It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
— Attributed to Mark Twain
Anyone wanting to know the truth would not behave in ways that ensure they never will. If you abandon your critical thinking skills the moment you even perceive a threat to your interests — doesn’t that bring those skills into question?
Taking on the entire country is worlds away from what everyone else is doing. Explaining America’s decline over decades of delight in the Gutter Games of Government — is apples & oranges as it gets when compared to the transactional nature of news and social-media norms. Understanding how seemingly unrelated events impact one another takes time and effort to digest.
Thanks to the internet and the cable clans paving the way for the onslaught of the utterly absurd — everything is poisoned by perception and hypocrisy now. America’s in perennial pursuit of ideologies — warfare waged with galactic levels of baggage & bullshit bolstered by . . .
opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion
— Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom
We could do something about that, but you’re busy . . .
You’re always busy
If I came into this cold — I’d already be able to establish a great deal on what this person told me without telling me. I coined “cable clans” over 10 years ago to capture the media in the same way I bucket both parties into “two sides of the same counterfeit coin.”
There’s no party-line loyalty in that any more than Gutter Games of Government or anything else above and across this site.
You care about politics — I care about problem solving. Believe it or not, you can do both (though the former will forever hinder the latter). But you’ve allowed politics to cripple the possibility of any problem solving at all.
Shallow thinkers do not think beyond the immediate and the observable. They usually take information at face value and only look at immediate consequences. They are not capable of looking at all sides of an issue or think deeply about the issue before making decisions or drawing conclusions . . .
They also believe that their opinion is based on deep thinking because they genuinely believe that their opinion is based on truth and facts. Whereas, deep thinkers look at the whole sequence of events and the consequences.
When we dig deeper, we understand better. We can compare different outcomes, examine, tear apart, and make cognizant judgments that are derived from different mental models.
Left and Right, I’ve yet to find a single person who digs beyond the depth of their immediate domain of interest. In our entirely transactional times, America endlessly rehashes topics of today — never once considering the totality of events that created them (or even having a notion of the need to).
With the issues I address — you might as well be saying the Civil War wasn’t germane to the assassination of Lincoln.
V for Victory — How Fitting . . .
A world where you can win an argument without even knowing what the issue is about. How you behave in denying the undeniable daily would be unthinkable for me to do ever.
Imagine America as an engine and you come along with a cross-section of it to explain why it’s not working. Since your audience shares your concerns, you’d think they’d be interested in understanding the internals of the problem. But they spend all their time talking about parts made by people they don’t like — never considering the defects in their own parts.
And even though you’ve got a rock-solid idea for how to fix the engine (or at least make it run on reason): They’d rather spend the rest of their lives complaining about problems than take responsibility for their part in creating them.
I fail to understand how you think we can solve anything in a country that can’t even get the self-evident straight:
“Wut?”
In my youth, I could not have imagined a world in which even people with PhDs would act like imbeciles in the face of information they don’t instantly understand. That an entire country could take satisfaction in insulting your own intelligence on a daily basis just astounds me. And there is no measure for how preposterous it is that people who can’t even connect the dots This Does Not = That:
Have the bottomless gall to belittle me on making correlations in 3 dimensions while you wallow in one.
What do you mean by 3 dimensions?
Now that would be a good question — and you’d be amazed at what you’d see if you’d started asking some.
As for what I mean . . .
What do you think this means?
It means that defending the indefensible in the former helped create the conditions for the latter. It means you harmed your own interests by the manner in which you pursued them — like all of America does every goddamn day.
I’ve always thought there’s something wildly out of whack with pursuing values in a manner devoid of virtue. In one form or another, inevitably there are consequences for convictions unguided by conscience.
Look around!
Marching to Black Lives Matter with the first black president sitting in the White House — was that a smart move? The answer should be abundantly clear and yet the question is not even considered. I’ve been blocked on Twitter for just politely suggesting that BLM is a counterproductive cause.
Instead of considering how you could fight for justice more intelligently — you act like I’m saying you shouldn’t fight for it at all.
Was that smart move?
It’s a sign of the times that people fail to understand the premise of such a simple question.
What’s more, they make it nearly impossible to explain it to them — as detail has a way of complicating the narrative. Even if drawing attention to a problem produces some positive activity, the concept of unintended consequences entirely escapes those consumed by what they see only in the moment.
A lot of that goin’ around
Speaking of detail and denying the undeniable:
The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together on matters deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace: Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on.
While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube. What’s wrong with that picture — and this one?
