The Watsonista spiritual mentor
I wrote this in an earlier post, but did not expand –
It reminds me of an observation made by Peter Sloterdijk in his Critique of Cynical Reason –
“The violent, antirationalistic impulse in Western countries is reacting to an intellectual state of affairs in which all thinking has become strategy“
This is what we are seeing here – all language and communication reduced to strategy. This is the precursor to all communication is propaganda, or more simply, when communication itself, a two way transfer of unfiltered information1, ceases.
This nonsense dissection of language has nothing to do with discourse or exchange of ideas, and everything to do with finding strategic advantage.
What you say is not relevant. How what you say can be reframed for advantage is.
Communication is reduced to propaganda. It ceases to be communication with any value.
.
The sheer extent of this information abuse is, quite frankly, frightening and only gets worse the more you look at it. Proceed at own risk.
What I think is a new addition to the Baboon Empire (and my stomach is not up to viewing it regularly) is Jason Thibeault, who offers us this piece –
The Problem with Privilege (or: Evidential Skepticism)
In a herculean effort of doublethink he attempts to build the case that there is a misogynist conspiracy to assassinate Becky Watson’s character whilst simultaneously expressing his love of Ophelia Benson, who’s balanced and intellectual critiques of Abbie Smith and ERV are nothing of the sort.
He then completes his biathlon by proving that those that express doubt at Becky’s elevator hysterics are no different to Obama birthers or 9/11 conspiracists –
There’s a subset of skeptics that are skeptical well past reasonable levels. There are people who will pore over every detail of a paper or news article hoping to find (or spin) some part of it into something supporting their overarching worldview that the paper doesn’t actually do by itself — think global warming denialists […]
These people are unhinged lunatics, for the most part. And the manner in which they are unhinged is that skepticism normally works by keeping us from believing every little thing that’s suggested to us uncritically. I posit that the abovementioned groups are victims of a runaway skepticism of the sort that produces AGW denialists, Birthers, the Tea Party, 9/11 Truthers, New World Order conspiracy nutjobs, and just about anyone else who says something about “the establishment keeping the truth suppressed”.
Entirely rational assessment. Apples are oranges. It’s been proven. Jews drink baby blood. Niggers want to rape your wife. Etc. Reality is Play-Doh to be molded at will. These are the intellectual standards of Baboon Land and its Overlord.
What can you do in the face of this mindlessness? While the truth of Becky’s story is indeed an important point, it is only a minor one in the face of the much larger issue – which is the wholesale undermining and corruption of the entire secular movement. And what dingbat misses entirely is that it is not doubt of Becky’s babbling that is the issue, it is the complete absence of doubt from the Believers. This New Skepticism that has taken root has only one test for assessing any kind of claim –
Does it confirm our biases?
If the answer is yes, then it is true and the discussion is over.
And if that’s not enough, Stephanie Zvan, mother of the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-parody Dear Dick letter, gives us a missive that is the latest installment of her series on correct and incorrect language use –
“Elevatorgate” Challenge #2
As an aside, let me note for the record that in the three months since I wrote that letter, not one person has asked me what it meant. Luckily, I don’t have to wait for permission to speak on the topic. And the answer is quite simple.
In case you were unaware, “Dick” is the British diminutive form of “Richard.” In the U.S., it might also be “Rich” or “Rick,” but in the UK, we’re down to basically “Dick” for common choices. So that was what I used.
Yet another sophist, self-justifying quagmire that says nothing and tries to imply everything by waffling. Toxic nonsense from a dumb, numb cunt so terrified of language that she feels the need to give the world a lecture on the Queen’s English after being wracked by guilt for daring to say “dick”…
Just another supporting effort in the crusade to convince us that words themselves are evil, and in themselves are sufficient evidence to prove the criminality of anyone you have taken a dislike to. Writing the legal texts for the Kangaroo court system.
