Category Archives: The Sleep of Reason

George Santos: The Fabulist

2024 Trip to South West United States, Death of Truth, reason, The Sleep of Reason, Trump

 

George Santos has become the subject of a tsunami of attention. People really are attracted to bullshitters. There is nothing wrong with that, unless they start to believe the bullshit.

Every one, it seems, wants a piece of George Santos now. Apparently, HBO wants to make an adaption of a new book about Santos perfectly named The Fabulist. In the book the point is made that we get the scammer we deserve. Like cheap politicians selling cheap beer.

According to Naomi Fry “the Trump era has opened the floodgates to politics as an out-and-out scam for those who wish to take advantage. I want to make it clear I do not think all politicians are scammers. That is not the case. I don’t want to be a part in shredding trust in politics. That is one of the things that is wrong with our current society. More and more people are losing that trust and that trust is vital for the survival of democracy.

America has had scammers in its history from day one. That is the point Kurt Anderson made in his book FantasyLand. Political scammers. Religious Scammers. Commercial scammers—you name it, they’re there.

The New Yorker podcast panel discussed a few famous American scammers in literature and real life. One of the panelists mentioned the Simpsons version of The Music Man, called “Marge vs. Zeller” (2020) where a travelling salesman Lyle Lanley and calls it a Shelbyville Idea. One of the townsfolk does not want to hear that. He says we are twice as smart as the people of Shelbyville. “Just tell us your idea and we’ll vote for it.” And what does he sell? He says Springfield needs a monorail. Even though Springfield doesn’t need a monorail. But Lanley seduces everyone. They beg for a monorail. That is what conmen do.

As Fry said, “The idea is that people will buy anything if you sell it to them in an attractive enough way. They want to believe. Whether it’s in religion or whether it’s in politics, or whether it’s in commerce, people just want to believe.”  That is exactly what the conmen do, and none has done it better than Donald Trump. He has sold his lie to millions and millions of people! That is what the 1980s televangelists did. As Fry said, “They said if you want your soul saved just send us money.” The key is usually the hyper desire of the scammed to believe the scam. When that is present anything is possible.

Call Time: As real as Chucky Cheese

2024 Trip to South West United States, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, The Simple Life, The Sleep of Reason

 

It is noteworthy that George Santos with his scummy videos on Cameo is actually doing exactly what Congressmen in the United States do. I have been told that American Congressmen spend half their working time phoning people for money. An aide hands them a quick note about the person they are calling and the politician talks to the person, be it a potential voter or potential donor, and tells them what they want to hear. For a couple of minutes, the politician is real chummy with the listener based on information on the cheat sheet. The listener thinks he has a real friend in Washington. But that friend is as real as Chucky Cheese. That is the deal: listen to the politician for a few minutes and perhaps consider a donation. Then the listener can go to his buddies and brag about how he got a call from the Congressman.

 

Vinson Cunningham, a New Yorker writer and member of the podcast panel  on Critics at Large, said the politicians he worked with referred to this as “Call time.” Politicians did it nearly every day. Cameo is exactly that. As Naomi Fry said about George Santos: “Politics has prepared him perfectly for this.” I would say, life in America or Canada has prepared him pretty good for this too. Living in FantasyLand is the perfect training for Call Time. Begging people you don’t know for money. Sort of like those people who stand on street meridians by traffic lights with their hands out usually with a sign briefly describing their plight.

That is exactly what American Congressmen do every day during Call Time.  It is no more dignified. It is no more real.

Mesmerized by Lies

2024 Trip to South West United States, civilization, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, The Sleep of Reason

 

One of the interesting things that one of the panelists on the Critics at Large podcast mentioned was that we as a people are “mesmerized by the lies”. To some extent “we identify with the scammer!” Part of us wants the scammer to win! Yet, at the same time, another side of us wants fervently to see the scammer wallow in his well-earned punishment.  We also want to point fingers and hiss at the miscreant. It is a bit like Saint Jerome who said that heaven would not be complete unless the saved could see the sinners roasting in hell. Is that what we  want to see?

According to Naomi Fry one of the 3 New Yorker writers on the panel, the latest version of the George Santos story is his entrance into Cameos. She described Cameos as “the platform where so-called celebrities from B-list to Z-list hock their wares.” The customers pay the “celebrity” for personalized videos. Santos is now one of the stars thanks to his fame as a spectacular liar. Just what is needed in FantasyLand. For this audience sensational lies are an attraction!

