Wednesday, November 07, 2012

How Do You Fight Such Ignorance?

First, to quote Spike Spiegel, "What happens, happens."

Good luck trying to fight against it. You must realize what little power over your world and environment you have.  And once you realize you don't control your environment, you realize that all you can do is control you.  So you must adapt to your environment, no matter how unfair, harsh or psychotic it gets.

Second, you can't fight ignorance.  Stupid, you can remedy.  But you can't fight ignorance, let alone religious zealotry.  Even if those are people and you are right, you will drive yourself insane trying to rationalize or reason with them.

You do, however, have several options that can hedge against the stupidity of people.

Capital and intellectual flight.

Preparation/insurance

And what did the ole Captain say on Nov 5th?

There will be more, but your Captain is going to enjoy the decline today!

I suggest you do the same.

19 comments:

J.P. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

You can overcome ignorance by educating the ignorant. Stupid, on the other hand ... well, "You can't fix stupid" and "Stupid is as stupid does."

Anonymous said...

Not sure if it is ignorance so much as acting in rational self-interest. The Zimbabwe/Venezuela method of politics works. Demographics have finally changed to an extent that all the dems need to do is nominate a non-white and promise handouts for the barbarian hordes.

V10 said...

Romney was no great savior, and wouldn't have changed anything significant, but Obama didn't deserve to have his first term rewarded and validated.

I was half in the Obama camp, for the sole reason of speeding up the decline. It's going to happen regardless, and the sooner we get through it, the sooner we can maybe rebuild something from the ashes while we're still young enough.

On the plus side, the left is going to have to wear the continued decline and the coming fiscal cliff. They'll rationalize that it's capitalism's fault anyway, and insist that the solution is to double down on the socialism, same as they have for decades around the world. But it'll ring that much more hollow to centrists.

PS: Think you may have it backwards. Ignorance comes from a lack of facts and is recoverable. Stupid persists in the face of facts. Just nitpicking.

Unknown said...

The main reason Romney lost was because he came across as a really unlikable, "greedy" establishment type businessman and "evil" capitalist, even though he shared a lot in common with Obama on so many issues. A lot of people thought he was going to be another George Bush, which was also where a lot of the uncertainty came from. He was basically a Rockefeller Republican and a Democrat lite who wasn't aggressive enough in trying to argue his case from the time he was nominated for as the GOP candidate, even though Herman Cain and Ron Paul would have made for far better choices since the latter had been really gaining momentum and popularity. He also didn't make too any appearances on conservative talk radio to try to appeal to his base or try to make himself relevant and hip to the younger voters who were flocking to Obama and his Jay Z concert.

In a few years, I don't even believe the Republican Party will exist if they stay the course having these extremely delusional religious nuts like Todd Akin, who I'm glad to report lost the election for the senate seat to Claire McCaskill. The Tea Party and Libertarian Party will either destroy them or be absorbed into the GOP and there will be a party realignment somehow and change of positions. People take their abortion and contraceptive rights very seriously and admitting that you're against that only costs you votes in the end, along with being overly too religious with your Mormon faith. I wish there was a completely secular or atheist president someday for this reason. Be glad they still control the House of Represenatives, even though I doubt that will make any real difference in the end.

This Forbes article explains flawed Romney's economic plan was and how that might have turned off voters. I also suspect that 47% comment alienated potential voters into voting for Obama.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2012/11/06/romneys-economic-advisers-cost-him-the-election-and-its-time-to-etch-a-sketch-erase-them/

Anonymous said...

You don't. You join it to get it over with.

Rumbear said...

I concur with Mr. Anony Mous. Problem is, if they don't come to class they tend to excel at stupid. A vicious circle it is.

I also prefer RCBS over Lee in the engagement of lead and brass.

Tim said...

A quote from Spike is always good.

Anonymous said...

I want "Enjoy the Decline" t-shirts

Herr Wilson said...

I just printed out the forms to withdraw my meager pension before the SHTF... I will purchase silver or gold with it. I also choose one of these careers which are well paying and in demand across the globe:

http://apocalypsecometh.com/a-career-for-a-young-man/

http://apocalypsecometh.com/more-careers-for-the-young-man/

In short, I will bet against America.

CBMTTek said...

@Anon 6:04:
You cannot educate those that refuse to be educated. That is the ignornance the Cap't is talking about.

CBMTTek said...

