Bullshit is Normalized. It's Killing Us. Perhaps Literally. Sooner Than Later.

My first point of departure was going to be the bullshit apologists for bozo;  otherwise known as DJT, ex POTUS.  Since he has gone past the line of acceptable if execrable rhetoric, and is now knowingly spewing Hitler quotes? What do say about the assholes who are defending him against his critics?  As if it could ever be not fair to point out that a toxic and hate mongering wanna be dictator actually is a  toxic and hate mongering wanna be dictator?  What kind of sick twisted, emotionally and cognitively disordered person, gives a fuck about the feelings of a toxic and hate mongering wanna be dictator?

Sidebar.  Ann Althouse recently posted a clip where Oliver Stone said sympathetic words about a certain toxic and hate mongering wanna be dictator.  She herself has a history of being sympathetic to the toxic and hate mongering wanna be dictator.  Anyway . . .

We live during the era of maximum bullshit.  I don't blame the internet, save for it makes it easy for any asshole to spew their opinions  (I get it, that I sort of resemble the remark myself,)  And it is not as if the never was a time with partisan hackery masquerading as journalism.  But I invite you to read the article.  

Opinion Journalism is Broken 

I haven't properly read it yet.  I will later.  I confirmed my point, and the last paragraph says it well.  Used to be a time where opinion journalists actually did research.  Just this past hour, I read some piece of shitty writing by right wing law professor  J. Turley.  He was singing that right wing hack song about how Disney is losing money because of social positions, and it' influence in the product.  He does not rely on any data at all.  So I feel justified in calling him a dick faced fraud.

Bitch please. You are a perfect example of what the fuck is wrong with so called opinion journalism.  If you are not doing the homework, the research?  Say that up front.  If you are talking about shit you really have no expertise in?   Say that up front.  If you are spewing talking points and or "alternative facts" that your side wishes were true, but know aren't?   Say that up front.

PS.  I googled.  Disney had a decent last quarter, as reported. Various elements of the entertainment industry, particularly for companies with heavy reliance on motion picture ticket sales, are still in flux.  Something further exacerbated by craft guild strikes in the industry that are now resolved, and the industry is still trying to catch up with production.  And some recent releases are suffering for lack of proper  pre release publicity.  Likewise, streaming services all over the industry have been experiencing a correction do to rapid growth for a time, slowing, increased competition, and changing viewing habits.

So if some dishonest motherfucker wants to argue it's the 'woke' agenda doing it all? In a perfect world, that dishonest motherfucker should either have to admit their slip shod, candy assed output as such, if not flat out partisan hackery.

There are several factors why American if not world society is headed to a shit hole. As the late great Professor Harry Frankfurt said,  bullshit is more prevalent than ever.  And it is dangerous.

Substack is Trash. My Opinion because

 like so much of the interwebnetubes, it promotes the idea every one's opinion is worth shit.  Hell.  Often is the case that even smart fuckers are publishing slipshod, cany assed bullshit.

For example, why would a fairly well known psychologist publish some "findings" on his substack, instead of a peer reviewed journal?  Cause no pesky oversight, perhaps?

To explain.  Old white lady posted about  Jonathan Haidt's recent substack, where he mashes up a few studies, and comes to his own, very much not looking like scientific, conclusion on the higher numbers of selfreporting depression among liberal girls than specifically  conservative girls?

Beyond the fact that he did no actual research himself,  this. . . not looking like scientific piece is just his thoughts on other people's work.  And only briefly mentioning,  the lack of indicia of good metholology on his sources, he pretty much is engaging in . . .  if not the total exact opposite of a duble blind study?  It's in that realm.  His "work is neither blind or scientific.   It's what we lawyers call ipse dixit logic.  The validity of the argument is only based on "cause I say so."  

In other words, weak assed shit.

Two more points re this published thing.  Conservatives lie.  When they say they are happy we should not trust them.  We are living as of this day, week, in the most public, Emperor has no clothes, moment.  Fox News has been caught in such a web of lies  I call it a Russian Nesting Doll of lies.

And lastly, perhaps more importantly.  The current conservative movement/GOP is based on grievance and victimhood.  Ya really think people who believe brown skinned people are invading the country to take away jobs and all they hold dear, from good white people are not depressed?  If you want to make an argument that being enraged all the fucking time leads to higher serotonin levels, go ahead.  Conservatives are a veritable cocktail of mental infirmity.  And they lie.

