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Guest Post: The Fuzzy Logic Of Useful Idiots
Via Giordano Bruno of Neithercorp Press
The Fuzzy Logic Of Useful Idiots
It hurts to be wrong. Not just emotionally, but physically,
especially when it’s public, like swimming headfirst into a school of
very ill-tempered jellyfish…..or maybe piranha. The horror of it is
almost cinematic. The more artificially pumped your ego, or the more
brainwashed with academic pretension, the more terrifying that moment of
realization is, that moment when all your assumptions are dashed aside
like a three-year-old’s alphabet blocks. To a certain point, it is
understandable why so many people live in such violent denial, however,
this does not detract from the perils of that denial…
Americans are masters of avoiding responsibility for bad assumptions.
I have seen middle-aged women cry, actual tears, because they have
been proven incorrect on something as simple as the price of dishwashing
detergent at the grocery store. I have seen full-grown men throw
wild-eyed tantrums and even threaten people with death because they
couldn’t handle being wrong about the correct score of a football game.
I once saw a man froth at the mouth and shout vicious obscenities for
20 minutes straight because he refused to believe there where more than
three ‘Jaws’ movies (I wish ‘Jaws: The Revenge’ didn’t exist either,
but I’m not going to have a spasm over it). I have seen little old
ladies physically attack people because they were embarrassed to be
wrong, not realizing that their response was far more humiliating and
self deprecating than just being “mistaken”. I have, indeed, seen the
glory of overgrown babies in action.
America is not the only culture prone to this, Americans just happen
to be the worst losers. We lash out when we are wrong, while most
Europeans tend to intellectualize ideas that challenge their false
perceptions, as if they are “above” even considering them. They are
masters of rationalizing the facts away, while we are masters of
brutalizing those people who are messengers of the facts.
Some of these unfortunate members of our society are merely lemmings;
sheep following each other mindlessly without questioning the purpose
or the destination. They are spectators in world events, and nothing
more. While others are far more dangerous because they take an active
role in the shaping of events, not knowing that their idiocy is
contributing to the suppression of the truth and even the downfall of
our nation. They help elitists to dismantle dissent and in the process
damage their own future. It sounds insane, and in a way, they ARE
psychologically ill, but in a manner that has been deemed tolerable (or
even practical) by society. We call these people “Useful Idiots”.
How does one know when he has encountered such a person? How does he
cope? Let’s examine some of the telltale signs of the useful idiot…
Just Smart Enough To Be Stupid…
Learning is a full time job, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, until the
very moment your ticker tocks and you find yourself sporting a cloud
and a harp. Some people, though, seem to think that retirement on
learning starts at around age twenty. Useful idiots are commonly men
and women who are intelligent enough to retain information but not
driven enough to research its validity, or to follow a thought through
to its logical conclusion. They very often work in professional fields
such as law, business, medicine, politics, engineering, media,
entertainment, etc. (though there are many others in these fields who
are not caught up in their own delusional worlds). These are people in a
position to influence others just by the virtue of their work,
regardless of how clueless they actually are.
Lacking knowledge is not such a terrible crime as long as you are
willing to admit that you do. There is always someone out there who is
going to know more than you about some things, if not many things.
That’s life. Useful idiots, on the other hand, are rarely willing to
admit that they are lacking in any department. They usually have just
enough knowledge to make themselves “convincing” to those who don’t
recognize them for what they are. In this way they are a sort of
mini-Chernobyl, waiting to spew radioactive waste (disinformation) at
any given moment, mutating public opinion.
Their ability to think is limited to memorization. The problem with
this way of viewing the world is that it excludes critical thought,
intuition, empathy, and wisdom. It traps us in a box composed of all
the things we have been TAUGHT, but keeps us from the things we could
discover on our own. Useful idiots are walking talking toasters; all
they take is bread, and all they make is toast (and the occasional pop
tart). Frankly, I’m bored with toast.
