How to Speak to Complete Idiots

POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Saturday, September 26, 2009 14:27
VIEWED: 996
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NIKI2

Friday, September 25, 2009 6:18 PM

Yeah, I'm posting Morford again. He happens to be terribly on-point this week, and nobody has to read it anyway. Let's just say he speaks for me on this and other things, and does it FAR more cogently and succinctly and sensibly than I ever could:

Quote:
There are three basic ways to talk to complete idiots.

The first is to assail them with facts, truths, scientific data, the commonsensical obviousness of it all. You do this in the very reasonable expectation that it will nudge them away from the ledge of their more ridiculous and paranoid misconceptions because, well, they're facts, after all, and who can dispute those?

Why, idiots can, that's who. It is exactly this sort of logical, levelheaded appeal to reason and mental acuity that's doomed to fail, simply because in the idiotosphere, facts are lies and truth is always dubious, whereas hysteria and alarmism resulting in mysterious undercarriage rashes are the only things to be relied upon.

Examples? Endless. You may, for instance, attempt to explain evolution to an extreme fundamentalist Christian. You may offer up carbon dating, the fossil record, glaciers, any one of 10,000 irrefutable proofs. You may even dare to talk about the Bible as the clever, completely manufactured, man-made piece of heavily politicized, massively edited, literary myth-making it so very much is, using all sorts of sound academic evidence and historical record.

You are, of course, insane beyond belief to try this, but sometimes you just can't help it. To the educated mind, it seems inconceivable that millions of people will choose rabid ignorance and childish fantasy over, say, a polar bear ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent#Polar_bear). Permafrost. Rocks ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth). Nag Hammadi ( http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html). But they will, and they do. Faced with this mountain of factual obviousness, the bewildered fundamentalist will merely leap back as if you just jabbed him with a flaming homosexual cattle prod, and then fall into a swoon about how neat it is that angels can fly.

But it's not just the fundamentalists. This Rule of Idiocy also explains why, when you show certain jumpy, conservative Americans the irrefutable facts about, say, skyrocketing health care costs that are draining their bank accounts, and then show how Obama's rather modest overhaul is meant to save members of all ages and genders and party affiliations a significant amount of money while providing basic insurance for their family, they, too, will scream and kick like a child made to eat a single bite of broccoli.

Remember, facts do not matter. The actual Obama plan itself does not matter. Fear of change, fear of the "Other," fear of the scary black socialist president, fear that yet another important shift is taking place that they cannot understand and which therefore makes them thrash around like a trapped animal? This is all that matters.

This is why, even when you whip out, say, a fresh article by the goodly old Washington Post -- not exactly a bastion of lopsided liberalthink -- one that breaks down the rather brutal truth about the real cost of health care in this country ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/19/AR2009
091900112.html), it will likely be hurled back in your face as an obvious piece of liberal propaganda. Go ahead, try it. Or better yet, don't.

Option two is to try to speak their language, dumb yourself down, engage on the idiot's level as you try to figure out how their minds work -- or more accurately, don't work -- so you can better empathize and find a shred of common ground and maybe, just maybe, inch the human experiment forward.

This is, as you already sense, a dangerous trap, pure intellectual quicksand. It almost never works, and just makes you feel gross and slimy. Nevertheless, plenty of shrewd political strategists believe that the best way for Obama and the Dems to get their message across regarding everything from he

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SIGNYM

Friday, September 25, 2009 6:34 PM

Indeed.

FREMDFIRMA

Friday, September 25, 2009 11:45 PM

I'm even less nice about it, having the habit of using the very same tricks their "leadership" does, simply insinuating myself up the pipe and then encouraging them to march right off a cliff like the lemmings they are, egging on what amounts to circular firing squads by exploiting schism, basically anything and everything to speed along their own self-destruction that I can without causing collateral damage to folks who just wanna live their lives in peace.

I got no respect for someone who surrenders their very personhood and humanity to an agenda they don't even realize or completely understand, and at that point no longer consider them human beings at all.

Consider it a character flaw if you like, but left to run on their own devices, these folks wind up a brownshirted horde, helping fulfill tyrannical agendas without fail, history has shown this time and time again - yet without them, without those storm troops to back it up, those agendas cannot proceed.

