In this world of ours, we need to deal with the liars, cheaters, and people who steal for a living without fear of getting caught, because they *are* ’The Law’, but also with the funny people. Within the context of this contribution a funny person is not someone who cracks jokes, but a person who will tell you a story, or his or her take on reality, and as you start laughing, because it cannot possibly be true, you discover that they were utterly serious. Now what? In a way you just embarrassed yourself, and offended the person talking to you. Not a very good start for a productive discussion on how to handle a situation through debate and the exchange of relevant information.
Compare to Liz Truss visiting Sergej Lavrov, as minister of foreign affairs of the United Kingdom, before she was promoted to prime minister, when she made it clear to everybody in the room that she had absolutely no idea that Voronezh and Rostov were legit Russian territory since time immemorial. People like Liz Truss, and Joe Biden, draw lots of flack from serious people, and plenty of people consider them ‘funny’. But they are dead serious!
This ‘In English’ part of my blog focuses on ‘Everything Ukraine’, but the same pattern is recognizable in economics, all things ‘Climate’, everything ‘Covid’, and this ‘Gender’-thing, to mention just the most important topics. In some cases it is difficult to distinguish between people who lie with a straight face, and those who are essentially ‘confused’. Laughing when a liar tries to sell you the ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ doesn’t hurt. In fact it may help to improve your own ’standing’, and enhance the possibility of a fruitful debate and ‘understanding’. Not so if this individual is ‘confused’.
Take this issue with this Prigozhin fellow. People who hate his guts, sanctioned him to steal everything he left exposed to Western banking, and called him ‘Putin’s Chef’, while exposing him as a war criminal for leading his PMC into taking Bakhmut, are suddenly ‘coming out’ as his cheerleaders, so as to be able to ‘explain’ why Putin took him out. How do they do that? They somehow short-circuited the previously aired complaints, blindsiding themselves to other possible culprits, and all of a sudden Prigozhin made it to the ranks of legitimate ‘opposition’. Not a single person in Russia ever had a chance to vote for the man, but that doesn’t matter. Yet you are ill advised to laugh at these people, because they are serious.
Yesterday I proposed to hold your horses. Don’t jump to conclusions. Zerohedge mentioned ‘reports’ which said air-defense systems took the aircraft transporting Prigozhin and his team from the partly clouded sky. Today the ‘Pentagon’ says that those ‘reports’ are false. So, who issued those ‘reports’, and why? Based on what? Every media-outlet, and every individual reporting about the air-defense angle as a ‘done deal’, can write to Amazon for their free ‘Donkey Cap’, and seat themselves on the ’Naughty Chair’ until we know enough to move towards finding the culprit. Compare to the MH-17 case to understand how ‘priming’ the narrative will have disastrous consequences for the investigation. Same with the killing of Boris Nemtsov in February 2015 in Moscow. Had to be Putin! But eventually a group of Muslim extremists, our friends in the Caucasus, were apprehended, put on trial, and sentenced. The MH-17-case was led into fantasy-land as the focus shifted from the most important question, related to why the crew of this aircraft had not been warned about high-flying aircraft in that war-zone being targeted, to who might have provided the Buk-system, still without any indication about who pushed the ‘FIRE’-button, and what he or she was aiming at. Don’t laugh, because people died a horrible death, and left loved ones, family and friends, but in addition those ‘confused’ people don’t get it.
The reason I call this state of mind ‘confusion’, is based on the observation that these people *do* know better. But they opt to temporarily erase this knowledge that they have, for reasons only they may explain to you afterwards, as they return to earth, and come to their senses. I’ve heard ‘experts’ say that wearing masks to counter the spread of ‘Covid’ was BS. Unscientific horse manure. Superstition. And you turn around, assuming that the debate on that topic is settled, and all of a sudden they support passing a law that renders wearing a mask mandatory. Don’t laugh. These people are dead serious! And they may throw you in jail for making fun of them.
The liars, cheaters and thieves are not ‘confused’. Whenever they try to fool you, producing a hearty laugh and exposing them in a crowd may actually be the better option to avoid violence, since responding angrily may escalate things quickly. But a ‘confused’ person will not be as forgiving, because they fooled themselves first and foremost, and are ashamed. They will double down, and rather escalate into making even more ridiculous claims, before hauling you in front of a judge, or bash your head in. These people are not funny, but dangerous. The problem may be akin to some professional ‘comedians’ who are extremely funny, until you turn the tables and make fun of them. From one moment to the next, they switch to being extremely nasty people who devour everything in their path. Something with their ego, and a twisted sense of ‘self worth’. An ‘inferiority complex’ hidden by ‘expert’ status. The kind of ‘experts’ which need an audience, as they cannot prove anything they say.