Hmm, so the dimensions exactly match the tubes used in Iraq’s history of manufacturing the Nasser-81 mm artillery rocket (a reverse-engineered version of the Italian Medusa)
It seems we have all the time in the world to promote the false — but not a second to spare for the truth. “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on” — a quote that’s been around in various forms for over 300 years (evidently the original being from 1710):
Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect.
This image is especially fitting for the times — since it’s a myth popularized by Washington Irving and others.
According to The Flat Earth Myth: The real myth is the idea that anyone ever believed in a flat earth:
Essentially no one during the Middle Ages believed the world was flat. Of the many myths about the Middle Ages this one is perhaps the most widespread, and yet at the same time the most roundly and authoritatively debunked.
In fact, the evidence is so overwhelming that refuting this myth is like refuting the idea that the moon is made of cheese.
Same on WMD — and then some!
“Bias” gets all the press
When prejudice is paramount to the problem. If it were just bias, convincing you with overwhelming and irrefutable evidence might still be difficult — but you’d be willing to be convinced.
Prejudice doesn’t roll that way. In fact, it doesn’t roll anywhere — as you don’t budge one bit, and take pride in it, no less.
As a friend comically put it:
It’s not “Pride and Bias”
Fact:
truth verifiable from experience or observation
Which means most of America is delusional by definition:
- A delusion is a mistaken belief that is held with strong conviction even when presented with superior evidence to the contrary
- Characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument
- Something a person believes and wants to be true, when it is actually not true
And the only way you can pull off the above is with the prejudice below:
Prejudice:
- An attitude that always favors one way of feeling or acting especially without considering any other possibilities
- An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts
- The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions
- A partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation
There is no market for what I do. But there wasn’t one for PCs at one time either. We could revolutionize the world too — just by using the tools we were given from the get-go:
That’s that lump that’s three feet above your ass!
Think of what you’re saying
You can get it wrong and still you think that it’s alright
Think of what I’m saying
We can work it out and get it straight, or say goodnight . . .
It astounds me that even sharing something in hopes of a human connection — that maybe having something in common could connect in a way that undeniable evidence doesn’t: Even that is mocked and conveniently taken as “weakness” in argument.
So in the Face of Centrifuge Physics
On a matter of world-altering consequence (that shaped everything you see today): Belittling my “disjointed” & “juvenile” website with “irrelevant music & movies” is the best ya got?
When you have absolutely no idea what’s going on here, on what basis are you so doubt-free?
And in a world that no longer allows for this quaint thing called conversation — “Think of what you’re saying” could not be more relevant.
So I will ask you once again . . .
Try to see it my way
Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong
While you see it your way
There’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long . . .
In a culture where even a PhD acts like an imbecile in the face of overtures he doesn’t instantly understand: Conventional methods aren’t gonna make a dent in the envelope of intransigence encasing hermetically sealed minds of our times. “Wut?” — reflects a society tuning in to people you think are geniuses for telling you what you wanna hear and thinking you’re enlightened for it.
The smorgasbord of sub-cultures has created another dimension of delusion in America — hardening minds not broadening them. The commentary in these communities speaks volumes about social media and the state of society: Habitually hailing high praise for purveyors of virtue — virtues that vanish the second they’re called to put them to the test.
As I said in my documentary:
It’s astounding how the mind can pull off psychological gymnastics that allow us to believe what we say without any sense of accounting for it.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act V
Left & Right . . .
Whatever your aims — you’ve got a crowd to comfort you:
Flooding the internet with clichéd crap like “the cognitive dissonance is strong in this one” is not the mark serious-minded people interested in problem solving. It’s almost impossible to find anyone who is, but they sure love to Tweet their concerns as if they are. And lo and behold, the second anyone in the Cognitive Dissonance Camp is challenged, cognitive dissonance kicks in to absolve themselves.
Then merrily move along — as they gotta get back to bitching about people who behave as they do.
Like the Critical Thinking Crowd:
People who take endless delight in flooding the internet with claims about their immaculate critical thinking skills:
But don’t do any of this . . .
The Cognitive Dissonance Camp is a faction seemingly competing for who can say, “cognitive dissonance” the most. No doubt many of ’em know much more about it than I do (which isn’t saying much since I’m no scholar on it). But congratulating yourselves for Tweeting about it is not what I call serious-minded conversation (or even qualifying as conversation at all). Add in professionals promoting what they’ve published that’ll accomplish exactly what all their other efforts did (along with their colleagues across their industry combined):
Absolutely nothing that’ll move America a millimeter in the right direction.
