Friday, September 30, 2016

How to Protect Yourself from Idiot Kings

”If Man were not so much more foolish and gullible than animals, he might have avoided a great deal of cruelty and misfortune.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer

Since it is the nature of people to understand stories more easily than most anything else, I will tell one. Let's call it a fairytale.

Once upon a time, not so long ago and not so far away, there was a large, prosperous village than unfortunately had an idiot for a king. Unfortunately, his advisers were idiots, too.

Down the road a bit was another village, one that was tiny and poor and not a threat at all to our large, prosperous village. Somehow, the Idiot King, along with his idiot advisors, got it in their heads the poor, tiny village had an insane homicidal maniac for a king. Along with that, many of the people in the village were also supposed to be insane homicidal maniacs.

"They are evil and are going to attack us for our goodness," exclaimed the Idiot King. "We have to attack them first in self-defense. How do we get the public to march off to war?"

"We will use propaganda," said one of his idiot advisers. "The techniques have been around for a long time and even an idiot could use them."

"Really?" asked the Idiot King, who was generally quite incurious about most everything. "Then it should be easy for us."

"There are four main techniques for successful propaganda," his advisor explained. "First, we have to stress emotion over logic, but convince people they are being logical."

"Works for me," said the Idiot King.

"Then," the advisor continued, "we have to demonize the enemy, but convince people the enemy really is evil."

"That's because they are!" frowned the Idiot King.

"Third," said the adviser, "tell people that by destroying the enemy the world will be safer, and will lead to a better world for us and them."

"It certainly will!" exclaimed the Idiot King joyfully.

"Fourth," the adviser continued, "idealize yourself, your country, your government, your military. By idealizing yourself and devaluing the enemy they can be transformed into evil monsters 'attacking us for our goodness.'"

"The things you can learn just by listening," the Idiot King said admiringly.

So the Idiot King and his idiot advisors told the people of the village (many of whom were idiots themselves) that the tiny poor village down the road was inhabited by monsters!! Evil, insane homicidal monsters that would go to any extreme to attack our large prosperous village and destroy it.

So of course many of the people of our large prosperous village grabbed their pitchforks and clubs and axes and marched down the road, attacked the poor tiny village, killed the King and many of the inhabitants.

Many of the inhabitants of the poor tiny village fled into woods, and when they caught one of the invaders of their village they killed him. In fact, the killed a lot of the invaders.

"This is really surprising," commented the Idiot King, puzzled. "I thought they would welcome us as liberators, cheering and throwing flowers at us and maybe even the women showing us their boobs."

"You'd think so," said his advisers, just as puzzled.

One of the inhabitants of our large prosperous village was a four-year-child who had no home so he slept with the village dogs to keep warm. Though this child was poor and homeless, an idiot this child was not.

"If the Idiot King has asked me," the child told his dogs, who listened attentively, "I could have told him his attack wouldn't work. For one thing, you can conquer a country on horseback, but you have to dismount to rule."

His dogs nodded their approval.

"If people weren't sleep-walkers," the child said to the dogs, who looked impressed, "they'd never believe anything their government says."

"Uh huh," chorused the dogs.

The child thought for a while then said, "If people want to prevent being brainwashed and falling for propaganda, perhaps they should use logic over hysterical emotion. Perhaps knowing some logical fallacies might help."

"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc," said one of the dogs.

"'Because of this, therefore that'," said the child. "Just because something precedes something doesn't mean it causes it. You must analyze the situation and discover what the true causes are."

"Yep," commented a dog.

"Perhaps," the child said pensively, "we should never allow ourselves to demonize anyone. There is no one in the world that is pure good or pure evil. Unfortunately, in politics, everything is with good or evil, with no shades of grey."

The dogs smirked, knowing they were better than humans in that way.

"And never believe in Utopia," the child said thoughtfully. "It's always based on the belief in getting rid of those evil people.' The butcher is held in great esteem in Harmony,' I read somewhere."

