There are two types of people in your world: Those who swallow everything that is fed to them, like the starving dogs that they are, and those who, if someone told them they were on fire, would roll their eyes unless they could actually smell their own hair smoldering.
And it’s easy to tell the two types apart, too; just listen to their vocabulary. If someone uses the words “tragedy,” “victim,” “godsend,” “blessing,” or “perspective” more than six times during a normal three-minute conversation, then they are undeniably of the first variety.
It’s not easy to be cynical, or as I like to call it, logical. Logical people are pariahs in this society, for the simple fact that they revel in crushing the conventional dreams, beliefs, values, traditions and customs of pretty much everyone who have closed their minds and eyes to the truth and instead elects to be guided by their hearts. Letting your emotions rule your actions is okay for, say, Valentine’s Day, but on a day-to-day basis, it’s asking for trouble.
Most of the time, people allow their emotions to lead because they are afraid of facing the truth. The truth hurts – it hits you over your head with a tie iron until you are bleeding from the ears, and then it steals your wallet – but it never tries to deny what it is. And since there are very few people who can handle such a beating, they attempt to obfuscate the truth using “Emotional Intellectualism”, which is my politically correct term for being politically correct. Emotional Intellectualism works like this: you read an article, or see a news report, or hear a story, and after all of the facts are laid out before you, you allow them to swirl about and then gel together in your mind and then express your opinion using the first emotion that pops into your head.
Need an example? Ok, lets use something topical. Read this article from Reuters, and I’ll be over here clipping my nails….Finished? Ok, what did you think?
If you answered: “Oh those poor people, this is just another example of how oppressive our government can be!”, then you, my friend, are an emotional intellectual.
If on the other hand, you write a 1000 word essay on just how ludicrous that article was, then, you are me. Or someone like me, anyway. Perhaps even one of the Outcast.
Lucky for you all, I happen to speak excellent Emotional Intellectual, and would be more than happy to translate the article for those with the inability to see the truth. The actual article content will be in quotes; the logical translation will be in parentheses.
“People left homeless by Hurricane Katrina told horrific stories of rape, murder and trigger happy guards in two New Orleans centers that were set up as shelters but became places of violence and terror.”
(Subhuman citizens were upset that the authorities were severely curbing their looting activities, and decided to play the race card and complain to the first person with a notebook and camera).
“Several residents of the impromptu shantytown recounted two horrific incidents where those charged with keeping people safe had killed them instead.”
(The two in question were stupid enough to engage in criminal behavior in full sight of law enforcement officers.)
“Police here refused to discuss or confirm either incident. National Guard spokesman Lt. Col Pete Schneider said ‘I have not heard any information of a weapon being discharged.’”
(Lt. Col Pete Schneider wanted to say, ‘I shot six of them myself. Goddamn animals’.)
"A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck's windshield and they shot him dead."
(Anyone whose English is that poor is lying. The man who was shot was obviously attempting to join in the fun. And if he wasn't, let this be a lesson to those who jump onto moving vehicles during natural disasters.)
"Last night at 8 p.m. they shot a kid of just 16. He was just crossing the street. They ran him over, the New Orleans police did, and then they got out of the car and shot him in the head,"
(He was crossing the street with a TV in his hands, a gun jammed in his pants, and shouting “Fuck you, pigs!”)
“A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it.”
(A woman named ‘Africa’ couldn’t possibly have any sort of hidden agenda. Plus, it was for her that her brother was stealing the TV.)
“’They have us living here like animals,’ said Wvonnette Grace-Jordan, here with five children, the youngest only six weeks old. ‘We have only had two meals, we have no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America.’”
(When your entire city has been destroyed by 20-foot waves of floodwater, you have very little choices on where to defecate. The government, or “they”, had nothing to do with your predicament, including your decision to have five children. If you live in abject poverty, you shouldn’t have children.)
“One National Guard soldier who asked not to be named for fear of punishment from his commanding officer said of the lack of medical attention at the center, ‘They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here.’"
(He cannot be trusted guarding his country. He should be summarily executed for treason. He also couldn’t possibly know what the government cares about.)
“The scene at the sports stadium was one of abject filth. Crammed into a small area after the building was shut to them last night, those remaining sat amid heaps of garbage, piled in places waist high.”
(The flood carried away all of the garbage pails in the Superdome, too? That seems like a lot of garbage for people who don’t have any belongings or get only two meals a day.)
“One police officer told Reuters there were 100 people in a makeshift morgue at the Superdome, mostly people who died of heat exhaustion, and that six babies had been born there since last Saturday”
(There were 25,000 refugees at the Superdome. Statistically, 177 babies a day are born in the entire state of Louisiana, at a population of 4.5 million. The Superdome refugees represent .5% of the entire state. Thus, since the article was written one week from the date of when refugees began filing into the arena, the number of live births – 6 – is exactly in keeping with the birth rate of Louisiana. What, did you think I wouldn’t check?)
"’We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom," one National Guard soldier told Reuters. "Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death.’"
(Good. Free up the courts for Enron officials. Lex Talionis.)
See how easy it is? My version of the article tells the exact same thing without all of the bathos and pandering that seems to accompany American journalism. Open your eyes and try it yourself. It’s fun and enlightening. All you need is a few spare minutes and your brain. Let your heart go out and catch butterflies while you’re thinking, or it will attempt to interfere.