It’s just another charade like all the other factions below: Endlessly rehashing run-of-the-mill ideas that don’t that have a snowball’s chance in hell of making a dent.
Look around!
While I’m sitting here with a rock-solid idea that could the catalyst for a tectonic shift in America (that could be accomplished with a handful of people and hardly any money).
But the Cabal of the Credentialed and their followers are so preoccupied with trying to educate others about bias that they’re blinded by their own. And why bother considering fresh ideas that might work when you can stay busy on what won’t?
The Yellow Brick Road is the path of America’s pursuits.
Believing things that have no bearing on reality has become a plague across America — erosion of reason that took decades of denying the undeniable. Systematic oversimplification has taken over to the point where inconvenient correlations are condemned as convoluted. And any attempt to have a conversation on issues that clearly call for careful consideration — is hijacked by baseless beliefs beaten into your brain as bedrock fact.
The idea of information is not to simply repeat and rehash: But to observe and reflect in order to evaluate the efficacy of your efforts (and adjust accordingly).
This nation has no such notion . . .
Like many alternatives, however, it was psychologically impossible. Character is fate, as the Greeks believed. Germans were schooled in winning objectives by force, unschooled in adjustment. They could not bring themselves to forgo aggrandizement even at the risk of defeat.
— Barbara Tuchman
Unschooled in Adjustment
Speaking of believing
Until the rise of podcasts, twitter, and the various forms of independent media / journalism, people weren’t really aware how legacy media was influencing their thinking. I think people are finally waking up and may surprise you here, especially if more talk about it.
New formats for funneling information that caters to your cravings is not what I’d call enlightened. And those who couldn’t spot clearly dishonest actors before — think they’re wide awake now? The Twitter bio behind that quote begins with “Groupthink averse.”
It would never occur to him that everything in that Tweet is Groupthink 101.
That you don’t understand how you’re all being played is bad enough, but that you make it nearly impossible to explain it to you reflects how new media has hardened you even more than legacy did. None of these boxes of beliefs are entirely wrong, but bonding within them makes you think you’re entirely right (on everything).
In this world — the rush is everything:
- The rush to respond
- The rush you get from responding
- The rush to roll out the next issue of concern
- Repeat and never reflect
You’d rather do a million things that won’t matter than one that would. You’d read 10,000 Tweets before you’d read 10 pages (never mind that the substance of those pages could solve some of the problems prompting that never-ending stream of concern). And no matter how much you flood the internet, it’ll never be enough:
As you bask in that collective feeling of going somewhere — never pausing for even a moment to notice you’re going nowhere.
At the helm of these interconnected echo chambers — are influencers who peddle repeatedly rehashed insight their followers praise like they split the atom. To be sure, some of it is insightful. But these “geniuses” are so full of wisdom that they’re oblivious to how they’re feeding the very problems they’re ostensibly trying to solve.
Purveyors of virtue are put on a pedestal for telling you what you wanna hear every goddamn day. They haven’t accomplished anything with their aimless arguments. But who cares about the efficacy of your efforts when failure is a pretty profitable enterprise these days.
If you think you’re making progress because of ever-increasing attention to your concerns, I suggest you reconsider.
As I said in my doc
It’s astounding how the mind can pull off psychological gymnastics that allow us to believe what we say without any sense of accounting for it.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act V
On the title alone, if I came across this and hadn’t done my homework — my first thought would be: “I must be missing something pretty big” . . .
America has other ideas
Button your lip and don’t let the shield slip
Take a fresh grip on your bulletproof mask
And if they try to break down your disguise with their questions
You can hide hide hide behind Paranoid Eyes
Speaking of Pink Floyd & Cognitive Dissonance
My interest in psychology came through my own experiences — including cognitive dissonance. I knew nothing about it until I told a friend about a little debate back in college (ironically COM 101) — and how I realized many years later that I was wrong. My classmate and I were disagreeing over who sang lead on most Pink Floyd songs. With every fiber of my being — there was no question that it was Roger Waters. I can still see the look on Bill’s face as he had no doubt it was David Gilmour.
In reply to my explanation about how I “heard” the singer I most identified with — my friend and fellow-Floyd fan said:
Sounds like cognitive dissonance
Ah yes, the power of “Hmm . . .”
Followed by a little look-see into what he was talking about. And lo and behold, he was dead-on. It hardly gets more harmless than our friendly debate over Floyd, and there was nothing to be gained regardless of who was right. But it went so much deeper than that — a realization that took a long time to come to light.
