HOW TO TALK TO A COMPLETE IDIOT, about WTC 911 BEING A FIXED JOB, a kind of PEARL HARBOR for the oil companies, ABOUT THE FEDERAL RESERVE being British bankers SUCKING AMERICA DRY, about BOTH PARTIES BEING THE SAME DAMN Republicrat THING -- about BOUGHT POLITICIANS which kiss the FED's butt, Pharms' butts, HMO's butts, NAFTA's butts, ABOUT the wisdom of holding out NO HOPE unless we all ACT!

There are three basic ways to talk to complete idiots. The first is to assail them with facts, truths, scientific data, the commonsensical obviousness of it all. You do this in the very reasonable expectation that it will nudge them away from the ledge of their more ridiculous and paranoid misconceptions because, well, they're facts, after all, and who can dispute those? Why, idiots can, that's who. It is exactly this sort of logical, levelheaded appeal to reason and mental acuity that's doomed to fail, simply because in the idiotosphere, facts are lies and truth is always dubious, whereas hysteria and alarmism resulting in mysterious undercarriage rashes are the only things to be relied upon.Examples? Endless. You may, for instance, attempt to explain evolution to an extreme fundamentalist Christian. You may offer up carbon dating, the fossil record, glaciers, any one of 10,000 irrefutable proofs. You may even dare to talk about the Bible as the clever, completely manufactured, man-made piece of heavily politicized, massively edited, literary myth-making it so very much is, using all sorts of sound academic evidence and historical record.

You are, of course, insane beyond belief to try this, but sometimes you
just can't help it. To the educated mind, it seems inconceivable that
millions of people will choose rabid ignorance and childish fantasy
over, say, a polar bear. Permafrost. Rocks. Nag Hammadi. But they will,
and they do. Faced with this mountain of factual obviousness, the
bewildered fundamentalist will merely leap back as if you just jabbed
him with a flaming homosexual cattle prod, and then fall into a swoon
about how neat it is that angels can fly.

But it's not just the fundamentalists. This Rule of Idiocy also explains
why, when you show certain jumpy, conservative Americans the irrefutable
facts about, say, skyrocketing health care costs that are draining their
bank accounts, and then show how Obama's rather modest overhaul is meant
to save members of all ages and genders and party affiliations a
significant amount of money while providing basic insurance for their
family, they, too, will scream and kick like a child made to eat a
single bite of broccoli.

Remember, facts do not matter. The actual Obama plan itself does not
matter. Fear of change, fear of the "Other," fear of the scary black
socialist president, fear that yet another important shift is taking
place that they cannot understand and which therefore makes them thrash
around like a trapped animal? This is all that matters.

This is why, even when you whip out, say, a fresh article by the goodly
old Washington Post -- not exactly a bastion of lopsided liberalthink --
one that breaks down the rather brutal truth about the real cost of
health care in this country, it will likely be hurled back in your face
as an obvious piece of liberal propaganda. Go ahead, try it. Or better
yet, don't. Option two is to try to speak their language, dumb yourself
down, engage on the idiot's level as you try to figure out how their
minds work -- or more accurately, don't work -- so you can better
empathize and find a shred of common ground and maybe, just maybe, inch
the human experiment forward.

This is, as you already sense, a dangerous trap, pure intellectual
quicksand. It almost never works, and just makes you feel gross and
slimy. Nevertheless, plenty of shrewd political strategists believe that
the best way for Obama and the Dems to get their message across
regarding everything from health care reform to new environmental
regulation, would be to steal a page from the Glenn Beck/Karl
Rove/sociopath's playbook, and start getting stupid.

It's all about the bogus catchphrases, the sound bites, the emotional
punches-to-the-gut. Death panels! Rationing! Fetus farms! Puppy
shredders! Commie medicine! Gay apocalypse! Forced vaccinations! Exposed
nipples during prime-time! Let one of these inane, completely wrong but
oh-so-haunting verbal ticks bite into the below-average American
brainstem, and watch your cause bleed all over the headlines.

The big snag here is that the Dems, unlike the Republican Party, aren't
really beholden to a radical, mal-educated base of fundamentalist
crazies to keep them afloat. Truly, the political success of the liberal
agenda does not depend on the irrational, Bible-crazed "value voter"
who's terrified of gays, believes astronomy is a hoax and thinks Jesus
spoke perfect English and really liked giving hugs.

In other words, there really is little point in the liberals adopting
this strategy, save for the fact that the major media eats it up and it
might serve to counterbalance some of the more ridiculous conservative
catchphrases. What's more, it could also give the whiny, bickering Dems
something slightly cohesive to rally around -- because the truth is, the
Democratic Party isn't all that bright, either.

And now we come to option three, easily the finest and most successful
approach of all. Alas, it also remains the most difficult to pull off.
No one is exactly sure why. The absolute best way to speak to complete
idiots is, of course, not to speak to them at all.

That is, you work around them, ignore them completely, disregard the
rants and the spittle and the misspelled protest signs and the fervent
prayers for apocalypse on Fox News. Complete refusal to take the fringe
nutballs even the slightest bit seriously is the only way to make true
progress.

This also happens to be the invaluable advice of one Frank Schaeffer,
noted author and a former fundamentalist nutball himself, who made a
simply superb appearance on Rachel Maddow's show recently, wherein he
offered up one of the most articulate, fantastic takedowns of the
fundamentalist idiot's mindset in recent history. It's a must-watch. Do
it. Do it now.

Now, you may argue that, while Schaeffer may be dead right and also
rather deserving of being quoted far and wide, it's also true that
calling people stupid is no way to advance the debate, and is itself
rather childish and stupid. And you'd be absolutely right. But you'd
also be missing the point. When you ignore the idiots completely, you
are not calling them anything at all. You are not trying to advance any
sort of argument, because there is no debate taking place. You are
simply bypassing the giant pothole of ignorance entirely.

You are not kowtowing to the least educated of your voting bloc, like
the GOP is so desparetely fond of doing. You are not trying to give the
idiotosphere equal weight in the discussion. As Schaeffer says, "You
cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot." By employing
option three, you are doing the only humane thing left to do: you are
letting the idiotosphere eat itself alive.

Do it for the children, won't you?
*    *     *    *
Three basic options. Choose wisely, lest you go totally insane By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Friday, September 25, 2009

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