I'm notso much depressed, because the world, the nation is so badly run by dishonest people.  Maybe a little, but what I really feel is disgust.  But I never liked people all that much.  Since a kid,I have wished to break free of humanity and become a dolphin.  Yea.  But you can't avoid nasty humans as a dolphin.  Fishing boats.  Illegal nets.  Pollution.  We are stuck here as humans no matter what.

Fake! Fugazy! Fiction!

 

Call this a follow up to last post.  The stupid shit a lot of MAGA Republicans believe, from election deniers, to vaccines will create zombies?  It's all fucking stupid.  I totally disagree with Althouse.  When we treat looney tunes delusions as if they have any validity at all?  We demean reality itself.   I am just going to briefly mention my favorite mini book of all time:  

"On Bullshit."  by Harry Frankfurt.

If as he argues, bullshit is particularly damaging to society, than raising looney tunes delusions to the status of views that might deserve serious treatment?  Well no wonder shit is currently so fucked up.  Having full blown malaria is now to be considered same as being healthy? That is my metaphor.  We suffer greatly as a society when we normalize pathology.

I don't think the  looney tunes delusion needs be as obvious as believing in lizard people, to be called out for being evidence of pathology.

Fuck all that crazy assed shit.

What is The Tell of a Pseudo Intellectual, or GOP Politician or Hack? Sophistry!

 Granted, one political party does not use sophistry to the exclusion of the other.  But seems to me, since the very idea behind conservativism is not only flat out evil, but a perfect example of  sophistry?  I am making  point there.  The ideology of that one political party, if there really is anything left that can, by a stretch of the imagination, be considered ideology, at least used to be,  is the fallacious idea that follows.  "The status quo is good, and should be preserved.  The old ways are the best ways."

What sordid bullshit!  10,000 years of human 'civilization'  means 10,000 years of most humans getting fucked in multiple if not all ways possible, to the benefit of a few, wicked, evil fucks.  I see no good in preserving that!  Burn the motherfucker down, metaphorically speaking!

In any case, I just watched a clip of the last "overtime" of the Bill Maher show.  Some dripping prick of a Brit writer for the NY Post made a classic argument in the key of sophistry.  They were winding down a discussion about the Depp/Heard trial, and related ideas such as metoo, and historic male to female sexist abuse.  The dripping prick of a Brit writer argued that yes, the reality of sexist abuse was real, but we should not use wicked Hollywood as the standard for reform and what not.  Even Eric Holder fell for it.  But my pretty brain almost instantly went to . . .  please!  Tell me what industry is better?  

I could end there, but just to drive the point home.  One of the other big stories of the moment is the admissions of Southern Baptists about some numerous and seemingly long tolerated sex abuse patterns and history on the part of its pastors.

If you can't even trust the fucking churches can you trust any one?

And The Most Amazing Thing to Me Is . . . They Think They Smart.

 Here I go again, picking the low hanging fruit.  Doing my rendition of Capt. Obvious.

Let's call out retired Constitutional Law Professor, Ann Althouse yet again.

First ,what she said:

Has anyone on the Cheney side ever explained how it could be possible to think that overrunning the building could overthrow the government? I wish people on both sides would use accurate language, but of course, they won't.

Now my response.

Ex Constitutional Law Professor. Now on the one hand, my preferred term for what happened in Jan, 2021, and still continues today insofar as conspirators are still conspiring to seize the Federal government, and never let go?  My term is putsch.

From the web. What Google gave me on it's quick take results with answers:  

What was the putsch in Germany?

Kapp Putsch, (1920) in Germany, a coup d'état that attempted to overthrow the fledgling Weimar Republic. Its immediate cause was the government's attempt to demobilize two Freikorps brigades. One of the brigades took Berlin, with the cooperation of the Berlin army district commander.Apr 5, 2022   

I think that works better because there was inside and outside government conspirators.  And there was violence before Jan. 6,  and on that day.  And we have been living under repeated calls for more violence by people sympathetic to that group of people succeeding in their treasonous goals, since.

So as far as congress critter Cheney and or her people needing to explain what they mean?  Read a fucking dictionary.  And some news reports. Google that shit.  I did.  

