Now I've started posting my inane musings on a more regular basis,
I've noticed that so far it's been predominantly the sort of
LiveJournal-type rubbish that very few people are likely to want to
read. I mean there's nothing against LiveJournallers... errrrr, well
OK. There's a lot to be said against most LiveJournallers, though
there's a certain value to pouring out your emo-type soul-searching
for your own personal benefit and maybe for the support and
understanding of your like close personal friends, but seriously. The
general public doesn't care. And yet here I am doing the same thing,
when really the only things I've ever written that anybody ever cared
about were more about the world at large than about the dysfunctional
bullshit trapped between my ears. So if I'm to continue writing, I
promise that it will not all be about my own ridiculously boring life.
I'll only inflict that upon people who aren't in a situation to avoid
it (hi ash!)

 So anyway, I read the other day that something like 11% of people
believe that Obama isn't really a US citizen and isn't eligible to be
president, with an additional 12% being "not sure"... and in general
this sort of things has ceased to surprise me. I mean, I'm a
mathematician, I understand the concept and dreadful reality of the
bell curve. Americans believe stupid shit, and in many cases this sort
of thing is probably for the best, like psycho-sociologically
speaking. If you really sit down and analyze the chances that you'll
do anything but do the same repetitive job 5 days a week until you get
cancer and die, you'll probably end up depressed; but people still
like to think that they can be different and that they can do some
deep meaningful work that will echo through the generations and make
the world a better place. I mean hell, even I think that sometimes.
There are lies we have to tell ourselves to get through the day. And
really, if you think about it, sometimes you have to start out telling
yourself the lie in order to make it true. Unless you're born a
cock-eyed optimist, you have to first convince yourself that you can
do more than what 99% of people accomplish, before you can actually
accomplish it. Which on the level of self-delusion is fine and sort of
useful.

 But then you get these people who believe things like "there is a vast
nation-wide conspiracy to cover up the fact that the President of the
US is secretly a Kenyan citizen" or some other such bullshit, which is
not only totally ridiculous on its face, but also frequently debunked
by high-powered reality-based truthfulness. And on top of all that, it
doesn't even matter, which is the big thing. Even assuming that people
who believe this sort of inanity will then accept evidence that yeah,
OK, dude was born in Hawaii, then they just move on to some other
conspiracy theory about a non-existing Pakistan travel-ban, or
something about his father's citizenship, or some other such bullshit.
In short, when one lie turns out to be just that, there's another,
contradictory lie that slides right in. "OK, so I was wrong about
that, but here's another thing that actually contradicts the other
thing I said, but since I'm batshit crazy I'm able to believe both of
them at once!"

 In short: cognitive dissonance. Which again, can occasionally be a
useful, sanity-saving type of thing in this our modern world. But when
you're just using it to sling mud at your political opponents, even
when you're (hopefully) smart enough to know it's not true, you're
being an asshole. I mean maybe my saving grace should be that I give
politicians and pundits too much credit: I assume that they are
actually too smart to believe the drivel they're foisting off on the
public, and so then that they're purely evil assholes who will do
anything to get ahead. I suppose if I just stop worrying and learn to
love the idiocracy, I could learn that they're actually idiots, and
they actually do believe in their heart of hearts that Medicare isn't
a government program, or that Obama isn't a citizen or whatever else.
Maybe the way to get rid of all my existential-type angst about the
evil bastards running our government is just to realize that they're
all idiots too.

 And I should sort of interject here that I don't actually fully
believe that one party or the other is necessarily above this sort of
thing, just that there's one particular side that seems to be better
at it, or at least louder, and that that particular side has been in
charge for like, way too long, and now is fighting twice as hard to
come back. And that that particular side has also strongly put itself
into bed with that most evil hotbed of cognitive dissonance, which is
to say religious fundamentalism, and so they just get the most abuse
from me. Which isn't to say that I would at all doubt that there are
democrats or independents or libertarians or greens or whatever that
are spouting off ridiculous lies to try and make political hay. I just
haven't really seen it as much so I don't comment on it.

 What to do? I dunno. I used to sort of believe that maybe if we were
loud enough, and woke people up enough, maybe we as a people would
stop being fooled by these assholes and maybe get some effective
government going on. Maybe I'm just getting older, or maybe the
anarchist in me is getting stronger, or maybe I'm just getting more
cynical (!) but at this point I sort of just tend to let government
cancel itself out. I get a lot of recreational outrage out of it,
sure, but I don't really know that I think anything's going to change
significantly, except those parts of my own personal life that I take
charge of myself. Which isn't to say I'm some kind of right-wing
"government out of my life" sort of asshole, but just that really,
it's better to just live. Which is maybe progress, on a personal
level. I'll keep doing what I can, even if that's just rabble-rousing,
but I'm not going to give myself a heart attack over Bill O'Reilly any
time soon.

 But like seriously... I wish the birthers would just shut the fuck up, you know?