One need only take into account the vast number of so called
financial analysts in the mainstream media who denied there was any
threat of economic collapse back in 2006/2007. How many of them stopped
to consider the consequences of ignoring the facts because of their
egomania and inability to think beyond their conditioning? How many
lives and nest-eggs have been destroyed, or are waiting to be destroyed,
because of them? How many of these useful idiots ever apologized for
their blundering? I can’t think of any…
Reacting To The Truth, Instead Of Absorbing It…
Useful idiots talk, they don’t listen. They ask lots of questions,
but never wait to hear your answers. For them, questions are not a
search for information, but rather a method of antagonism. It is a way
to keep everyone else on guard while making themselves feel superior.
In this game, the useful idiot never has to expose his ignorance because
he never has to enter into a meaningful dialogue with anyone who has an
opposing view. All he has to do is attack, attack, attack.
I have seen all kinds of reactionary tactics from useful idiots, but I
find that the most common one for the American brand is the application
of overt bravado. They turn everything into a joke whether it is funny
or not. Laughing at that which we don’t understand sometimes makes
things less frightening, but it also makes us more passive. Dedicated
clowns, for all their theatrics and daring, are generally impotent
historical figures. How many clowns or comedians have ever really dared
to break the establishment mold and aim a magnifying glass at the true
absurdity of our system or our culture? How many have inspired
legitimate and original thought? I can think of only a handful, and
almost all of them remained tied back by the entertainment industry for
their beliefs.
The clowns that are the most “successful” are those that follow the
establishment guidelines and play on them as if they might dare break
the barrier of lies, but they never do. In Medieval times, even the
most blood thirsty king would allow the court jester to make jokes at
his expense. Why? Because the jester was an inconsequential figure, a
powerless and non-threatening being. A jester can verbally thrash a
tyrant, but nothing ever really changes, because deep down, though they
make us laugh, nobody really cares what clowns have to say. Now imagine
a whole subsection of our country emulating this dynamic. Imagine all
these people deluding themselves into thinking that being a slave isn’t
all that bad, as long as you’re the funny slave.
When confronted with a truth that threatens their established world
view, useful idiots will do anything to distract or derail the exchange.
Making bad jokes, resorting to childish ridicule, ignoring cold hard
logic, making threats, denying you are qualified to present the facts,
even though the facts speak for themselves no matter who is relaying
them, etc. Rarely will they confront the truth you present on its own
terms. Instead, they will try to make YOU the issue of discussion, and
not your information.
Skewed World View…
Is it really that hard to double check a piece of data to confirm
whether or not it is true? Apparently, it must be, because so many
Americans have decided to believe whatever they are told without a
second thought as long as the guy telling them is in a suit or a white
lab coat. If a guy in a lab coat told you that cyanide makes you more
desirable to the opposite sex, would you slam down a glass before
hitting the singles bar, or would you verify the info and actually
research the damned subject before hand?
You might say “well cyanide is poison, everybody knows that!” Yes,
people know that because they research it. But how many other poisons
do Americans ingest daily because some official gave the thumbs up?
Mercury (thimerosal), aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, fluoride,
rBGH, Bisphenol-A, and numerous others. One stop at the computer would
produce thousands of pages of research which shows the volatile nature
of these chemicals and the consequences of exposure. Why do we
contaminate our guts with this garbage on pure faith? Welcome to the
realm of the useful idiot…
The useful idiot is not just the guy chugging down GMO milk filled
with udder puss, anyone can do that and not be useful. No, the useful
idiot is the FDA official or the corporately paid scientist who SELLS us
on the purity of the milk. He’s the local dentist who laughs at you
when you question the safety of all that fluoride accumulation in your
bloodstream. She’s the nurse who threatens to call CPS because you
don’t want your newborn baby injected with half a dozen mercury laced
vaccines two months after they exit the womb. The useful idiot is the
guy who received his standardized academic neuron rinse but never
learned that the first rule of academia used to be ‘question
everything’.
World view is really a battle between inherent conscience, common
sense, and the conditioning of our era. Even a single root
misconception, like the belief in the legitimacy of the false left/right
political paradigm, could easily skew the whole of a person’s vision to
a sea of truths. The useful idiot is not only conditioned himself, but
he also becomes an agent of that conditioning in others. When
confronted with a truth outside of his established world view, he almost
short circuits. He has lived most of his life with the ideas and
propaganda of others slogging around in his skull. To be faced with the
possibility that all of that time, energy, and devotion, was worthless,
is almost too much to bear.