Some of the customers are rather surprising. There were some young female law students who paid the current rate for a completely phony pep talk from Santos who happily told the young women they were about to become “rock-star lawyers” and how they were going to “slay” the legal world. He was quite willing to do that even though he obviously did not know anything about them. “Queens who were about to conquer the world” he called them. Yet this is what the law students wanted. Why did they8 want to listen to obvious lies from a celebrity?

Santos very smoothly fits into this Fantasy world. In fact, he is really good at it. It cost $500 for a brief talk by Santos that bears absolutely no resemblance to reality whatsoever. For $500 bucks you can hire Santos to praise you, or your no-good son, or daughter. Even though Santos does not know any of you. Why would people pay for that?

As Naomi Fry said, “he is taking the pop culture detritus that surrounds you and is wearing it like so many Mardi-Gras Beads. Santos told the women law students they were approaching “the end at the light of the tunnel.” Santos is definitely smooth. He was born to be a scam artist, though, no doubt his short time in politics greased the path to his current fame and fortune. That is where he practiced his lies before turning professional.

Life in FantasyLand keeps getting stranger. to me it looks more and more like the end of western civilization.

Please-be-True Fantasies

2024 Trip to South West United States, Critical thinking, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, Skeptical Philosophy, The Sleep of Reason

 

Critics at Large, a podcast of the New Yorker discussed the subject of George Santos and his participation in what they called his scams, had a panel of columnists discuss his case. The columnists agreed we are living in the golden age of scam in which Santos is merely the latest iteration. This really is the point. Many people in North America live in a FantasyLand that is filled with astounding lies that are exploding through the ethnosphere. We are in the midst of surging lies and scams. They are ubiquitous.

 

Kurt Anderson in his gem of a book FantasyLand explains why this is so. He traces it back to the delusions of the original European visitors to North America.  This is what he said about early settlers in the United States, but would no doubt say about the same about the early European settlers to Canada. This world of illusions is by no means confined to the United States, but as I have said, that is where this world was profoundly amplified. This is how Anderson described it:

“The first English people in the New World imagined themselves as heroic can-do characters in exciting adventures. They were self-fictionalizing extremists who abandoned everything familiar because of their blazing beliefs, their long-shot hopes and dreams, their please-be-true fantasies.”

We are the ancestors of those fantasists. We are following in their footsteps 5 centuries later. And George Santos is merely the latest manifestation of that phenomenon.please-be-true fantasies.”

This is what  what happens when we abandon critical thinking and skepticism in favor of fantasies that we want to be true so ignore the lack of evidence for them .

 

A Poor Choice of Words

2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, The Sleep of Reason

 

According to the Guardian, George Santos  claimed to have graduated from Baruch College but “The college found no record of Santos as a student.” The best part though was his response when interviewed by the Guardian to these revelations, “Santos confessed he hadn’t graduated from “from any institution of higher learning” and had used a “poor choice of words”. A bald lie in his world becomes “a poor choice of words.”

The Guardian also reported “Santos’s campaign website said that his mother was Jewish and his grandparents escaped the Nazis during the second world war.” The truth he admitted “Santos’s campaign website said that his mother was Jewish and his grandparents escaped the Nazis during the second world war.”

I could go on and on about these lies but will confine myself to one more (this is hard). The Guardian reported that. a local paper reported on his alleged fraud in 2020 and called him “George Scamtos.” His amazingly lame response according to the Guardian was to say ““I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress and I got away with it then,” he told Piers Morgan, adding he “didn’t think” he would get caught.”  Santos is the poster child for the death of truth in America. 

Santos has been accused of vast number of lies. And the list keeps growing like a monster.

All he had to say when caught in a lie was that he didn’t think he would get caught. That’s all that matters in FantasyLand.

 

 

Scamland USA

2024 Trip to South West United States, Death of Truth, The Sleep of Reason

 

By and large Canada is not that different than America.  It’s just that everything in the US is in high def. Everything is magnified in America.

There are many things that are interesting when travelling in the US. It must be the most interesting place in the world. Crazies are certainly one of them. They abound here.

Take scammers for example. The latest and greatest scammer is the disgraced Congressman George Santos who was recently turfed out of office by his confrerés. First, you have to be pretty bad to warrant ejection, especially by your own side. Take a look at some of their members in good standing if you doubt that.

