Tag Archives: gullible

The Half-Truth About People

Stanko & Tibor: Bin Laden Diaries 4

 


Half-Truths, People and Insane Ramblings

Carl Jung, the noted psychotherapists (or was it psychiatrist?or psychoanalyst? I can never remember, but I just know one of them can get me mood-altering substances in bulk if I just use that tried-and-true line “What, you don’t hear the squirrels telling you to burn down the forest and rid ourselves of the gopher menace?” Come to think, that squirrel did make a lot of sense, and he was right about the housing market crash… but I digress) once said these famous words:

“Why are there never any crackers or Saltines on the table when I order the damn tomato bisque, seeing as I come to this diner at least 3 times a week since my wife Emilie can’t make a bisque worth crap??!!”

After much forethought, some back thought and a lot of sideways thinking, I understand what Jung was trying to tell us in that cryptic message. I have come to the conclusion that you can categorize the world into groups.

Smart people who are nice

This category is indeed a rare breed, but I have plenty of family members, friends and even some colleagues who fit into that category. What qualifies them as smart? Mostly they can figure out the tip on a restaurant bill in a split second, even when the bill is split between like 6 people. Furthermore, it isn’t only education that makes them smart, because I know many people who were or are filled with life smarts and were too damn smart for a school system that couldn’t teach them anything, so off they went on their own to be happy and wildly successful. How do I know they are nice? Apart from petting me on the forehead in a benevolent, pet-like way, they aren’t hesitant to take me out to lunch or order Chinese food and pick up the tab despite my boorish behavior, poor table manners and irregular shaving habits. And they I begrudge the most since I wish they would include me in their wills, but they won’t because they are smart. Bunch of jerks.

Smart people who are mean

I was going to start with Hitler or the Quebec tax collectors being good examples, but that would be too obvious. Politicians sometimes fall into this category, but they also fall into the Dumb people who are mean group more often than not. I also thought of a few evil professors I had who thoroughly enjoyed belittling their students largely because they were unable to get an erection (or orgasm) as the younger students at the college wouldn’t pay them the time of day. Or they had a spouse that no longer loved them and had begun sleeping with the international student staying at their house for a semester and let everyone and his brother know about it. We also see examples of smart and mean people in business, the clergy, spiteful postal workers whose livelihood will soon be taken from them and crafty yet nasty grannies at Wal-Mart or other shopping institutions who have somehow outfoxed you at the checkout line, cut in front of you and managed to crush one of your toes doing it. May they rot in hell.

Smart people who are opportunistic

This group can run the gamut between nice and mean, it all depends on how they were raised and usually how hungry they are for food or sex. You see, smart people know when to capitalize on an opportunity, like snagging a free meal at a wedding they weren’t invited to, or someone who isn’t watching their case of beer at frat party. Or they know how to have drunken sex with someone at that frat party not really caring what the long-term outcome is especially if she’s in a different faculty and has herself issues with controlling her alcohol consumption at these events, which really covers up a home life where the parents were lushes themselves.

But it isn’t always about food or sex. It’s sometimes about seeing a good deal and seizing the opportunity, like when you’re shopping for that electronic gift that your spouse wishes you wouldn’t buy, but it’s on sale and your impulse control is weak at best, not unlike that of a heroin addict. Or perhaps saving someone from being run over by a car because you know that person you save will be grateful and give back to society having been given a second chance at life. Unless that person was a serial killer, so then you indirectly led to the deaths of others thinking you’d be smart and save a life. Dummy.

Smart people who are nice but dumb

So, how can you have a category that’s an oxymoron? Well, I think the very definition of ‘oxymoron‘ (adjectival compound noun, singular, consisting of the abbreviated word for oxygen (‘oxy‘), an omnipresent gas across the globe, and morons, an omnipresent amorphous blob of idiots scattered across the globe in great numbers) shows quite clearly how you can have people who are smart in one discipline, like biology, computer engineering or gambling, and are also sometime nice, but you know they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Like that brilliant colleague you know who can’t figure out which side of the escalator to stand on (the right, dummy) when others are trying to rush up the escalator instead of taking the stairs so they can get to their places of work or the proctologist appointment post-haste (also morons). There are a good deal of these smart, nice but dumb people in modern society. Sometimes they are made managers by other smart/dumb people thinking that gleaming success in one category, say rebuilding an engine block or calculating the trajectory of missile, must apply to others areas. Idiots. Nice idiots, well-intentioned, but smart idiots. They should be sent to a re-education camp or remedial school with whips. Just because.