Making A Difference, One Lost Freedom At A Time…
Sometimes the best qualities of good people are ironically the worst
qualities in the useful idiot. Useful idiots love to participate…in
anything…as long as it’s sanctioned by a recognizable organization.
Bless their hearts, they just want to get out there and make a
difference! Go team!
This is a serious issue with those on both sides of our fake
political spectrum, left and right. How many people clamored to be a
neo-con after 9/11, only to find that in their quest for public safety,
they wrongly supported the weakening of Constitutional freedoms, the
destabilization of our economy, not to mention the invasion of Iraq, a
country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 (even if you believe
the official story) or any other terrorist attack in this country? How
many liberals ran screaming like schoolgirls at a Justin Bieber concert
towards the global warming and carbon tax scam, only to find out that
the climate labs responsible for all the research they had been eating
up without question was actually using contrived and in some cases
completely fabricated data? I won’t even get into the Obama-fever
thing, mainly because my stomach isn’t strong enough at the moment.
The problem with useful idiots is that they want to participate TOO
much. So much that they’ll jump on any bandwagon that is well funded
and flamboyant enough to peak their interest. They are joiners with
highly superficial standards, like brownshirts, or lice. This is where
they do their worst damage…
Participation, for the useful idiot, is not about making a
difference; it is about feeling like they are making a difference. In
some cases, it’s about “hope”, but not real or effective action. In
other cases, it’s about vengeance and malice, but not justice or
integrity. In either scenario, the key missing factor is the truth,
which is neglected or traded for a quick boost in self esteem. This
makes the useful idiot the prime target of elitist disinformation.
Nearly all criminal actions by governments receive their primary support
from this portion of the citizenry exactly because they are so
ridiculously eager. They are the zombie ditch diggers of the globalist
infrastructure, chopping away at our liberties in search of brains.
Confronting The Useful Idiot…
Why bother trying to communicate with these dimwits at all? Are they
not the very definition of a lost cause? Perhaps. I can say with a
certain authority, though, that some of them can be introduced to
awareness, especially since I used to be one of them…
I was the Democrat putting up Kerry stickers and handing out buttons
back in 2004. I was the guy who shut down any conservative viewpoint no
matter how accurate or valid because Bush was the devil incarnate (and
also because I was uninformed enough to believe that neo-cons were
actually conservative). I was the guy at those protest rallies where no
one including myself really understood the topics we were speaking out
on. I knew corporations were the enemy, but I didn’t understand why. I
knew the wars were dishonest, but I thought they were all about oil. I
knew the economy was in trouble, but I barely knew what the Federal
Reserve was, let alone fractional reserve banking or fiat currency. It
took many years to fully remove my head from my ass, but I did. I see
no reason why others could not do the same, given the right prompting.
The useful idiot has to be faced with queries he can’t weasel out of
or deflect. That means continually asking him questions and demanding he
support his responses with concrete proof. He has to be shown beyond a
doubt that at least one of his precious ideals is unfounded and
unsupported by the facts. Just one. After that, he can no longer
assume that any of his other views are rock solid either. He will be
forced to finally check his sources, which usually leads to a terrifying
epiphany; he knows nothing! It’s like falling down a bottomless South
American sinkhole with nothing to grab onto. I know, because I felt it
once.
Eventually, he accepts the loss of his old identity, the foolish man
that was so confident and certain, and moves on towards a frightening
world where he must teach himself, instead of waiting around for others
to teach him. The empowerment and the awe of this process is nearly
indescribable, it has to be experienced to be understood. It’s like
being able to see and to speak clearly for the first time. You never
knew what you were missing because you had nothing to compare it to;
only that unsettling knot at the pit of your stomach, telling you that
something was very wrong. Now, to go back would be unthinkable, even
hellish.
Nobody sees themselves as a useful idiot serving the interests of
tyrants in the oppression of their fellow man. But, the fact remains
that many Americans are in just such a position. You can hate them, you
can even wish them ill, but don’t give up on them all. Contesting
ignorance is not just the civic duty of the informed, it is also an act
of compassion towards those who are not.
