"The strongest man in the world..."
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22:27 GMT on 20 March 2003
Some things just honk me off. People who refuse to admit reality are one of them.
(I'm dashing this off without any outline, real or mental, so bear with any apparent incoherence please.)
I had a conversation a couple of months ago about Bowling for Columbine with an acquaintance. He's a teacher, a former social worker, and yet fairly bright (though you can certainly guess his politics from what I just told you — there are signs of hope, but only signs). He began by saying he thought it was "important" to see the film because it was the talk of the students in the high school he was working in. I asked if he had pointed out to those students that Moore is a proven liar. He more or less ignored that, and said that he liked the movie because it "really made you think, even if you don't agree with what it says."
Well, hell. I listed easily discovered fabrications in the film (the "get a gun for opening an account" scene, which could only have been staged; the text in the 1988 campaign advert that was never there before this "documentary;" and one other which I don't recall, perhaps the lies about the NRA in the animated sequence), and made the point that if the only food for thought the movie gives you is poison, what good is it? He said, essentially, "well, still, it really made me think." I countered: so what? Moore lied, he's lied in the past, he rarely tells the full truth. Whatever is in the documentary is tainted from the outset. This had no effect. Apparently truth, or reality, is trumped when something "really makes you think."
It's a mild case of the same mental state that permits people to state — without irony — that GWB is worse than Saddam Hussein. It's the mindset of people who think that socialism is still a noble ideal, despite the tens of millions killed in the name of that ideal in the last hundred years.
The same mindset motivates people who think holding up a sign in public is "doing something."
The same mindset put Rachel Corrie under a bulldozer, because she apparently thought her feelings could stop it.
This same mindset drove those other human shields into Iraq. Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for the Darwin awards, reality seeped through the cracks in their minds and they left because, well, they might get hurt and stuff. (Call me crazy, but wasn't that the whole f--king point?!?)
Reality just has no bearing on this mindset.
Plato and Kant (and innumerable others) maintained that that which you see is not real, and that which is real is unobservable, undetectible, and inaccessible to the mind of Man. Kant's terms for this are the Phenomenal World (that which you can see) and the Noumenal World (the real reality you are forever denied to understand).
Except that these self-righteous nimrods think that they (whom Thomas Sowell refers to as The Anointed) have a direct pipeline into the Noumenal, and you don't. So when Reality hefts a Louisville Slugger, assumes the stance, rears back and smacks The Anointed across the forehead, they blink once or twice, rephrase what they just said, and ignore it.
I know I should be able to just shrug it off, but this crap makes my blood boil.
What set me off on this rant were a couple of comments over at MooreWatch regarding this post about Michael Moore's mature and reasoned advocacy of changing the rules for voting the Academy's Best Documentary Oscar so that he has a better chance of winning.
"Charmed12" left his cleverly ungrammatical reply:
I think you americans are just pissed that the rest of the world now knows what most of us knew. The truth about your shitty gouvernement. Bush who's asking Saddam to disarm, why don't he disarm, those weapons that Saddam has for 12 years now, is half of what the american gouvernement gave him 12 years ago.
But worse is "oboe_face," for whom facts are irrelevant. He challenges the post's author:
My point, and the rest of the world's, is no one PRO war can come up with a rational reason FOR war.
Go ahead. Try.
Then, after being confronted by several reasons, several good, rational reasons, he says:
Sorry guys. Your reasons just don't float. No one is arguing that Saddam is a bad guy, an evil dictator with a bad record of human treatment. Here's a link you can throw at your lefty opponents, documenting 20 years of abuse...
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Recent/MDE140082001!Open
But what everyone wants to know is why this makes a pre-emptive strike, without the support of the world when that support was ASKED FOR, NECESSARY?
Aaron slams back with:
As ironic as it is to have someone like you, who is allergic to facts and reason, tell me that my reasons just donšt float, the fact remains that we provided you with ample reasons for Saddam to be removed from power and the best you could do was to provide a link from Amnesty International that proves us right? Does that make no sense to you as well?
And there you are. This person asked for evidence, got it, augmented it, and still claimed he was right somehow. The mind reels.
So, forthwith, required reading (and viewing) for twits, nimrods, subgeniuses, permanent wearers of peril-sensitive sunglasses, and all other brands of reality-impaired witlings.
Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People is a marvelous play to read (I've never seen it performed). It's about a respected, powerful man who warns the community of danger. Everyone tries to ignore it, because they don't want the danger, and they persecute him. Everyone hates him. The majority is always right, and they try to suppress his voice.
Sound familiar?
Yet, at the end of the play, even though everyone in town still hates him, even though nobody will listen to him, he wins. He is undaunted, trusting his direct observation over the creepy political and emotional machinations of every one of the pull-peddlers, and is outright triumphant at the end. For he knows that, come what may, reality is on his side.
Imagine: this bright spirited ode to independent judgment was penned by a European, and a Scandawegian one at that! Sure, socialism and bitter envy hadn't settled into the culture yet, but it was coming.
If you want to see the best cinematic adaptation of this play, go out and rent Jaws tonight.
I'm not kidding.
The story is essentially the same. A respected member of the community (doctor, police chief) tries to warn his tourist-dependent community (spa, resort island) about an imminent threat to their health (bacteria, big honking shark). They don't want to hear it, for such news will hurt their economy. Sure, the details are different, but the setup is the same.
Or, if you prefer to run with the cowboy "insult," Geitner Simmons has the answer.
No matter how many magical realist novels you read, no matter how much you don't like it, no matter how hard you wish, reality is what it is, and you have a choice. Either deal with it, or jam your fingers in your ears, and start humming real loud.
(This post is a revision and expansion of this post from yesterday. It was cut short by outside circumstances, and portions were lost to a computer crash. I was unhappy with it, so I took it off the front page, but it remains in the archives because I did put it up.)