that they have seemingly endless gaggles of Fuckheads to show up for all kinds of shit. Yes, Liberty University (formerly Lynchberg University, which they changed because I guess it was too right on the money) wanted their students to comeback to school in defiance of any common sense or concern for their “students” safety. Because their Semitic thunder god will protect them from disease? Haha, no. Because the economy is worth more than their lives. Seriously, that's why. It is so dedicated to this notion that it is pressing trespassing charges on reporters covering their commitment to the prosperity gospel. Which now seems to be not that you are prosperous because god loves you. No. That's what it was, but that shit was too pagan Roman Empire. Now, to be more in line with Calvinist doctrine, god doesn't love you until you are prosperous. Now that's the Protestant work ethic, the very spirit of Capitalism! Which means if we let the economy tank, their god will punish us, uh-oh! I've got to tell you, if I were on another planet, the slow devolution of Christians into Ferengi would be a down right hoot.
Oh yes, lets not forget Prager U (which my processor wants to change to Preggers for some reason, and no, I didn't teach it that!), which is not a university, but a cheesy propaganda mill run by a guy whose look screams closet gay, but like, the kind of closet gay in which coming out wouldn't actually improve his wardrobe or make him look less like a dweeb, because this is 2020 and outdated television stereotypes can only do so much (hint: actually nothing). What else can I say about Prager U and all these “schools”; its fake, its bullshit.
Speaking of Economic Death Cults
“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor — both black and white, here and abroad“, said Martin Luther King Jr. But what would he know? It isn't like he was a reverend or anything. Oh wait he was! Lets talk then about gods plan for poor people. Specifically, to die in a pandemic to save the economy, since a healthy economy will bring the rewards that come from god's love. What rewards? Why, more work silly!
The propaganda blow holes have not shirked their duty to encourage people to remember that the Protestant work ethic is the foundation of our economy, gods love, and your proper lot in life, even if that lot leads you to your death. A lonely death, to be sure, but since you'll be knocked out on the ventilator anyway, you won't even be able to tell you're alone as you slip off into not having to work for these assholes anymore.
The pundits are even claiming that the elderly, since they obviously have fewer years of useful work left to them, should go in and keep the economy alive, even if it means certain death. The richly rewarded talking heads say these things knowing that they themselves risk nothing, for no one, as they broadcast their bullshit to the homes of those that don't have a rich man's bunker to weather things out in. Talking heads are so brave!
The talking heads (i.e. the Glenn Beck zoo crew et al) are all spitting the message (bullshit) the rich want us to hear. The message being, ‘your value to us is the work you do, you have no purpose or value to us beyond your work, your lives mean nothing to us if you are not working.’ As I said above, welcome to the new protestant work ethic. The ties between Capitalism and Protestantism are deep, we all kind of forget this and think of this prosperity gospel and salvation through work bullshit like its some sort of new phenomena, some sort of new way the rich are using religion to manipulate the frightened and ignorant. It isn't. It isn't the oldest bullshit to be sure, but its definitely been drying in the sun a while. We could go into deep analysis on this, but instead, I want to try an approach that has worked well for me when discussing the environment with people. Instead of waxing moralist on the Earth's biosphere, I just ask people, “Mother fucker you like breathing clean air or what?” So here it goes, “Mother fucker you trying to die of work or what?” That's basically what this comes down to. Are you going to work yourself to death for the sake of a rich asshole's bragging rights with, I dunno, other rich assholes? Because right now that is fundamentally what they are demanding of us, and it's bullshit.
Nastiness is bullshit
“They were very nasty to me.” ~The 45th President of the United States of America
You know what I love most about nazi double talk and hypocrisy? How it is the perfect example of a snowflake condemning snowflake life. Everything that a nazi has to say about safespaces also applies to the U.S., since the U.S. is white person safe space. Fuck sake we might as well change the countries name to the United Snowflakes of America. But for them, they aren't being snowflakes, they are being civilized. It is all of us, the minorities, the poor European-Americans that don't tow the line, foreigners who aren't actually foreign they're just not Protestant, “Communists!” and such. We are all filthy, uncivilized savages that don't understand basic shit, like how to please god with large bank accounts, which are also obtained by pleasing god in a never ending loop of circular bullshit.
The Republicans are the undisputed masters of carrying colonizer rhetoric through the ages, to be used without being called on their colonizer bullshit, to here and now in our contemporary era. They are the more civilized, so when they cheat, lie, bullshit, gerrymander, and generally do everything they can to avoid democracy, it is in the service of taming this savage wild-land full of savages who savagely want basic shit a human needs, savagely. It must be why most European-Americans just don't see the racism. It would be too much a blow to their psyche to have to admit that they are now the savages being colonized by marketing, propaganda, rhetoric, all fancy words for bullshit.
No, number 45, they were not nasty to you. If they were being nasty, they would body shame you when you walked into the press briefing room by saying shit like, “Whoa, someone call Linus, we just found the Great Pumpkin!”, or maybe, “So that's when doc Brown's hair would look like combed on the right side!”. I would love it if every time a republican politician or pundit said, “They said some very nasty things”, or “They were very nasty to me”, if a reporter could just say, “Good, fuck you”. That would just tickle me to no end. But instead, we all keep catering to snowflake shit, because despite the strides made in egalitarianism worldwide, it's still the United Snowflakes of America, and it's bullshit.
Well, that's the end of my Diogenes the Cynic bit. See Diogenes, you can stick it to the man without masturbating in public. And with that thought in your mind, don't forget to wash your hands!
Patacelsus
A Discordian for 20 years, Patacelsus finally got comfortable when the 21st century “started getting weird.” When not casting sigils, taking part in Tibetan Buddhist rituals, or studying the unfortunate but sometimes amusing stories of the dead, he’s been known to wander the hidden ways of the city, communing with all of the hidden spirits one can find in a city. As Patacelsus sees it, we’re all already free; after completing the arduous task of waking up to that we can then proceed, like a doctor treating a patient, to try to rouse others from the bitter and frightening nightmares of Archism. He laughs at Samsara’s shadow-play in lovely California, in the company of his wife, two cats, and two birds.