Giordano Bruno
Neithercorp
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…
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