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Too bad a bit more humility did not accompany your enlightenment.
He did own the status of having been a useful idiot himself. But I see what you mean. It still creates an us and a them.
i pray that that there will always be an "us and them" in this context. i just hope to be 'us' more often than 'them'...
problem is, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect we may never really know which we are at any given moment. a curse of proximity.
to be sure, i believe we are always moving back and forth between being useful idiots and being slightly better - depending on the context we're in, and how much sleep we've gotten.
I think this is on the money, remembering and forgetting, and knowing this is all of us. I was a more useful idiot than I am now. But I slip. Other useful idiots have investments that they have to give up to stop being idiots. Inertia is also a powerful force.
The othering I was referring to is the self righteousness some folks can innocently take on, not knowing that they are alienating folks, even when the message is good. The high horse can be a dangerous place to fall from if you don't know that you can fall. High horse riders are another kind of useful idiot.
Yeah, sleep, also for me food can really be an issue (crabby).
Nice to see you posting.
i call it "accidental arrogance". i have no idea how condescending i really am sometimes. comes from wearing my pragmatism on my sleeve. no time for PC formalities. what is, is... yet most around me seem to need the diplomacy, so diplomat i'm slowly becoming. so damned inefficient and such a game... but "so it goes", and so goes i...
i hope you keep cracking the jokes in those meetings, as i bet you're a hoot, with most comments going right on by the intended target(s) - ala dilbert.
i get here (ZH) when i can these days, mostly lurking/scanning for gems, but this place can eat you up if you let it! i find this sort of topic much more intriguing than unsustainable bond-spread and usual gold-buggery (as much as i like gold, etc.)
cheers!
"How many liberals ran screaming like schoolgirls at a Justin Bieber concert towards the global warming and carbon tax scam, only to find out that the climate labs responsible for all the research they had been eating up without question was actually using contrived and in some cases completely fabricated data?"
O Rly? You mean as in Climategate which ended up being nothing more than a publicity stunt? Who's the Justin Bieber crying crocodile tears? Those who cry over Global Warming or those who cry with the Koch bros handkerchief?
Well of course:
"The problem with useful idiots is that they want to participate TOO much. So much that they’ll jump on any bandwagon that is well funded and flamboyant enough to peak their interest. They are joiners with highly superficial standards, like brownshirts, or lice."
Or in the Koch bandwagon...
"This makes the useful idiot the prime target of elitist disinformation."
You said it.
" I knew the wars were dishonest, but I thought they were all about oil."
And they weren't? What any other explanation is there for the military adventures the US has been taking in the middle east since the XXI century that were INDEPENDENT from the "oil" variable?
Ok, Naomi Klein, I'll try to answer:
A) I'd say the lead crier is Al Gore, who now must deal with the inconvenient truth that he's been exposed (pardon the pun) as having a huge economic self-interest in carbon trading, so not the unbiased crusader we thought.
B) What did the Koch brothers do, exactly? Libertarian supporters of freedom and free markets, how controversial.
C) Kuwait (Desert Storm), yeah, oil, but really proximity to Saudi oil fields, but still, you win that one. Iraq, meh, not so much, the revenues revert to the Iraqi govt, and given the cost of the war, a bad trade either way, and even Neo-Cons understand that subtraction is addition's tricky friend. Afghanistan, hmmm, not much oil in those rocks, and as the longest of all the wars, can't be explained by oil imperialism. Or did you plan to go back as far as Lawrence of Arabia with this?
The Koch brothers are as "libertarian" as Obama.
Where the lower orders pick up such nonsense I have no idea.
there is an interesting article about the Koch brothers influence on the "political agenda" over at the New Yorker. . .I think it's important to follow the money in the political arena, and see whose agenda makes the cut. . .
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
"Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. . .The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States."
That would be "pique" actually...
Nice post, thanks.
>The useful idiot has to be faced with queries he can’t weasel out of or deflect.
Ok, if God exists, then how do you know there isn't a second one? How do you know there aren't 99 gods?