Here is how New York magazine summed up his short life so far:

“Most often, it’s best to assume what the Republican from Long Island has said about his life is bogus.”

 

Lately it has been revealed that his scams and lies and have gone into the realm of alleged serious malfeasance, but until then many of his lies were so ludicrous they were funny. For example, he claimed to have been such a serious volleyball star for his college team he actually had to have knee surgery on both knees because of his exuberant jumping. It turns out he never played for the volleyball team.

Lies like that though tend to find a congenial home in the modern FantasyLand.  We must get used to this. I will continue. That much is inevitable when truth is no longer valued.

Hysteria Rides (and falls) Again

Conspiracy Theories, Death of Truth, Gender Warfare, Hate, Social Media, The Sleep of Reason

 

 

It is hardly surprising, but hysteria has failed again. That is because hysteria rarely leads to encouraging solutions to real problems. Hysteria interferes with critical thinking.

Many Winnipeggers learned this lesson on Friday. As Maggie Macintosh reported in the Winnipeg Free Press,

More than 1,000 students — including nearly half of one elementary school’s population — were absent from classes in one Winnipeg school district Wednesday as misinformation spread online about its teachers distributing graphic sexual content.

 

Many Winnipeggers believed the nonsense they read about on social media that teachers planned to suddenly expose children to explicit and inappropriate information. That is typical of the stuff social media spreads, and unfortunately, many parents are inclined to believe such claims. People who are addicted to conspiracy theories believe stuff like this no matter how incredible it is. People living in what Kurt Anderson called “FantasyLand” are addicted to such absurdities.

 Superintendent Brian O’Leary said “We had a lot of information circulating on social media, particularly within the South Asian community, telling parents that the schools were planning to hand out books with graphic sexual material to all students.”

As Macintosh reported, the Superintendent  said,

 “false and malicious fearmongering” on social media prompted hundreds of families in the Seven Oaks School Division to keep their elementary-aged children home from classes Sept. 20.

 

He also said the posts in Punjabi, Hindi and Arabic were “deliberately concocted to scare parents,” and were circulating on Facebook. The problem is that far too many parents, and others, believe everything they hear on social media, particularly if it aligns with their anti-government ideology. The problem is not gender ideology, it is the ideology of automatic distrust in government. Adherents to this ideology would much rather believe nonsense on the internet than government sources.  And this is a big problem for society.

As Macintosh said,

“About 50 per cent of students enrolled at Arthur E. Wright Community School did not show up Wednesday. The absenteeism rate dropped to five per cent Thursday. The abnormal attendance levels were recorded on the same day as the “1MillionMarch4Children” — a protest organized by a conservative group that is “against gender ideology” and claims schools are sharing “sexually explicit content” with students — played out across the country.”

 

When hysterical parents hear lies this, particularly if they have a sexual element,  they immediately move into high gear before they have a chance to think things through rationally. Hysteria is the mortal enemy of critical thinking.

I don’t think it is a coincidence either that this happened as hundreds of protesters showed up at the Manitoba Legislative Building the day before to call for more parental rights, even though they already have ample parental rights they rarely use.  When parents are haunted by fantastical visions of children being sexually abused, their reactions are on hair-trigger mode.

The president of the Manitoba Teacher’s Society Nathanial Martindale was disappointed that parents had believed such nonsense that  Manitoba teachers are out to harm children. As he said, “nothing could be further from the truth… Educators want the best for all learners and will never be onside with homophobic or transphobic hate.” But reasonable ordinary truth like that  just does not cut it on the Internet when there are salacious lies instead.

Lies and Hate travel at warp speed on the internet compared to dull truth.

 

Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracies

Conspiracy Theories, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, The Sleep of Reason, Trump, Trumpism

 

On my regular walks in Arizona, I have enjoyed many interesting podcasts, including some  about the crazy things done by Trumpsters. One series of such podcasts were hosted by Jordan Klepper under the title “Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracies.”  I have listened to a number of them.

On one of such walks through Johnson Ranch in San Tan Valley I learned about Trumpsters who believe that even though Trump lost the election he is still in charge. They believe he still leads the American armed forces.