Dumb people who are nice

You know you’ve met people in this category everywhere you have traveled across this earth, save maybe France (that’s the next category). We have encountered them in all walks of life, be it any societal sphere, any country, any age. Sure, sometimes it’s hard to suffer fools, but nice fools, well, they aren’t actively making the world a worse place for kicks. In some cases, they are making it a better one by not getting into fights at supermarkets, or giving freely of their tax money by playing state-sponsored lotteries so my school system and health care system have some extra funding while the rest of the world goes to rot. Now, I know many of you readers think “Hey, the dumb-but-nice category watch too much reality TV, which is in and of itself a crime.” Reality TV is a crime, but watching isn’t; it merely should be used as a marker of sorts when the aliens land and separate out the useful people from the soon to become alien dog food. Dumb but kind. These are people who everyone should be nice to largely because you don’t want them to become the next category as there are WAY too many of those on this earth.

Dumb people who are mean

Wow, where do I start? With the bureaucrats in my city who deserve life in the electric chair? Or the taxi driver whose manliness comes into question when others pass him and then likes to believe I cut him off in some alternate universe where taxi drivers are even-tempered, kind and respected, and then proceeds to scream at me through his driver’s window in a language that has yet to be deciphered and decrypted by modern linguists and computers? Or is it the policeman who arrested a citizen who pointed out to said cop that he shot through a red light in a school zone without his siren blaring and lights flashing just because he felt like it? Or the woman the policeman pepper-sprayed because said low-IQ and anger-filled, petty constable was upset had his idiocy brought to light and proceeded to violently twist the arm of the poor shuck who pointed out the fuzz’s flagrant disregard for motoring laws? (Actually, you NEVER point out anything to a cop in this city because they will arrest you, thus making you a member of the dumb by nice category. Idiots.)

There are countless, millions of examples of dumb and mean. Religious zealots of all stripes who kill for a cause. Why think critically when you can kill others for glory? Much simpler. Why think critically? Let’s not forget politicians who are caught with their pants down, both literally and figuratively, and then blame the press and subsequently find religion. Or BNP for getting caught and then not being too contrite and paying a $9 billion fine. Or that ass counsellor at summer camp who was just overjoyed at being a petty dictator so he could ruin the self-confidence of 8-year-old boys. I won’t got into snooty restaurants who apparently don’t want my money just because I made a rude gesture toward the waiter that resembled kneading dough with two fingers, while I waited impatiently for a table. (I have low blood sugar issues, what do you want from me?)

Dumb people who are opportunistic but don’t know what the word ‘opportunistic’ means and get taken advantage of by smart mean people

This is small category, but it usually involves people who don’t dress well, but think they do so they buy that horizontally striped shirt with orange accents when they really shouldn’t have. Often, they walk down a corridor where lots of other people are, and their gait is wide, their arms flail, they check their phone for email thus slowing everyone else up, and if they are carrying a backpack or purse, they have it hanging just so thus forcing you to deke and slide past them in such a way that causes you to twist a muscle in your back or arthritic hip. Their other flailing arm I just mentioned? It’s already clocked someone else in the head because dumb-dumb has no concept of personal space but just bought a smart phone sold to them by some evil smart person. This section also covers the ones who rush into a super store to get a deal on those crazy shopping days where it’s supposedly 90% off list price, and thereby causing injuries to others and themselves to glorify the gods of Mammon and greed, yet they desperately NEED a 400-inch TV set that is somewhere on Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs next to sex and shelter and bacon. At least, that is what the smart but mean marketers with a big bonus target told them. (It’s called the Internet people. Just order, click and ship.)

So there you have it, the world sorted it out for you. Now go take this jewel of information and do with it as you will. Just make you sure when you get arrested that you forget conveniently that I was the one who told you THE TRUTH.

Lovingly pudgy, haltingly hairy, and addicted to sugar,

Pope Gregarious the XXIII