Sensitive Mortals.
And it’s easy to tell the two types apart, too; just listen to their vocabulary. If someone uses the words “tragedy,” “victim,” “godsend,” “blessing,” or “perspective” more than six times during a normal three-minute conversation, then they are undeniably of the first variety.
It’s not easy to be cynical, or as I like to call it, logical. Logical people are pariahs in this society, for the simple fact that they revel in crushing the conventional dreams, beliefs, values, traditions and customs of pretty much everyone who have closed their minds and eyes to the truth and instead elects to be guided by their hearts. Letting your emotions rule your actions is okay for, say, Valentine’s Day, but on a day-to-day basis, it’s asking for trouble.
Most of the time, people allow their emotions to lead because they are afraid of facing the truth. The truth hurts – it hits you over your head with a tie iron until you are bleeding from the ears, and then it steals your wallet – but it never tries to deny what it is. And since there are very few people who can handle such a beating, they attempt to obfuscate the truth using “Emotional Intellectualism”, which is my politically correct term for being politically correct. Emotional Intellectualism works like this: you read an article, or see a news report, or hear a story, and after all of the facts are laid out before you, you allow them to swirl about and then gel together in your mind and then express your opinion using the first emotion that pops into your head.
Need an example? Ok, lets use something topical. Read this article from Reuters, and I’ll be over here clipping my nails….Finished? Ok, what did you think?
If you answered: “Oh those poor people, this is just another example of how oppressive our government can be!”, then you, my friend, are an emotional intellectual.
If on the other hand, you write a 1000 word essay on just how ludicrous that article was, then, you are me. Or someone like me, anyway. Perhaps even one of the Outcast.
Lucky for you all, I happen to speak excellent Emotional Intellectual, and would be more than happy to translate the article for those with the inability to see the truth. The actual article content will be in quotes; the logical translation will be in parentheses.
“People left homeless by Hurricane Katrina told horrific stories of rape, murder and trigger happy guards in two New Orleans centers that were set up as shelters but became places of violence and terror.”
(Subhuman citizens were upset that the authorities were severely curbing their looting activities, and decided to play the race card and complain to the first person with a notebook and camera).
“Several residents of the impromptu shantytown recounted two horrific incidents where those charged with keeping people safe had killed them instead.”
(The two in question were stupid enough to engage in criminal behavior in full sight of law enforcement officers.)
“Police here refused to discuss or confirm either incident. National Guard spokesman Lt. Col Pete Schneider said ‘I have not heard any information of a weapon being discharged.’”
(Lt. Col Pete Schneider wanted to say, ‘I shot six of them myself. Goddamn animals’.)
"A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck's windshield and they shot him dead."
(Anyone whose English is that poor is lying. The man who was shot was obviously attempting to join in the fun. And if he wasn't, let this be a lesson to those who jump onto moving vehicles during natural disasters.)
"Last night at 8 p.m. they shot a kid of just 16. He was just crossing the street. They ran him over, the New Orleans police did, and then they got out of the car and shot him in the head,"
(He was crossing the street with a TV in his hands, a gun jammed in his pants, and shouting “Fuck you, pigs!”)
“A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it.”
(A woman named ‘Africa’ couldn’t possibly have any sort of hidden agenda. Plus, it was for her that her brother was stealing the TV.)
“’They have us living here like animals,’ said Wvonnette Grace-Jordan, here with five children, the youngest only six weeks old. ‘We have only had two meals, we have no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America.’”
(When your entire city has been destroyed by 20-foot waves of floodwater, you have very little choices on where to defecate. The government, or “they”, had nothing to do with your predicament, including your decision to have five children. If you live in abject poverty, you shouldn’t have children.)
“One National Guard soldier who asked not to be named for fear of punishment from his commanding officer said of the lack of medical attention at the center, ‘They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here.’"
(He cannot be trusted guarding his country. He should be summarily executed for treason. He also couldn’t possibly know what the government cares about.)
“The scene at the sports stadium was one of abject filth. Crammed into a small area after the building was shut to them last night, those remaining sat amid heaps of garbage, piled in places waist high.”
(The flood carried away all of the garbage pails in the Superdome, too? That seems like a lot of garbage for people who don’t have any belongings or get only two meals a day.)
“One police officer told Reuters there were 100 people in a makeshift morgue at the Superdome, mostly people who died of heat exhaustion, and that six babies had been born there since last Saturday”
(There were 25,000 refugees at the Superdome. Statistically, 177 babies a day are born in the entire state of Louisiana, at a population of 4.5 million. The Superdome refugees represent .5% of the entire state. Thus, since the article was written one week from the date of when refugees began filing into the arena, the number of live births – 6 – is exactly in keeping with the birth rate of Louisiana. What, did you think I wouldn’t check?)
"’We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom," one National Guard soldier told Reuters. "Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death.’"
(Good. Free up the courts for Enron officials. Lex Talionis.)
See how easy it is? My version of the article tells the exact same thing without all of the bathos and pandering that seems to accompany American journalism. Open your eyes and try it yourself. It’s fun and enlightening. All you need is a few spare minutes and your brain. Let your heart go out and catch butterflies while you’re thinking, or it will attempt to interfere.
Sensitive Mortals.
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