The question makes no sense. First you have to precisely and scientifically define "God" so that you can test the hypothesis. If not then you might as well ask if zibbypigglenukeymongers exist.
Sorry, let me clarify. By "god", I meant an old magical bearded guy in a robe who keeps lists of who's naughty and who's nice. Like Santa Claus, only invisible. Also, instead of entering chimneys, gods communicate using combustible shrubberies.
For some reason, the people who claim one god exists can never explain how they know there aren't multiple gods.
It's common knowledge that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the One True God.
Be off with yourself, heathen.
There's God and there's the concept "god". See, the one you conceived, limited as a man, limited as a persona in a child's story... You are correct: it cannot exist; what *you* conceived is a failure but that's your own fault. Try harder next time
Now, there's plenty of logical proofs for the existence of One God for centuries in various philosophical treatises. No religious belief is required. If you passed the Zero Hedge captcha test without a calculator you'll be able to find it alone.
LMAO, do you mean this "proof"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaunilo_of_Marmoutiers#The_.22Lost_Island.22_refutation
"Anselm claimed his ontological argument as proof of the existence of God, whom he described as that being than which no greater can be conceived. A god that does not exist cannot be that than which no greater can be conceived, as existence would make it greater. Thus, according to St. Anselm, the concept of God necessarily entails His existence.
Gaunilo criticised Anselm's argument by employing the same reasoning, via reductio ad absurdum, to "prove" the existence of the mythical "Lost Island", the greatest or most perfect island conceivable: if the island of which we are thinking does not exist, it cannot be the greatest conceivable island, for, to be the greatest conceivable island, it would have to exist, as any existent island would be greater than an imaginary one."
You found St. Anselm already. Wikipedia, no less! Wow.
I hope you'll understand why Gaunilo's argument is intellectually dishonest. I also hope you'll continue to more elaborate logical proofs; there's a lot to gain.
I repeat, no religious belief is required. Don't worry about that.
"See, the [god] you conceived, limited as a man, limited as a persona in a child's story... You are correct: it cannot exist"
Actually, you're wrong. It could exist:
1. It's quite possible for there to be a being who appears to be a magical old bearded guy. Consider Papa Smurf.
2. Being invisible is physically, and almost technologically, possible (invisibility cloaks). It's like the Stealth Bomber but with the visible EM spectrum.
3. I see no law of physics being violated by using a combustible shrubbery / smoldering privet as a communication device. (Though it may violate FCC laws.)
The only fly in the ointment is a complete lack of evidence.
. . . there are as many versions of "god" as there are minds who believe in "him" - the story is endless. . .
kinda like the number of theories on child-raising...
cheers
Nice post.
The orwellian propaganda is so great though, the disinformation machine from so many outlets is so powerful, it takes a lot of homework and study to try and break through it (I am making amazon.com rich off the library I am building), and most people are so focused on their immediate needs it is so hard to get people to contemplate the same questions are founding fathers were struggling with when we gained our independence.
My parents or years in school taught me nothing on important matters, and ironically I find myself educating my parents as they have no clue what is central banking or the Federal Reserve, the struggle between big government versus limited government (the same old Federalist v AntiFederalist question), what are the different forms of government, what is money and money debasement, and what is political law versus natural law. I feel like the most important questions have been hidden away so they are never asked and that propaganda can fill the void and dictate the views. Then if you actually get to the point where you are asking yourself the important questions how do you acknowledge, recognize, and challenge the biases, folklore, voodoo, and mysticism that have controlled the issues? You have to leave your comfort zone and actually do work to find answers. How many people are going to do this? The bankers, the politicians, the bureaucras, the elites are always banking that Americans will not leave their comfort zone, and it seems they are often correct.
appreciated this post "tyler" - particularly in light of the "elections" commentary prior and no doubt to come. . .
this excerpt can of course be applied to us all, since most of what we are told, or read, is taken in with zero direct experience of the subject - of course, how can we experience "everything"? so we absorb second-hand information daily, then try to fit it into our pre-made opinionated thought-boxes, memorising the meme for repetition in conversations yet to happen. . .