Aligning myself with Waters was rooted in my philosophical interests as a teenager in Cold War times. I still remember the moment I was mesmerized by Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut. I walked into a dark room down at some friends’ house and they had the album blaring. Even cranked up there was a soul-searching quietude in the tunes that seamlessly flowed from one into the other. I had never heard anything like it, but what struck me most was the imagery in Waters’ words — coupled with acoustic guitar strumming harp-like in heavenliness:
The rusty wire that holds the cork
That keeps the anger in
Gives way and suddenly
It’s day again
The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset
Could be the human race is run . . .
And as the windshield melts and my tears evaporate
Leaving only charcoal to defend
Finally I understand the feelings of the few
Ashes and diamonds
Foe and friend
We were all equal in the end
Despite the gloomy lyrics . . .
They had a thought-provoking purpose that immediately resonated with me. And yet by overly identifying with the visionary behind the band, I defended him on faith alone. If I could do that blindly with nothing to gain — imagine how discourse is poisoned when deeply-entrenched motives are involved. I was foolish for being so certain in my Pink Floyd perception, but had Bill brought in some liner notes listing lead vocals, I would have found it impossible not to take that information into account.
As equally avid fans, I might have thought that our opinions were equal at first — but in the face of evidence to the contrary, I would change my mind.
But the absence of evidence is no excuse.
I had other things I could have taken into account to at least consider the possibility that I might be wrong. Given that Bill was a good bit older, I suspect he knew far more Floyd history than I did (which wouldn’t be hard — since my knowledge was limited to a few albums). When I first revisited the lead-vocal question sometime in the early 2000s, it looked like I had been wrong all along — and if I could recall his last name, I would have tried tracking him down years ago just to let him know.
I like to acknowledge error. I see it as a form of practice to be more careful in the future. And it’s a gesture of grace and respect to say:
Hey, sorry I was so hard-headed about that — I wish I would have listened to you.
Above all, it deepens your willingness to wonder:
“To learn to ask: ‘Is that true?’” . . . Maybe there’s something to what she just said. Let me think about it. That’s interesting. Maybe I should change my mind.’” . . . When is the last time you can honestly remember a public dialogue — or even a private conversation — that followed that useful course?
Over a decade had passed since I re-evaluated my viewpoint, and several years ago — just for kicks, I was curious to see just how far off I was. A lot more material is available online now, so I was able to easily compile the entire catalog to nail down a fairly accurate accounting. Imagine my surprise when my spreadsheet revealed that Waters came out on top by ten.
So, was I right after all? No, absolutely not!
First off, I don’t know for certain that the numbers are right — I just know that they’re close and that Waters came out ahead just a bit. But for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that the numbers are correct. Would that make my right?
No! Because my original belief was based on nothing!
Whatever the numbers, they don’t change the fact that in my ignorance I cast my conclusion with lickety-split judgment — letting my over-the-top loyalty shield me from listening. Without any knowledge of older albums, I based my belief on a restricted domain of information — and yet I was completely satisfied that my knowledge was enough to express an opinion with absolute certainty.
Moreover, even on the albums I listened to a lot — the issue’s still in doubt, as I heard what I wanted to hear. And now I hear differently. The irony is that neither one of us was right because it seems too close to call. But he was far closer than me (since he was basing his belief on actual knowledge). It wasn’t just that I believed I was right — I didn’t even think it was remotely close.
And now I hear differently
This nation has no such notion — and it shows!
And you get away with it with ease — as you’ve got friends: In a world where you can promote principles in one breath and abandon them the next.
Or as I coined it
The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.
These five conditions specify the circumstances under which increased proselyting would be expected to follow disconfirmation.
— When Prophecy Fails
We could do something about that.
Just hear me out and all will become clear. And if it’s not — try this on for size:
Imagine! . . .
Just on the day of my discovery of cognitive dissonance:
In those moments, I reflected more on a harmless little debate back in college than I’ve seen the doubt-free in do in 20 years on a matter of world-altering magnitude:
even 20 years later
Half the country still can’t get this straight:
By Design
America Remains Mired in the Murky
What does it say to you: That on evidence claimed as components to build a nuclear bomb — the “debate” was hijacked by 10-second sound bites? Shouldn’t any debate establish what the debate is actually about? What does it say about a country that can’t even establish that much on a matter of this magnitude? As I said in my doc:
All the sarin gas shells in the world would have no bearing on the aluminum tubes and other intel, but loyalists to logical fallacies are not burdened by the inconvenience of FACT.