And this is what I found:  If that does not suffice, professor, that is on you.

“I think what we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election,” the Wyoming Republican told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”     

If that does not suffice, professor, that is on you. 

Like my title says, I am amazed they think they smart. I am not going to go all that much deeper on what Lory and McWhorter said in the full version of their last chat vid.  But I did finally watch all of that pro white supremacy  (that was on Loury, mostly) vid.  They both think they are some kind of thinkers.  My reply to that is:

"Are you negroes sure about that?"

As far as Althouse goes.  I would say she is a very shallow thinker.  She see the surface of something.  Naturally through her own filters.  And I am not saying they are consistently the same, or as locked in, partisan hackish, as a garden variety GOPer. But we all have our own biases.  But one really is not  a thinker unless one can see past their own biases, and go deeper.

She is more of a "Ohh!  Shiny thing!" kind of commenter, than  Loury.  Who works so very, very hard to toe the party line.  He is more of a  . . . .  "Did I say the right thing? Oh. Oh.  I need your approval.  Love me, you white people," kind of commenter,  And McWhorter?  I think he used to be generally reasonable.  But he is seemingly moreso becoming a centrist Dem with a heavy case of "Get off my lawn."  He describes himself as a cranky Dem. I describe him as someone who needs to repeatedly listen to MJ's "Man In The Mirror," song, until he understands, he is greatly what he claims to dislike in other people.  As a side bar.  I confess to being a recovering internet troll.   I have not always been as fair and objective as I am now.  Hope to be?  Maybe someday?  I am still a work in progress.

Oh. In the full version of that last vid, now up on bloggingheads.  At one point he makes a point about not being a sellout, in the context of his remarks at least.  He says something to the effect his reason for not doing that is he does not want to die having done that.

And to that, and to the guy who wrote a book slamming people who disagrees with him?  I say:

"Are you  sure about that, negro?"

Talk is Overrated. Arguments Are Inherently Bullshit.

 

This will be a mostly, on the fly mash up of various ideas crawling around my pretty brain.  

The interwebnetubes is itself not toxic.  The people spewing their bullshit there is the actual source of harm.  For example, the dumpster itself is not a source of disease.  It came off the line from the factory pretty clean.  It is the decomposing organic matter dumped in it, that is the actual carrier of the bacteria. And it is the bacteria that will make you sick.

Talk is indeed overrated. I think of my (in my mind at least) fight with the 'more speech' crowd and think they are fucking out of their infantile minds.  Have you been paying attention to most people, and the shit they think and say?  And go back to what I just said about the real source of disease on the interwebnetubes.  It's the people, not hardware and software!

Before I go down that road, hats off again to Harry Frankfort for his "On Bullshit," booklet.  More people need to read that.  Because if the world had too much bullshit when his booklet was published, there is a great deal more, now. Seems.  I am not sure if there was ever a time when people were better at detecting and discarding bullshit.  But it seems to me, that people are too used to it.  And that means they really don't care if it's bullshit.  Bullshit wins!  

There are so few intellectuals these days.  I am sure of that.  Sadly, thanks to how people are too used to bullshit, and that they really don't care if it's bullshit?  We are now suffering a plague of pseudo intellectuals, of posers, of fake though leaders out there, monetizing their bullshit.  Not that there is anything new about the attempt and or success at monetizing bullshit.  But the interwebnetubes makes it easier to try, if not succeed at that bullshit publishing bullshit, bullshit.  (I went a little repetitive there. Works for me.)

Actually, I got to a good place to end, in fewer keystrokes as I expected.  My pretty brain has not been too damaged by the avalanche of bullshit.  Yet.

This is Why

 I rarely post anything outside of either my own FB wall, friendlies' walls, or here.  I have lately learned the truth of my, meaning all of our mortality.  I barely have any time to spare on reading idiots on line, never mind engaging with them.  


I did post something in a comment field for one of Loury's videos, last week.  And I did not even go after him for politics.  I just made a remark about form of argument.  I am a lawyer.  And not all lawyers get wound up over bad logic, form of argument.  But I was feeling it that day.  And like that post I made earlier today.   I am tired of cranks from the one cranky pants faction thinking they are any better than the other cranky pants faction, when they are all making the same errors of form in argument.

No Bitches! Fuck No!