If the aim of the exercise from the Watsonistas has been to completely destroy language, discourse and the very act of freely communicating itself, then by any measure, it is a resounding success. The examples above are the rule, not the exception, of the kind of derangement that is churning out around the clock from the Crisis Factory. The process never varies. When it’s not fabricating nonsense from scratch, it is custom deforming something that already is. When a new communication is received, the first response is not “what is that person saying?”, it’s “how can I warp this to my advantage?” Jason Thibeault is a prime example, and one that sinks to new lows, by conflating criticism of Watson with conspiracy theory and extreme right politics.
The first response of those that have never been exposed to Baboon Land is “wtf?”, followed by “these people are insane…” and a look of askance to you in the hope you will say “relax, it’s satire…”
It’s not. It’s real. It is cultivated and deliberate incoherence. It is the public face of secularism. No wonder the christian conservative bloggers are wetting themselves laughing. They are fully entitled to, and in comparison, they are pillars of reason.
There is no real way to combat this insanity either. Even if the Baboon Palace new Soviet did not have a censorship Iron Curtain in place2; even if the derangement made some kind of effort at fallacy control and logic; even if the baboons did start playing the ball and not the man and suspended their vile habits of slander and insult as a first resort – it would still be impossible to argue anything when what you say and what they hear are always guaranteed to have no relation to each other. They have contrived a genuine impenetrability to any reason outside of approved dogma. They *are* creationists. There is nothing left, apart from the cause and the god, to be able to tell them apart.
1 – As Robert Anton Wilson put it in _Prometheus Rising_:
Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.
The Watsonistas live and breathe all of these communication blockages.
2 – A censorship so enthusiastic that you don’t even have to participate in the dung flinging, ahem, “discussion” there to earn a permanent ban, as I discovered myself.
Free bonus token cartoon –
Made an honest attempt to find and link the source. No joy.
grey lining 
October 9, 2011 at 7:26 am
Well crud, I gave you 5 stars for this one before you edited the cartoon in, now I feel dishonest, ’cause I’d have given you quite a few more stars, it’s such a great cartoon.
It’s completely routine by now, you see it in the papers every couple of weeks or so, some poor schmoe has to drop out of his political career, his backers abandon him almost instantly, because someone accuses him of some level or other of sexual misconduct. No proof required, sometimes not even much discussion. No illegality required, not even any unconsensuality necessary in the incident, all that’s necessary is the accusation. Sometimes the accusers say that all they want is an apology or an admission. Sometimes they even get that, but it does no good, the guy is toast from the very beginning. Unless he’s gay. Gay leaders are a little bit more popular these days with the majority of the public opinion, well in my opinion anyway.
But just on a personal slant, for a long time now, I’ve already had to avoid telling my women friends some of my husband’s best jokes to me, because I just don’t appreciate the way they look at each other, the wheels turning in their minds–they are like kids sometimes, their thoughts are patent when they hear some stuff–and you can tell they’re biting their tongues to keep from telling me (bursting my bubble) they think my husband is emotionally and verbally abusing me, just because the thing I tell them that he said is not a sentiment of outright veneration of me. Like once when I had said something dumb, and he knuckleheaded me right on my forehead and said, “McFly!”. Well, that’s just an example, but he has said many things over the years to me (and I don’t particularly want to get into them here, so I hope no morons will come along demanding “Citation Needed!” of me for this post) that are that honest and fairminded of him, but I can tell people would begrudge him of the comments on my behalf, even when I don’t myself at all. Sometimes the people even check my face for bruises I am pretty sure. And well, it’s just annoying for me, but there must be a lot of other people that this kind of sexism made manifest just actually tears whole families and friends’ circles apart in.
October 9, 2011 at 11:07 am
It’s modern day shunning – in “liberal” lipstick. And they still deny their Puritan roots.
October 9, 2011 at 11:45 am
It’s completely routine by now, you see it in the papers every couple of weeks or so, some poor schmoe has to drop out of his political career, his backers abandon him almost instantly, because someone accuses him of some level or other of sexual misconduct. No proof required, sometimes not even much discussion.