They will nitpick over pebbles while refusing to even glance at the mountain of evidence that crushes their “convictions.”
— Richard W. Memmer: Act V
For the sake of argument: Let’s say Saddam had full-blown active WMD programs on chemical & biological weapons. The tubes would still be a lie — whether the war would have been justified in that scenario or not. I’ll go one further: Let’s say he had a uranium enrichment program in operation as well, but that the rotors were carbon fiber — not aluminum. Once again, the tubes would still be a lie.
Getting lucky in finding something you didn’t know about — does not absolve you from a case that was woven out of whole cloth.
I defy you to find a single instance of anyone on the Right even attempting to make an argument on the dimensions, material, and quantity of the tubes. You’ll be lucky to find them mentioned at all. You think it’s just a coincidence that all the “arguments” on the Right just happen to follow the same pattern (conveniently leaving out the marquee claim on a mushroom cloud)?
That — all by itself, speaks volumes:
To anyone who thinks world-altering wars are more important than whining about websites that expose painfully obvious lies, anyway.
If only you’d laid it all out exactly as I like it — then I’d abide by the principles I preach
Is that how it works?
That’s about the size of it. I guess I figured that if you didn’t understand something — you’d try this on for size, but I’m old-fashioned that way:
Funny how there’s always an excuse . . .
Back in the day — there was no website with an array of illustrations to gripe about. I was just sharing Trillion Dollar Tube to all these fine folks flaunting their badge of beliefs so F.A.I.R.
Showing some courtesy for a 5-minute excerpt doesn’t seem like much to ask such bastions of virtue. But without watching one second — self-satisfied scorn was your gold standard for gleefully gutting the truth.
And why mess with tradition?
The road to reality is blocked by detours designed to keep you going in circles. Purveyors of poppycock reroute you with narratives that avoid detail like Black Death. The way out is to start with an inconsistency or two that’s narrow in scope — and take the trail where it leads. To ascertain the truth on any topic: If you’ve got something concrete to go on — that’s your point of entry. By all means, keep the door open in every direction. But by nailing down the definitive first, it paves a clearer path to all the rest.
This country does the exact opposite on everything — lumping it all together and never even approaching where you should have started in the first place:
This chart is misleading in several respects . . . Beams centrifuge never actually worked . . . We can infer . . .
Sounds pretty sloppy to me . . .
Perhaps we should have a conversation to clear up what all this means on issues that have eroded reason beyond recognition?
Behold my “hatred” of Thomas Sowell:
Never mind this . . .
Not to mention this
Speaking of sleight of hand . . .
The administration had its hands on 60,000 tubes, and yet not one of them was presented by Powell at the U.N. According to HUBRIS, they scrapped the idea of displaying a tube — since Powell would be holding up the one piece of evidence that was most in dispute.
— Richard W. Memmer: Prologue
There was even talk of Powell holding up one of the tubes for dramatic effect. But a veteran communications strategist in the room balked. “If you do that, it will be on the front page of every paper the next day,” noted Anna Perez, Condoleezza Rice’s chief of communications.
“Do you really want to do that?” Perez had a feel for these things; she had worked for Walt Disney, Chevron, and a top Hollywood talent agency.
This would, she thought, be an awkward visual. Powell would be holding up the one piece of evidence that was most in dispute. Everybody would focus on that. The idea was scrapped.
Think about that
You’ve got 60,000 of ’em:
But rather than put a single sample of your hard evidence on display for all the world to see . . .
You put it a PowerPoint?
And it just makes me laugh that they tossed that tape measure in there for effect (particularly because it’s the wall thickness that’s of paramount importance). The sheer sloppiness of it all — it’s just pathetic. I’ll put my presentations in COM 101 against this crap any day. But strictly speaking — purely on the principles of persuasive speech:
Since their goal was to manipulate the masses — she was spot-on by concealing what they displayed.
What is uranium enrichment?
You’ve probably heard of yellowcake — how about uranium hexafluoride? Does calling someone a “Bush hater” strike you as a valid counter to that question? Never mind this story goes straight to the top with who’s in the White House right now — on very specific culpability to boot.
How so? How I’d love to live in a world where you’d ask not out of party-line pursuits — but because it’s on the trail to the truth.
The question comes down to whether or not you’re basing your belief on something in the realm of reason — not some fail-safe fantasy that allows you to believe whatever you want.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act III
One Voice Became Two 