A deeply flawed syllogism
Or maybe we can just say that here's a fab example of arguing towards a cherished conclusion, a cherished party-of-one conclusion, that is. Notice the chick being magnetized has the freaked-out expression small animals get just before the car hits. So onward.
A flawed syllogism is like saying Obama, being a black guy and all, should not be president (::duh:: how obvious is that?) so therefore he was born in Guam or Nairobi or Kenya or some hot place without 48 oz. Coke slushies and shouldn't be president atall since he's not An American Citizen, so there. And since it's 2009 and we live in the age of bountiful crap, there's a huge consumer range of awful conclusions to choose from. Obama is a Nazi? Nazis everywhere? Gotcha covered. Death panels/check lists/whatevs administered by shadowy bureaucrats? You bet. Forced abortions? Absolutely. Internment camps for white people? Honey, we're there.
But let's just invoke the law of parsimony and call all of it for what it is, this "discussion" that's making the rounds, this populist tidal wave of 2m or 1m or 750k or 40 gazillion-trillion souls, depending on your news source, who showed up in DC last weekend. It's racism and it always was racism. (A tip o' the hat to Jimmy Carter for spelling it out and I second the emotion.) The world is not what it was. It's doubtful we can go back to those dear departed days of Klan marches, poll-taxes, and colored-only everything. It's not only the negras who've gotten uppity, it's the ladies too (most of them currently supporting their hunky guys), plus those little brown health-service-grabbing immigrants taking all those great American jobs. The celebrated era of the white guy is over and, in case you live under a porch or a rock, it's been over since about 1964.
But one thing that confounds me about stupidity in general, is this tendency to roar to the polar opposite of any argument. This AM, I'm currently brooding over No Impact Man: the movie, the book, the talk show. And yes, idiocy also comes to the progressive left on little cat feet. Here's this fella and his wife, plus hapless child, with a cushy income-level, who decides to give up everything for a year. It's kind of Walden Pond without the pond, the good writing, the ideals, and the 19th century, but you get the idea. So they have a pan of worms in the kitchen to compost their garbage, they walk up 40 billion flights of stairs every day, they squint under candlelight at night, and play charades for funsy. What I wonder is why they fled to this inflated dystopian vision of non-consumer life.
When I was a shirt-tailed tad, we kept our compost outside and when we lived in an apartment complex, we didn't have a compost pile. We had electricity too, and even used it at night to no ill-effects. For giggles and grins, we went separate ways to our singular amusements. I read comic books, my little sis babbled into her toy telephone, and my parents played bridge. As Terry Allen says, It weren't art but it weren't bad.
We didn't get a book deal out of it though.
No Impact Man has remarked in interviews that his vision of things was informed by Zen Buddhism, to which I call bullshit. The hardest part about Buddhism is that middle-way thingie. Extremes are easy. Hate to diet? Jump on the Anorexia Express and starve instead. Been a consumer pig? Give it all up, put on scratchy loin cloth, and hunker in the dark. The nicest part about being a total contrarian, is that you can give your brain a rest. There's no uncomfortable doubting or deciding moment to moment.
But, thankfully, extremism of any kind is always a two wicked candle. It burns like a mother while it burns, but it burns out fast.
Don't even try to light my fire. I'm here for the long haul.
A flawed syllogism is like saying Obama, being a black guy and all, should not be president (::duh:: how obvious is that?) so therefore he was born in Guam or Nairobi or Kenya or some hot place without 48 oz. Coke slushies and shouldn't be president atall since he's not An American Citizen, so there. And since it's 2009 and we live in the age of bountiful crap, there's a huge consumer range of awful conclusions to choose from. Obama is a Nazi? Nazis everywhere? Gotcha covered. Death panels/check lists/whatevs administered by shadowy bureaucrats? You bet. Forced abortions? Absolutely. Internment camps for white people? Honey, we're there.
But let's just invoke the law of parsimony and call all of it for what it is, this "discussion" that's making the rounds, this populist tidal wave of 2m or 1m or 750k or 40 gazillion-trillion souls, depending on your news source, who showed up in DC last weekend. It's racism and it always was racism. (A tip o' the hat to Jimmy Carter for spelling it out and I second the emotion.) The world is not what it was. It's doubtful we can go back to those dear departed days of Klan marches, poll-taxes, and colored-only everything. It's not only the negras who've gotten uppity, it's the ladies too (most of them currently supporting their hunky guys), plus those little brown health-service-grabbing immigrants taking all those great American jobs. The celebrated era of the white guy is over and, in case you live under a porch or a rock, it's been over since about 1964.
But one thing that confounds me about stupidity in general, is this tendency to roar to the polar opposite of any argument. This AM, I'm currently brooding over No Impact Man: the movie, the book, the talk show. And yes, idiocy also comes to the progressive left on little cat feet. Here's this fella and his wife, plus hapless child, with a cushy income-level, who decides to give up everything for a year. It's kind of Walden Pond without the pond, the good writing, the ideals, and the 19th century, but you get the idea. So they have a pan of worms in the kitchen to compost their garbage, they walk up 40 billion flights of stairs every day, they squint under candlelight at night, and play charades for funsy. What I wonder is why they fled to this inflated dystopian vision of non-consumer life.
When I was a shirt-tailed tad, we kept our compost outside and when we lived in an apartment complex, we didn't have a compost pile. We had electricity too, and even used it at night to no ill-effects. For giggles and grins, we went separate ways to our singular amusements. I read comic books, my little sis babbled into her toy telephone, and my parents played bridge. As Terry Allen says, It weren't art but it weren't bad.
We didn't get a book deal out of it though.
No Impact Man has remarked in interviews that his vision of things was informed by Zen Buddhism, to which I call bullshit. The hardest part about Buddhism is that middle-way thingie. Extremes are easy. Hate to diet? Jump on the Anorexia Express and starve instead. Been a consumer pig? Give it all up, put on scratchy loin cloth, and hunker in the dark. The nicest part about being a total contrarian, is that you can give your brain a rest. There's no uncomfortable doubting or deciding moment to moment.
But, thankfully, extremism of any kind is always a two wicked candle. It burns like a mother while it burns, but it burns out fast.
Don't even try to light my fire. I'm here for the long haul.
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