The dogs listened in awe.

"Never idealize your government, your country, or your military," pondered the child. "All such idealizations are hubris, and hubris is always followed by nemesis—destruction."

"Pride goes before destruction," one of the dogs added. "And a haughty spirit before a fall. That's in the Bible somewhere."

"Someday people will smirk at people who in the past believed in witches, monsters, dragons, and so on," the child finished. "But they'll be no different than we are, because, if brainwashing and propaganda can be defined in one sentence, it's convincing people monsters are attacking our village, so we have to kill them."

"You're pretty smart for a human," one dog said.

"Like anyone's going to listen to a four-year-old child," the child observed.

"Or a dog, for that matter," said one of the dogs sadly.

8 comments:

Mad Jack said...

I like it. This is a fairly impressive post.

little dynamo said...

You don't have kings, idiot or otherwise. Lookit the Idjits calling the other folks Idiots. lol 'Idiot Wind blowing like a circle around my skull/from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol'.

No kings, you Advanced Evolved Geniuses have democracy (or dead republics) in which you are permitted the illusion of self-determination and power, while your women collectively rule over you, slowly strangling your civilization. Meanwhile, you chirp bravely about Constitutions, rules of law, trade deficits, and all the other shit that never matters.

I'm had awhile to observe, and I am not very impressed with You The People and your satanic soft-gynarchies. Most kings, idiot or not, could do better making decisions, by having his advisors interpret his dung. Just so, your votes. Cheers.

Robert What? said...

Well I'm halfway there: I'm not a king but I am an idiot.

Glen Filthie said...

Okay, okay. Settle down Bob.

As the local Neocon I suppose it falls to me to sort out the stupid kids: no, we will not be going to war over a shit hole like Syria or the Bohunks in the Ukraine. There's no money in it. Somebody go tell Jim that too! All we're doing is rattling sabres at this point. Politics is not a zero sum game, contrary to Bob, the Alt-Right and Libertarian turdies. Sitting on your hands and doing nothing does not equal nothing happening. If you sit on your hands while evil festers - you will create a power vacuum. In a shit hole like Syria/Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan...right on through to Dirkadirkastan - if you create a power vacuum some moslem mutt will step up to fill it. If you let him do that for too long he gets bigger and entrenched as Saddam did - then you have a REAL problem on your hands.

Saddam certainly DID have WMD's. We know this because we sold them to him, and he used them on the Kurds. It's a fact that he was actively engaged in going nuclear and it is debateable whether he did or not before he was shut down. What was on those endless convoys that drove right past the stunned UN inspection teams? Uncle Bob? Josh? Anyone?

But yeah - if Putin or the sheep shaggers go over the line we WILL kill them. Or they WILL kill us. Men like Putin regard guys like Uncle Bob and his peaceniks as contemptible fools - and he knows how to deal with them too. He uses them and then he kills them. We know this because it's a matter of public record.

Repeat after me, you retards: "Don't you fall into the trap! Uncle Bob is full of crap!"

Now if anyone of you needs any remedial help with Geopolitics by all means - you know where to find me!

Anonymous said...

says the retard Canuckian who thought his rotten crotch fruit was gonna be a STEM major. GTFO.

Anonymous said...

Glen, stick to writing about guns and whisky, because you know fuck all about geopolitics or history.

Glen Filthie said...

Says the guy who blames Bush for American failures in the middle east.

Not only am I an expert on guns and whisky - I am fully conversed in the ways of the Middle Eastern Mudflap. I'm strongly inclined to give a lecture on Sharia Law but it wouldn't go over well with the cellar dwellers and trailer trash.

Vox Day got one right when he referred to you guys as 'historical ignoratti'. Gulf War III will not start in Syria. I'm thinking Iran - but it's too early to tell. There are grim rumblings in Libya that the mainstream media and the American political machine are ignoring...

Moustache Lovers said...

Good reading your postt