A Controversial Post

Now, I know that many of you are going to get angry with me and say that I’m a liar or betraying my ideals, but hear me out.  I know this is not what most people want to hear, but I feel that I should be honest.  I am taking a contrarian position, but doing so in a sensible tone that appears to run a middle ground between two extremes, which I will portray as angry, unthinking emotion-based rants, whereas my rants are rational, calculated, and deliberative.  I am rational.  I think through my arguments, even if I don’t actually test their implications.  They may not have any relation to the outside world, but in and of themselves, they are thoroughly coherent.  I speak a very rational language, the language of,”This is why everyone else is hysterical, and why I’m reasoned and methodical.”  You may not believe me at first, but that is because you’re committed to a delusional, utopian worldview, and you are not grounded in the real world like I am.

Now that I’ve made my controversial statement, I am going to back it up with broad generalizations and veiled attacks on the character of the emotion-based, hysterical people, that is, everybody who is not like me.  I am going to take anecdotes and read them as indicative of a whole swath of ideas and opinions.  I am going to take quotes out of context and cite them as proof that everyone of a certain persuasion feels that way.  I am going to pretend that everyone of sense agrees with the claims that I put forth as self-evident.  All in order to convince you that my controversial idea – which started, I now must admit to you, as a bon mot and then got out of hand, as I tried to prove it – is right, indeed, should not be as controversial as it is.

Is my idea controversial?  Probably not.  In fact, I know it’s not controversial, because it’s the very same idea that has been recycled through the press repeatedly for several months, but I came up with a new metaphor, and so I will parade it as my new and controversial idea.  Is my idea intelligent?  Does it bear any relation to the situation that I am trying to discuss?  Does it matter?

Do I know anything about the subject on which I’m commenting?  Not really.  But I have read a handful of articles on it, and I think that my position offers a way of thinking about it that no one has offered before.  Why do I think this?  Because, in reading a handful of articles on the subject, it is clear to me that I’m the only person who has stated this idea explicitly.  I will give you facts and figures, because I took a statistics class in high school and know how pie charts and tables work.  Are these facts and figures correct?  Who cares, because somebody took the time to collect them and publish them, and I disclaim all responsibility at this point.  Scientists say it is true, and therefore I can claim an authority greater than myself.  Never mind that claims about population or lifespan from two thousand years ago are incredibly difficult to verify, I will treat them as though they are absolutes.  Never mind that two surveys arrive at opposite conclusions, I will take the one that strikes me as most practical.

Now, you may be mad at me at this point, but clearly this is the fault of your ideology.  If only you were objective like myself, you could free yourself of these silly superstitions.  I will now proceed to give broad policy recommendations to activists, because they clearly don’t understand how politics works, unlike myself.  Am I a politician?  No.  Have I worked in politics?  No, although I did do phone banking for a prominent politician in the last elections.  And I have talked to politicians, and they have made broad generalizations that I will here repeat out of context.  This is why you should listen to me; I don’t know what kinds of conversations have gone on in private among your groups, and I don’t care.  I don’t even care if you have already thought through and dismissed the very conclusion that I am offering.  I’m smug and self-righteous, and I don’t need to care.  That’s why you should listen to me.