Klepper specializes in attending Trump rallies for the Daily Show on television in order to interview Trumpsters. Often they are hilarious. All he has to do is ask them questions and they do the rest. But I loved one comment he made: “you can tell how these people really love America by the weapons they have bought to hurt other Americans.” For example, the Proud Boys, who are strong Trump supporters expect the American military to attack them so they must be prepared. In America that means they must be heavily armed.

Often crazy conspiracy theories have a hint of truth to them. For example, on January 6th of this year it was obvious that a number of military types still support Donald Trump. To them he is still the Commander-in-Chief. Nothing he can do will change that! They would die on the hill for Trump if he asked them to. Frankly, to me that is a little frightening.

Many of the Trumpsters are former members, or even current members, of the American military. And conspiracy theories gather around the military like iron filings collect around magnets. I believe the reason for this is the extraordinary level of fear among the theorists. A military of course is important to all of us. They are meant to protect us from some of our worst fears. As a result, conspiracy theories abound in and around the military. For example, there is a new theory in the United States that Donald Trump is still calling the shots for the military, even though he is no longer the president.

General Mike Flynn was Trump’s was the 24th U.S. National Security Advisor who was appointed by president Donald Trump and he lasted exactly 22 days of the Trump administration. He resigned after it was revealed he had lied to Mike Pence and others vetting Flynn for the advisor position.

Flynn held some whacky conspiracy views and it is disturbing that for 22 days he was so close to Commander-in-Chief of the United States. In some of his on-line posts he showed that he gave credence to conspiracy theories including the one that there was a plot to kill Navy Seals  involving current President Joe Biden who had been involved in the assassination of Osama bin Laden by the Seals.

Trump also endorsed such views when he re-tweeted some of those theories. Trump denied that re-tweeting constituted an endorsement of such theories, but what else could that mean? We also must remember that Donald Trump had about 50 million Twitter followers at the time, so re-posting such theories was a dangerous thing. Trump followers notoriously believe what Trump says and don’t require evidence to back up his claims. His proclamations are enough to convince them no matter how much contrary evidence is available.

Another on-going conspiracy theory—most of these never seem to end—was the call by Trumpsters to the Attorney-General to investigate reports that in Italy certain nefarious actors had hacked the voting machines in American election, even though they offered no evidence that this had happened. As Klepper commented, this theory had “as much substance as cotton candy that had been put through a clothes dryer.” These conspiracy theorists expected the authorities to pay attention to these wild and unsubstantiated claims.

Conspiracy theories aren’t getting more rational are they?

Credulity in America is a serious problem. This is one more sign of serious decline in American society. Having a president or national security advisor promulgating them can have serious consequences.

 

Thinking not dying

Classic Books, Freedom, reason, Rebel, Social Democracy and Trust, The Sleep of Reason

 

Can great literature lead to great societies?

There is no obvious and direct link between democratic societies and great literature. As Joseph Brodsky correctly pointed out, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were all very literate men. That did not help societies in the countries they led. But that does not mean there is no connection.

Democratic societies, it has often been observed, need good citizens. Citizens who have not forgotten how important freedom is and know that to protect a fragile democracy—and all democracies are fragile—an alert and informed citizenry is essential. Azar Nafisi explained how books like the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were important as a consequence:

For this they need to know, to pause, to think, to question. It is this quality that we find in so many of America’s fictional heroes, from Huckleberry Finn to Mick Kelly in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. How can we protect ourselves from a country of manipulation, where tastes and flavors are re-created chemically in laboratories and given to us as natural food, where religion is packaged, televised, and tweeted and commercials influence us to such an extent that they dictate not only what we eat, wear, read, and want but what we know and dream. We need the pristine beauty of truth as revealed to us in fiction, poetry, music and the arts: we need to retrieve the third eye of the imagination.

Democracies can benefit from its citizens engaging in what Huck called “a long think.” Nothing is better for purpose than literature or art, or other works of the imagination. This is what Nafisi called “The Republic of the Imagination.” This is what allows us to live and avoid a smothery death.

In totalitarian societies people risk their lives to achieve this. The risks are clear and present. But even in democratic societies lives are at risk to, for smothered lives are not worth living.

People in totalitarian societies often appreciate the freedom to read much more acutely than citizens of democratic societies. But they are not the only ones. As Scout said in that wonderful book To Kill a Mockingbird, another classic, “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing.”