 Worst anti CRT argument, courtesy of the black guys at bloggingheads.com; Loury and McWhorter.  

There are more white people in America, and if they start thinking of themselves as white you might radicalize them into being pro white radical agents, some shit.

Remember.  The premise of CRT is the deck is already stacked in favor of white people.  And the idea expressed by McWhorter that these white people are not aware of being white is the most fucking ignorant thing I have heard from an ivy league professor. But compared to what the average white Republican Racists usually say? Ok.  Not that unusual.  I have never met an adult white American who did not know they are white and actually on some level know there is status to that. I have met and know of some who deny it. But some bitches lie.  Every one knows that.

Cutting to the chase. CRT isn't going to radicalize a statistically significant number of white people to become white supremacists, by itself.  Firstly there are millions of them already. Most of the 70 more million people who voted for Bozo the second time either are white supremacists, or at least are willing to vote for a white supremacist pushing a white supremacist agenda.  And it is Fox News, and it's copy cats, and other white supremacist sources deliberately doing that.  And they were doing a bang up job of that before they got on an anti CRT bent.  And they will recycle some old talking points when they feel it.  And they might come up with new talking points, as well.

CRT is just their new favorite shirt.  Don't be a moron.  Don't buy the talking point.  Tucker Carlson and many of the other white supremacist really are more worried about replacement theory. But they get loads of shit for talking that shit. 

Continuation on a Theme: Ipse Dixit Logic is Bullshit.

 Ipse dixit translates from Latin to English as:   he said it himself.  It is a logical fallacy, but also is the way most humans talk about shit.  Therefore, most humans are bullshit, and not really worth paying attention to.  I could say that especially applies to the often, no smarter than a bucket of snot, Republican morons I see vomiting forth on various comment sections.  But truth be told, oftentimes the trigger for their comments is pretty much equally moronic bloggers, and opinionaters, and pretend journalists.  Even real journalists fuck this shit up!

Since I am in that zip code, I might as well mention the deliberate cheaters.  There are pretend serious writers who can write books with all kinds  of footnotes, like we were taught serious writers should, back in high school.  But the pretenders either rely on bullshit quotes from slip shod candy assed others, or misapply the data, or leap to the wrong conclusion.  And the worst of the bunch just make shit up.

But even if I haven't appeared in court as an attorney of record in years and years, there is something I like about court.  There is a judge.  And it is their job to call out bullshit.  Case in point.  This lawsuit in Texas by some anti vax hospital staffers.  The moronic lawyers filed papers with such dishonest arguments, that the judge went ballistic on them in her opinion and order:   

“Equating the injection requirement to medical experimentation in concentration camps is reprehensible,” Hughes wrote. “Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on victims that caused pain, mutilation, permanent disability, and in many cases, death.”

Judge Trashes Bullshitting Morons.

Now I am not going to argue that only Republican lawyers try to slip a stinky argument past a judge.  I think Republicans do it so much more.  Because Republicans are more likely to believe in and/or employ ipse dixit logic than fact based, objective reality.  Their over reliance on ripe, steaming bullshit isn't anything new.   But after Bozo, 45th POTUS, there seems to be no limit to it.  He took that shit to a whole new level.  And the hordes of deplorables are ready to follow.  Such as they will unflinchingly compare getting a extremely safe vaccine to being tortured by a Nazi Death Camp Dr.

Here is the part where I get to the main point.  If you exaggerate to the point of ripe, steaming bullshit stupidity, some people might still take you seriously.  No one has to, however.  There are many people in the world, not all of us lawyers, who as a default process judge people in the following way.

We can never truly know what is in the mind of other people.  All we really get for data points is what they do and what they say.  And if people are constantly communicating ripe, steaming bullshit?  The fact they get written off by others as unserious people is entirely on them.

What You Think You See, Might Not be Real, or the Whole Story at Least.

I will try not to name names.  But I want to make a point about viewpoint bias.  And that is greatly a function of observation/information limitation.  Consider the following quote from Frank Herbert's  "Chapterhouse Dune."  I won't try to explain the series of books for those of you who don't know it.  But I will say as a formatting matter, each chapter of these books starts off with a "quote." Some are short.  Some are longer. And some set up the chapter.  And some are more universal in possible application.

Anyway:

“There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a wild ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening—first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindlegs, and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light of discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: “It is obvious! The nose causes the tail!”