Cappy:

Right now, not exactly enjoying the decline here. Bit bummed. Never figured the US population would be quite stupid enough to re-elect someone that is such a dismal failure. Everything, and I mean everything the left hated about Bush, Obama personifies, and they re-elected him.

I think the correct approach for the GOP in the House is to totally support the President. He wants to raise taxes on the "rich", I say do it. Wants to raise corporate taxes, support it. Full support. More food stamps, disability, and free college education, HELL YES! Help the President send the economy overseas. And, when unemployment hits 25-40% and food is five times what is is today, and gas is $20 a gallon, they Republicans can say, with a clear conscience, we worked with the President and helped him transform America.

Oh well. Will get over it in a day or so. Then will start to enjoy the decline again.

Anonymous said...

Being the opportunist that I am, I started last night at a Romney party. When it was obvious how things were going, I moved to an Obama party. Met a sweet young thing flush with her first voting experience - took her home to add to her evenings of firsts...

I may think she's an idiot for voting for this buffoon, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to take advantage of everything she has to offer, since she voted for handouts. I figure I'll enjoy what she's giving away. :)

Gotta love life...

Anonymous said...

Being the opportunist that I am, I started out the night at a Romney party. When it was obvious how things were going, I moved over to an Obama party. Met a sweet young thing, flush with her first voting experience. Took her home to give her some more firsts to enjoy...

While I may think she's an idiot for voting for this buffoon, that won't keep me from making use of her. Just like I will make use of other useful idiots.

Anonymous said...

You got stupid and ignorance confused. Ignorance is way more solvable.

V10 said...

@Roberto: "In a few years, I don't even believe the Republican Party will exist..."

Every few elections, when a party has grown so out of touch with moderate centrist majority, they should be sent to wander in the wilderness, to rebuild themselves.

IMO, the fiscal conservatives need to either split from the social conservatives, or firmly muzzle the stupidest of them. The Conservative Party under Prime Minister Harper in Canada is a good example. Harper leans so-con, but he's pragmatist enough to stifle party members that try to open up cans of worms, like abortion.

Anonymous said...

Why fight against ignorant women? Convert them to Islam. Then convert yourself.

We need much more of the anti-feminist outlook of Islam.

I wonder how many men will convert?

Thomas Smith said...

Well I would like to add "Beans and Rice" to the list of commodities to buy in disaster scenarios. I'll bet you'll trade all your silver, or a couple of bullets at least, for a pound of rice here in a bit.

heresolong said...

Roberto,

Contraceptive rights? The only actual debate on contraception was whether the government could force me to pay for yours. There was no debate on contraceptive rights at all other than that pasted by the left onto Romney.

Too Mormon? The only reason we knew he was a Mormon was because the left kept telling us. Name one policy that he would have implemented based on his religious faith.

Greedy? He saved dozens, if not hundreds, of companies from extinction, creating arguably millions of jobs. The only reason he came across as greedy was because the left portrayed him that way and he was unable to get a coherent defense out to the people without it being filtered out by the media.

47%? He pissed them off? The only reason he pissed off any of them was because the left and the media put their spin on his totally accurate statement, which was that 47% of the people had a vested interest in big government and that it would be more difficult to convince them to vote against their self interest.

One more example was the Detroit automaker bailout. Romney laid out a convincing case as to why the automakers should have gone through the bankruptcy process. The headline ended up being "Romney says Let Detroit go bankrupt". How do you fight that?

I could go on, but what's the point. My fear is that until everything conservatives do isn't filtered through a hostile media, we will never win anything of significance and any policies enacted will be big government, statist programs. Any progress we make will be by fighting a rearguard action against these programs to slow their advance. We will never reverse them.

I don't think Romney is the problem here. He should have, and could have, made a better case for freedom and limited government but even when he and Ryan did, you didn't hear about it unless you were there in the room or happen to listen to Beck or Limbaugh. I don't read the newspapers, but my guess is that the average person still thinks that Obama did a great job on Benghazi and there just wasn't anything that could have been done. The average person thinks that the economy is just about to turn around. Nothing Romney said was going to get out to those average people, just the negative spin on stuff he either didn't say or was twisted to make him look bad.

And maybe, given the % of people who are in favor of a socialist/Marxist utopia, plus the % who are so uneducated as to think we are headed in the right direction, plus the % who never did actually hear the real message, it really made no difference what Romney said or who he was.