In the Republic of the Imagination, as Nafisi says, “We must read, and we must continue to read the great subversive books, our own and others.”

And in my opinion there is no more subversive book than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That is why it is a great book. Perhaps the best novel of all time. That is a possibility.  It is my favourite novel.  That is a certainty.

Tom Sawyer, who appears in this book at the beginning and then returns to wreak havoc near the end of the book, is completely befuddled by what he has “learned” from reading books. It gets Tom into trouble and more importantly endangers the lives of others, such as the slave Jim. He keeps insisting how they must conform to the books no matter how absurd and no matter how little he understands of what those books actually say. Sawyer is continually barking up the wrong reality tree.

 

Tom asks Huck, “Do you want to go doing something different from what’s in the books and get things all muddled up?” Huck agreed, saying: “all kings is mostly rapscallions…You couldn’t tell them from the real kind.” Huck’s conclusion was a sound one: “Sometimes I wish we could hear  of a country that’s out of kings.” Huck would appreciate the wisdom of John Lennon.

We can think or we can die. That is the  choice.

We are Doomed

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, Democracy, The Sleep of Reason, Trump, Trumpism

 

Not every one likes Bill Maher.  I know he is the worst interviewer on television.  Often he does not let his guests speak, but speaks up for them instead.  As well, when he lets them speak, he has some very interesting guests from all ends of the political spectrum from Steve Bannon to Nancy Pelosi.  And he sometimes makes some very interesting points.

For example, he was the first one to predict that Trump would never resign after he was elected president. He said that almost immediately after the election in 2016!  Now every one knows that. But not many said that in 2016. But Maher has also appreciated, as few others do, that this refusal now has important consequences.  Americans seem to be tolerating, if not encouraging,  this refusal even though the peaceful transfer of power has for long been considered the most important characteristic of democracy. It is what distinguishes democracy from autocracy.

And now millions of Americans have demonstrated clearly that they don’t think this element of democracy is important. They don’t care! I have found this astonishing. Many have not. Many shrug their shoulders as if it didn’t matter.

Maher said “Well we had a good run.”  On November 8, 2022 Americans had a chance to vote for democracy. As Joe Biden and many Democrats said, “Democracy is on the ballot.”  And they were right. And it didn’t matter to millions Americans. Inflation was more important than democracy. Bill Maher predicted this 4 days before the election as if it was a foregone conclusion. This is what he said,

“Tuesday is the election and I know I should tell you to vote in the most important election ever. So, O.K., yes. You should vote.  And it should be for the one party that still stands for democracy preservation. But it’s also a waste of breath because anyone who believes that is already voting and anybody who needs to learn that isn’t watching and no one in America can be persuaded about anything anymore anyway.”

On this point Maher is right.  No one will change their mind. Trump was right when he said he could stand in Times Square, murder someone and it wouldn’t make any difference to his supporters. They are that determined to vote for him no matter what he says or does. that gives him a lot of rope.  Look at the mountains of evidence revealing his nefarious deeds. Yet, his supporters are filled with religious devotion that cannot be altered. No one can be convinced out of a theological devotion. That in itself is enough to kill democracy.

Maher gave another pertinent example—the January 6th hearings. Those hearings provided Americans with an overwhelmingly convincing narrative that Donald Trump had no respect for democracy as he led the charge against democracy and his devoted followers followed. As Maher said,

“The January 6th hearings it turned out changed nobody’s mind. Democrat Jamie Raskin said the hearings “will tell a story that will really blow the roof off the House.”  No that was Hurricane Ian. Hearings roof not blown. The Committee did a masterful job laying out the case but we live in Partisan American now. So it’s a little like doing stand-up when half the crowd only speaks Mandarin. No matter how good the material is it’s not going to go over. After all the hearings the percentage of Americans who thought Trump did nothing wrong. Went up 3 points! That’s America now.”

 

Again, Maher is right. The truth did not matter! All that mattered was that millions of people are devoted to Trump and nothing—absolutely nothing—will turn them away from their religious leader. The overwhelming narrative is irrelevant.

I am a Canadian; I have no dog in this hunt. But I do. America is the leader of the modern world. Maybe not for much longer, but for now that is true. If America coughs the rest of the world catches a cold.

 I am posting this as the election is drawing to a close. I don’t know any results. I hope Maher is wrong; if fear he is right.

Are we doomed?  Let’s see what happens tonight.