(Mediumish Legnth Essay) Holy shit! This alien just ripped it's way out of my stomach....

[originalpckelly]

It crawled out of me, and started singing, "Hello my baby, hello my darlin', hello my ragtime gal..."

Then pink elephants came flying out of my ass along with a few pigs and monkeys! Then these little green men from Mars came by and tried to hunt the elephants for their pink ivory, and in the process hit me with their laser gun zaps!

If someone said that to you, and they were wearing a nice tin foil hat to keep the aliens from changing their thoughts, you would write them off and perhaps anything they said after that point.

If they then said 2+2 = 4, would it be wrong?

On the other hand, if an elected official said all that bullshit, even after a life of good service and logical statements, would you believe them any more?

I'd hope not.

The problem with our society, I would suggest to you, is that we link the credibility of statements with the credibility of a given person.

If Walter Cronkite had started about that bullshit stuff one day, I'd hope you wouldn't have believed him. "This is Walter Cronkite, at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, an alien ripped its way out of my chest and started singing Hello My Baby. It was a disturbing experience, but unfortunately my luck worsened when pink elephants, pigs, and monkeys started flying out of my ass. Then some little green men from Mars landed their spaceship, got out, and began hunting the pink elephants for their pink ivory. I was injured in the exchange. (He holds up his hand to reveal its "injured" state, but it is not injured.) You may notice that I'm wearing the latest in thought protection caps, it is to keep the aliens from changing my thoughts. I'm Walter Cronkite, and that's the way it is."

I am not old enough to remember Walter Cronkite as a news anchor, but even to this day, when he says something, it sounds like it's true. However, if he said something like that, I think most of us would slowly back away from poor Mr. Cronkite.

If the extremes suggest the non-existence of a link between one's credibility as a person, and the credibility of one's various statements, what does that mean for the things which are incredibly muddled, like war?

Over the years, I've slowly come to think that war is just about as absurd.

"Hi, I don't even know your name, but I'm going to send you off to die in a war." Think about it. The President of the United States cannot possibly remember the names of all the people in the Armed Forces, yet he is charged with making decisions that will cause some of them to die. If someone doesn't even know your name, how can they ever possibly make life and death decisions for you?

Why do we listen to these people who run this country? They don't know who the fuck we are, you or I. Even if they know you, they cannot possibly know all 300 million Americans well enough to make life altering decisions for us.

When a President of any party says something, I suggest people believe him because he was elected.

Elections mean at least one of these things:
1. They are really good at lying.
2. A large group of people in our country are total morons, and they fell for bullshit.
3. They really aren't full of crap.

While you might be able to figure out if an elected official is full of crap, you cannot at the present time know their intentions without lots of doubt. Even if you hooked them all up to polygraphs, the accuracy of those tests is disputed.

There is such a naive assumption on the part of so many in politics that politicians are just angels in waiting. I cannot fucking understand the ignorance. How many lying scumbags need to be elected, revealed to be scumbags, and driven from office before we get it already?

When will we realize the inherent flaw in delegating such important decisions to the few, the stuck up, the full of crap?

I don't know about you, but I will no longer fall for the bullshit. I will no longer believe someone who doesn't even know my name is capable of making decisions better than I can. We can all fuck it up, including the people making decisions for us. I don't view that as an imperative to hand over my life to someone else, after all, if we don't know what's right for ourselves, how will someone who doesn't even know our names know us any better in any other way?

It's a bunch of bullshit. This system is like an ignorance nuke detonating. I have seen the mushroom cloud of ignorance rising over the horizon. It is dressed as Thomas Jefferson and likes to teabag members of Congress:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA

This man is making a plea based upon the credibility of Thomas Jefferson, and not by improperly quoting him, this guy is fucking dressed as Thomas Jefferson. That's fucked up.

Then you have this ass:


I know why he's smiling, the aliens from Mars just set their anal probes to vibrate! (Either that or he's teabagging a member of congress out of view...)

Anyone else see the scary shit happening here? You know, times of economic instability causing political instability. I think I've seen this movie before. It's why I'm talking about credibility, or the lack thereof.

These people are clearly full of crap, they know it, and they are using elements of American history to cloak/legitimize their fucked intentions. We cannot know whether someone means well or ill, but the safest assumption is ill, at least when someone is asking for power. It's like a court room. The prosecutor/state is asking for the power to lock someone up in a jail. We presume innocence on the part of the defendant, because the person asking for power like that is very dangerous, not just to a limited number of people, but to everyone.

In life, I suggest, the burden of proof should be on the people who ask for power, that there should be no naive assumptions of credibility, of their statements or their intentions or their person. We should judge people on the merits of their statements and make them prove they mean well.

If someone does mean well, they should have no problem with this process.

I have no credibility, no one on a web forum has inherent credibility. You and I should be presumed to be full of crap, then work our way up from there. Each claim we make should be taken independently of another. Simply because I say 2+2 = 4, it doesn't mean I should be trusted when I say the aliens just jumped out of my stomach. You shouldn't assume that I mean well either, when I say something like that. I may be pulling your leg (or perhaps it's the alien? :P) I may be looking for fame/fortune by selling my story to a tabloid.

Don't fall for bullshit. You already think you can't, but just thinking that makes you vulnerable. You don't honestly think someone who's a victim of a scam artist thinks they're being scammed, now do you?

I know nothing, nothing whatsoever. I'm so stupid everyone has to prove to me what they're talking about, and I'm so dumb that I need to have these fact things, which I can verify with more than a few third parties. Maybe we should all be the right kind of stupid. ;-)

Real ignorance is presuming to know something with incomplete evidence. I do not know shit until I have evidence, and even then the evidence may be lacking/incomplete. I suggest that knowing doubt is a powerful thing.

Do you doubt me? Do you punk? :P It's OK, after all, this is just a web forum, and I have no real credibility. You must evaluate what I said, the only credibility here comes from the statements we make. Nothing more, nothing less. And one statement is detached from another, well kind of. :P