Dominic Strauss-Kahn. Now I don’t for a second think DSK is entirely innocent of being middle-aged sleaze-bag very much accustomed to his position of relative power and using it to get whatever he pleases. I am even prepared to think that the maid at the centre of it all may have had a genuine grievance, and never intended the situation to insanely spiral out of control the way it did.
We will never know the answers. Why? Because the fem-bots intervened to catastrophise the situation to the maximum extent possible to selfishly propagandise their fascist ideology and shriek the victim’s song. In the process, they did succeed in effectively ruining DSK, but they also destroyed the maid’s case by pressing the panic button too hard and too often.
DSK’s career is now effectively over, not that he’s in danger of starving or anything. Fuck, I’d walk in your shoes pal – it must be nice to not have to worry about your rent or your booze cabinet ever getting empty. But he has no recourse to undo the damage. He was tried extrajudicially and declared guilty and there is no appeal.
And the forgotten one, after the dust has settled, is the maid. Now that she is of no further use, the fem-bots have forgotten about her. Where is she? Does she have a livelihood? What happened to her? The fem-bots don’t care. This is the expediency game in action. They don’t give a fuck about her – she was just a gender political tool, and now has ceased to have any value, so is discarded. Lovely.
October 9, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Hahah.. I give my wife the “stupid look” when she does something silly, and we have a laugh about it. She just comes out and says it when I do or say something dumb as hell. I give the death stare, but can’t help but grin about it moments later.
What a miserable existence it must be if you’re not allowed to be real with the person you marry.
October 9, 2011 at 7:40 am
“I can tell people would begrudge him of the comments on my behalf, even when I don’t myself at all.”
Clearly, yet another gender traitor in our midst! Begone foul self-determinor; evil critical thinker. Gads. What’s the world coming to?
______________________
Doctor:
What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.
Gentlewoman:
It is an accustom’d action with her, to seem thus
washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of
an hour.
Lady Macbeth:
Yet here’s a spot.
Doctor:
Hark, she speaks. I will set down what comes from her, to
satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
Lady Macbeth:
Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then
’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and
afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow’r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?
October 9, 2011 at 7:43 am
Lovely comic Franc. Quite appropos.
October 10, 2011 at 4:01 am
“it would still be impossible to argue anything when what you say and what they hear are always guaranteed to have no relation to each other.”
Yes, when PeelZebub came out with his etiquette guide and I retrieved my jaw from the floor, my hope was that it could be explained to the deluded old codger that he was seeing attitudes and motivations that just weren’t there in the critics. Instead he just doubled down on the deafness and cherry picked some bitchy comments. I don’t think he’s deliberately cynical, just sincerely delusional. Now I could be off base here, but I think the problem here is that his approach to discourse is self-serving and consequently assumes the same of everyone. He and his mates seem genuinely unable to understand the concept of arguing a position on EG contrary to their’s without being motivated by the desire and intention to get one’s end away at any and all opportunities at the next TAM. I really don’t think that there’s anything Machiavellian there, unlike sweet little Becks.
October 10, 2011 at 4:29 am
Awww, man! You one-upped my PeeZus! Kudos…
October 10, 2011 at 12:18 pm
They are like Creationists – they believe.
October 17, 2011 at 6:02 am
Here is a question. What do you think of the way they seem to have scrubbed Dawkins out of the award ceremony with Hitchens? Everywhere else posted Dawkins’ Intro, followed by Hitch’s acceptance, followed by a clip of a question.answer by Hitch. Skepchick only posted the Hitch view. I asked the fearless leader on Twitter, she told me to ask the author, which I did. Still no answer. However it does seem like a petty move keeping in line with Watsons’ I will not watch him, or attend his lectures nonsense.
October 17, 2011 at 6:45 am
Chief Agency for Protection of Feminist Sensibilities at work.