There is no place in this world for many of us.
We don’t fit.
When it comes to politics and expressing our views, there is no one who represents us.
In this world, we are forced to choose between professorial and congenial front men for corporations, who promise tiresome unworkable bandaids, and crazy con artists who espouse wild theories while promising instant erections.
These con artists are of course also frontmen for corporations. They are propped up, then dismissed by the corporations in order to marginalize the effects of populist movements.
So to get anybody to listen to your view these days, you either have to be a professorial type who spits out mindless detail ad infinitum, or you have to crank out craziness.
If you espouse a plausible yet realistic idea but can not support it with esoteric facts or data, you are dismissed.
A professor on the other hand who espouses unrealistic, unworkable ideas but accompanies it with reams of esoterica is readily embraced.
Throw in a Wharton School degree and he walks on water.
There is a belief system in this country that a workable idea must have reams of data to support it.
It’s part of our stat happy culture.
So, the thinking goes, the more data (forget about its validity) you have, the better the idea is.
This is not so.
In fact, I will argue that better ideas have fewer data points.
An essential feature of a great theory is that it ignores data.
If Charles Darwin had to include every single detail in the fossil record to justify evolution, there would be no theory of evolution.
But it goes beyond that.
Professors, whose job it is to teach history to their students, often must focus on all the data points that exist out there. Consequently, these professors must by necessity overlook, dismiss, or exclude many theories that do not necessarily encompass all those data points.
A regular guy who focuses on the workability of ideas, and not all the data that exist out there, has a difficult time prosecuting his idea because society values those people who spit out reams of data.
Consequently, a regular guy who espouses a workable theory in a sane manner doesn’t look good on television.
This individual can’t compete with the professorial types who sound good because they have data. Nor can our regular guy compete with the crazy guy. He can’t compete with the crazy guy because the crazy guy peddles instant gratification.
So the regular guy is stuck.
Let’s use an example.
Let’s look at the immigration problem on our southern border.
The professorial types will of course discuss immigration data ad infinitum. They will completely overwhelm the average person through data. Many educated people will be fooled by this front man for Corporate America.
On the other end of the spectrum is the crazy con man. He will promise immediate gratification to the American public in the form of a wall. The wall is very much like those pills that are sold for erectile dysfunction. Millions of people will buy into this.
Caught in the middle is the regular guy who understands that the reason why we have a problem on our southern border is because US corporations have made life miserable for the people in Central America. The regular guy understands that unless we give the people of Central America a stake in the game, they will continue to come here. So, the regular guy proposes the principles of Christianity. He says to the people that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us.
The regular guy will lose. He doesn’t have any data to back up his solution because his solution has never been tried. He also cannot promise instant gratification as the crazy con man can do.
The professorial types will chuckle derisively and call the regular guy’s solution the long-term solution, not the short term solution. The regular guy will respond back by saying that the long-term solution is the short term solution and vice versa. It is that way because the short term bandaids that the professor proposes, increased security, tamper-proof visas, won’t work and haven’t worked. The regular guy will have the audacity to suggest that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure – to no avail. In our stat happy society, Ben Franklin’s aphorisms carry no weight.
Plus the professor through years of experience teaching, participating in conferences, and huckstering on television has learned the proper body language skills that sell well on television.
On the other end of the spectrum the crazy con man will make jokes about the regular guy, and the people will cheer just as they cheered for Barabbas.
In seconds, the regular sane guy will be vaporized into dust by the cute collaboration of professors and crazy con men.
Christians and regular people with common sense need not apply.
There is no place for the regular sane guy in society.
Sincerely,
Archer Crosley
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