Here is at least one of the rational conclusions.  If you have a narrow view of the thing, you likely are not really going to understand the truth of the thing.  My way of explaining that phenomena in a shorter way is to say, if you don't plug in all the necessary data, you are not going to come to the right conclusion.  And as opposed to our near the desert dweller in the quote, lots of people have access to all the necessary data.  But they deliberately toss out the parts that do not fit their desired conclusion.  And then with the same (relatively) delusional sense of certainty of our near the desert dweller, publish their erroneous conclusion as if their subjective beliefs are facts.

I might be just some ordinary, low rent lawyer.  But I have been making my money for years and years, sorting through piles of data, with one major priority;  separate the needles of possible real evidence from the piles of shit.  Greatly because of that, I  am really good at judging what is a useful fact, instead of mere argument.  Mere argument is fucking useless shit.  No matter how strongly  people may believe in their own or other's arguments?  As an objective matter, arguments are objectively fucking useless shit. 

Granted, our near the desert dweller skips the argument and jumps right to the conclusion.  But ya know?  It doesn't really matter how many words one uses to support an objectively baseless conclusion.  With out sound evidence, all you have got is an objectively baseless conclusion.  Let us never pretend otherwise.  And let us call out bitches who publish such useless, baseless bullshit, even if they get published by legitimate publishing houses, and get interviewed on real TV.

The Impossibility of Not Covering Again, Old Ground.

I have had a certain thought in my head. And I would have posted about it (again) but there's the dilema. If I have not explored that idea here, in the past, I am sure I made the argument as what I would call a "throwaway." That's what I call it when I toss off/out the bare bones of the argument, while either bolstering a main line of attack, or otherwise going all shotgun/scatter shot about it.

Anyway, the thought in my head was how twisted the GOP is nowadays. It resembles more the traitors who made war against our great nation, back from 1861-1865, than the Republican Party that fought that war to preserve our Perpetual Union. Not a terribly original thought. But some days the noise level from them people just highlights that fact moreso, than other days.

Anyway, some other thing has been crashing around in my head. And that would be that silly argument Ann Althouse made in that bloggingheads.tv performance I linked, over the past few days. (Either way you are going to get something partially recycled from me, today.)Personally, I find that libertarian, Pollyanna view of non-judicial, extra legal, not constitutionally protected free speech, to be flat out childish. And at some point today, it occurred to me, that is not only merely bullshit (as I said last time visiting the subject,) but it is a logic loop of stupidity, to say it is anti free speech to express the idea that some people need to shut up (get off the TV, what ever) with the shit they spew.

Mind me. First you have the offensive shit spewer. They are engaging in "free speech." Then we have the critic who takes offense or otherwise rejects the first speaker. That's "free speech" too, even if the speech is,"For the love of all that is decent, shut the fuck up with that mindless shit!"

But now we have the libertarian, "free speech" extremist, bullshit child mind's "free speech." Perversely, they do essentially the very same thing speaker number two does, and that is deliver a message ,"You should not say what you did just there. STFU with that!" But oddly, if not hypocritically, they engage in the very same sort of (allegedly) anti free speech, at the very time they claim to be defending "free speech." It's as consistent a matching of ideology and behaviour as to be in the middle of the act of beating your dog with a pool cue, while waxing forth about the evils of animal cruelty.

Analogy aside, it's just plain stupid.

And no matter how much longer the the chain or argument goes on and on, we still have lots and lots of "free speech" flying around. But the perversity of criticizing some one's speech for their criticizing of an other's speech is just it's own level of bullshit.

And again, I am not a free speech extremist. I would rather see less pointless bullshit than more. And no kiddies. the mere fact you think you have a point doesn't mean you are not engaging in bullshit. The level of sincerity you show your thought is not even relevant. Well, I have to correct myself there. As Professor Frankfurt would say (spoiler alert) and as the last line of his book reads:

"Sincerity itself is bullshit."


Last thought. I have been stuck on the overlap between politics and linguistics and rhetoric for years. And I retreat to that meta level of analysis sometimes, just to avoid dealing with the same old partisan shit. And today is one of those days. (And it's not like it is worth it, every day at least, to actually spend my time deconstructing the bullshit arguments the other side makes. And makes. And makes. Talk about covering old ground, again!)