as for "intuition & empathy" - yes, sore lack of these traits in evidence nowadays - intuition requires cultivating an internal non-verbal form of sensing that navigates through the chatter and intentional distracting, and empathy gives depth to actions - it can force one to pause before engaging in group behaviours that might be harmful to others, and therefore, the whole. . . empathy needs to take in the whole picture, and forego allegiance to self-centred actions, which is another mark of immaturity.
great read.
we're vehement creatures of momentum. once our egos commit an opinion/action, it is very difficult for most of us (impossible for some), to re-think, re-assess, re-decide, and eventually change. kind of an all-or-nothing creature. we'll see proof of this with the 'new' political climate we've just created - does anyone really believe any 'message' that was 'sent' will actually be heard and responded to? right.
so, with that said... onto the point about humor and jokes...
i would assert that the humor and jokes are a sign of appreciation of the subtlety of life, and it bothers hell out of the dogmatic "black & whiters" out there. most of my fun comes from bothering them with simple, dogma-shattering questions. (borrow our way out of debt, you say?)
nope, i refuse to apologize for the jokes. the smartest folks i know are appropriately pragmatic, cynical, and realistic. they can spot the various fundamentalist hyperbole (political, financial, religious, etc.) a mile away. thank 'god' for those fine folks.
george carlin, oscar wilde, mark twain, gary larsen, pj o'rourke, scott adams, etc. folks like these are the intellectual floodgates that keep the useful idiots in check.
I reiterate: You left H. L. Mencken off your list.
brilliant quote (no surprise, RR),
i clearly need to add HLM to my reading list.
this is a bit like the various groups spending so much energy retaining power, that they don't have any energy left to do anything worth a damn with that power...
ironic as hell
Great post.
It is hard to blame the useful idiot as his "betters" use the same type of belligerent emotionally intense argumentation, devoid of any actual information. I cannot blame a people for being uninformed when the whole media is a vehicle for the daily "two minutes of hate"
Interesting stuff, but my concern is with the floundering useless cluefuls who could together make huge improvements in our social, economic, and political systems. Useful idiots (aka sheeple) need a viable alternative and none is forthcoming from the "fuc" heads around here. Perhaps an Organization of Floundering Useless Cluefuls (OFUC) would pull it together.
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"It sounds insane, and in a way, they ARE psychologically ill, but in a manner that has been deemed tolerable (or even practical) by society. We call these people “Useful Idiots”."
I've always believed that their was something wrong with people like this and having you express that our society tolerates people like this and don't call them out for what they are tells me that our leaders in our society have done their job well. They have dumbed down enough of our population that they can't comprehend the disaster that is coming down the road toward them. The disaster of govt. liabilities both federal and state being cut and/or rid of. The disaster of our dollar and our economy imploding. The disaster of our foreign policy coming back to haunt us. And the disaster of when our nation becomes a third world, and then we get to see how THOSE PEOPLE get by day by day. As with all empires, if the populace refuses to change course the govt. won't change course. And soon our govt. will take us over the cliff.
Tyler - There are undesirables playing in our garden...
:-(
signore bruno, you do your namesake proud with this post.
everyone else, thanks for sharing. this has been a topic stewing in me mind for a good mooncycle now and you all helped to bring me some clarity, even the useful idiots helped me see the idiot in myself. we're all mirrors yes?
prophet, i'm down with the OFUC. it's time.
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As far back as I can remember, I wanted to feel useful, important, that my life matters, that I can make a positive difference.
Many times i have tried to force my way, going beyond my God-given talents and boundaries.
I believe in today's society, for many people, we have so many obstacles to doing things that matter.
I am thinking of the health insurance field, in particular.
Nine years ago, I filed a patent, and asked about 100 insurers if they were willing to consider my product.
Only one showed an interest.
That tells me that the insurers were more interested in the status quo, protecting their turf, than designing a win-win health insurance product for the long run.
Don Levit
This very clearly outlines the dichotomy between our instance to be socially participatory and accepted with our intellectual challenge to question everything. Questioning of the fundamentals of life is best done with friends in Florida outdoor kitchens.