IMHO it's self defense, and THEY made it "me or them" when they chose this path.

And if THAT is the choice, making it is about as clear a decision as I've ever made.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

KPO

Saturday, September 26, 2009 2:20 AM

America isn't the only country with a christian heritage: other societies have come from just as religious a starting point in history, to now be much more secular. So what is special about american christianity?

It strikes me that maybe entrenched american christianity is more of a symptom than a root cause - of an intellectual culture of challenging/denying expert opinion (in history, news, or science as in this case).

Heads should roll

RUE

Saturday, September 26, 2009 2:30 AM

"Nag Hammadi"

The Gospel of Thomas is right up there with the Tao Te Ching. Those are my two favorite 'religious' texts of all time.

***************************************************************

Heaven and earth are not humane.

TRAVELER

Saturday, September 26, 2009 3:53 AM

Hello KPO:

I don't see this extremism as being just in the United States.

This extremism is not just in the United States, although that is the country I live in and so It disturbs me to hear such talk as Obama being the anti-christ.

And not all Christianity but the Fundamentalist Christian. I have known Christians from Protestant faiths and the Catholic faith that don't live in this "LaLa Land". There are physicists, anthropologists, and people with doctorates in the other sciences that practice religious faiths. They have found a way to balance the truth of their science with the word of the Bible.

In the 1930's, Germany became dominated by extremists, so it is clear the United States does not have a market on the "LaLa Land" syndrome. And look at Taliban. The whole Islamic world is not out to destroy the nonbelievers. It is the extremists. They are not only entrenched in their caves but in their minds.

I also feel that it can't be narrowed down to religion. I know people who don't practice any faith and yet to hear them speak is to ask yourself where on Earth did you get such ideas. But I never verbalise it. Just as has been pointed out here, you will never break through that train of thought. It is to well ingrained and you have to go on with your own life and leave those people who clasp tightly to their twisted ideals to their own devices.

Frank said it very clearly and I agree. You can point out facts until you're blue in the face and these people will not listen. They have heard what is going to save them and all else is lies. Or as we say in forums like this one, "Don't feed the trolls."

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Traveler

PIZMOBEACH

Saturday, September 26, 2009 4:27 AM

Niki - I assume your thread title was inspired in part by this:

What a shock to see this cover on the front table greeting me when I walked into my local bookstore. My fault really... I assumed you'd have to be half intelligent to write an entire book. (DUH - of course G Beck did not write this book).

I have to give props though and say that the Glenn Beck machine has definitely outflanked me as I cannot for the life of me figure out what their angle is with the vaguely Nazi formal dinner attire they have Beck in for the photo. So it must just be so brilliant it's over my head. I honestly can't even think of what they were thinking his fans would think... *maybe* it's just that some times the ideas that sound great in a meeting just don't work in real life.

To the Morford piece, of course, makes complete sense if you are already of that mind. But this part:

"And now we come to option three, easily the finest and most successful approach of all. Alas, it also remains the most difficult to pull off. No one is exactly sure why.

The absolute best way to speak to complete idiots is, of course, not to speak to them at all. "

I'm afraid that would only work if they weren't mainly interested in just listening to themselves. They have a media advantage right now so they have to be confronted - "not listening" sounds like sticking one's head in the sand. This feels more to me like a *game* of better intelligence and greater persistence. They don't really care or need the left to listen or speak to them.

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PIRATENEWS

Saturday, September 26, 2009 7:20 AM

Change: Buy Obamacare or Face Jail or a $25,000 Fine
http://cryptogon.com/?p=11268

Jew Michael Moore’s New Movie Was Brought to You by Kosher Bank Robbers at Golden Sacks
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/09/michael_moores_new_movie_was_b.ht
ml

New Birther Infomercial Running In Seven Southern States
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/new_birther_infomerc
ial_running_in_seven_southern.php

Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup narrated by Daniel Sunjata of Rescue Me TV
http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2009/09/loose-change-911-american-cou
p-full.html

KWICKO

Saturday, September 26, 2009 2:27 PM

I'm not saying that you have to hold lengthy conversations with idiots, but it IS useful to engage them, if only to gather up any "lurkers" who might otherwise be suckered into the idiots' view of the world.

Mike

Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and Bible black