I’m Not Clowning Around

I am afraid of clowns. I also fear dis-organized religions, crowds of more than three people and dentists. But mostly, I fear clowns.

Of course, circus clowns and rodeo clowns aren’t a concern. Most clowns are well meaning. Even jesters don’t create much anxiety for me. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart always find a way to make me laugh even in the face of calamity.

I don’t mind mimes, as long as they don’t put me in a box.

Once I watched an airline pilot make faces, do magic and tell jokes to a screaming toddler in order to keep the passengers from binding the child to a food cart and gagging him with a pillow. The pilot was definitely clowning around.

As I said, most are well-meaning clowns and often make me laugh. They aren’t the ones to fear.

The clown to fear is the one with a microphone. They are not interested in getting to the heart. They are more interested in getting a reaction, any reaction. These are the Clowns of Disinformation, playing their audience for the fool. Whether the Clown believes the gag or not is irrelevant. What matters is the reaction they can spark.

There are basically two types of Microphone Clowns: Fundamentalists and Sophists. They are equally destructive and disruptive to the success of rational and secular civilizations.

They are scary not because of what they say, or even what they believe (although I often find both outlandishly destructive). Instead these Clowns are scary because without having to smudge their own make-up, and nothing on the line, they are able to get some acolyte to throw the pie, pull the trigger or push the button.

Some Fundamentalist Clowns are obvious.

For example, prior to 9/11, Osama bin Laden was a caricature of a backward cave dwelling religious troll. The butt of late show jokes and Hollywood parodies.

Today he is a martyr for a cause being carried on by a relatively small number of religiously and intellectually myopic zealots. Bin Laden is to ISIS what Gordon Kahl is to the US Sovereign movement: self-aggrandizing clowns infected with an arrogant belief they have been uniquely divined with an insight into the nature of God and Truth. A spiritual sickness reinforced by the weak-minded, intellectually dishonest and opportunistic trolls surrounding them.

I’m not minimizing the horrors Fundamentalist Clowns unleash onto the world. From my perspective, both historical and observational, Fundamentalist Clowns adopted a “strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles” and sell these ideas to superstitious and dogmatic disciples. The disciples lack the critical thinking skills to separate decency from dogma, humanity from hyperbole. In other words, they are fundamentalists.

Believing Mexicans, immigrants, Jews, blacks, intellectuals, Muslims, Christians, whites, rich or any other variation of “them”,” those” or “you all” is somehow at fault for what ails the world is a literal, strict and basic fundamentalist perspective. “Someone is at fault!” cry the Fundamentalist Clown and followers. “And we know it isn’t us.”

Fundamentalism informs their black and white worldview. Clowns sell the idea of “they” are either with us or against us. “They” either believe as we do or “they” are the enemy. Either “they” conform willingingly or we will punish them. It is the mantra of all fundamentalism: we’re right, they’re wrong, conform or be punished.

Of course, it is easy to label bin Laden a Clown, he’s made himself a target by claiming to know God’s will. And as most American fundamentalists know, Pat Robertson, speaks for God. How else would Robertson know Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment and as a result the United States is “unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster? Could they be connected in some way?”

No. No they are not.

Statistically, tragedy happens to everyone everywhere. Only Fundamentalist Clowns pedal the idea tragedy happens for a reason beyond simple physics or psychology. Microphone Clowns imply the intent; adherents infer the meaning. And then adherents send money or martyr themselves.

Sometimes both.

Here is the reality: storms happen. Things happen to Buddhists, Taoists, Catholics, Lutherans, Muslims and atheists. Timothy McVey happens. The IRA happens. The Unabomber happens. The DC Sniper happens. As do car accidents, train accidents, the fall down a flight of stair accidents and occasionally IRS audits. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.

Things will continue to happen and it won’t matter who is bombed into submission, gassed into oblivion or packing heat. It isn’t a deity punishing or testing you, us or them. It’s simply physics, sickness or stupidity. Nature is indifferent to opinions, politics, religions, nationalities, gender and time. The only constant is physics and humanity’s willingness to wage war on others based on a Fundamentalist Clown’s high opinion of themselves.

The other Clown is the Sophist.

These Clowns are the sociopaths and the narcissists. The goal isn’t a yuck but a buck. They are willing to say anything for press, prestige, promotion or profit. As a Clown they play for the audience too.

At least the Fundamentalist Clowns are consistent, the Sophist Clown is indifferent to their own hypocrisy. They know the audience is not actually paying attention to the details. They know the audience is more interested in the drama and commotion. They know the audience is willing to overlook reversals in position, even ones caught on tape last year, last month or last night on Twitter.

Most importantly, they know the audience will make excuses, and like any good soldier, counterattack the evidence, science or math as simply manipulated tools in a conspiracy of haters to throw a pie in the face of their favorite Clown.

The sophist uses the smoke and mirrors of creative editing, sound bite manipulation and marketing to deliberately devise an “argument seemingly plausible but is actually fallacious or misleading”. They are counting on the intellectual dishonesty, fears and resentments of an audience to fuel their own advances. From their perspective, you’re either a pinhead or patriot. Artificial phrases providing empty calories for insatiable memes, merchandise and column inches across the internet.

Sophists are like the great and powerful Oz, hiding behind the curtain, pulling the levers and pushing the buttons. It looks inspired to the Coward, the Heartless, the Brainless and the Lost but behind the curtain is a self-aggrandizing clown who would be King, or at least King for a Day.

Which is why Microphone Clowns are so popular. Clowns tell the audience what they want to hear. It’s simpler than nuance. The Clown claims to distil the issue to its essence. No other thinking required of the audience.

Of course, in a world filled with complicated histories, overlapping economic interests, competing media objectives, fundamentalist zealotry and Season 2 of Daredevil, who has time for nuance? Distinguishing between individuals, groups, ideas and worldviews would require an understanding of history and culture over time. Maybe even a deep understanding of science and math. Who has time for that?

I mean, besides experts? And who has time for experts?

Watch a Clown and their pattern is repeated day after day: ask the experts questions without interest in the nuance of the answer. Then cut off the expert and undermine the expert’s credentials or redirect to a statistical outlier or misleading comparison. The goal is to make the audience comfortable in their contempt, ignorance or outrage.

Nuance is bad for ratings. Nuance leads to headaches.

The solution is for an expert statesman to step forward outside the clowns and tell Americans the truth. For example a statesman could say: “there have always been terrorists, there will always be terrorists and killing people in large numbers only creates more terrorists.” Therefore, you should live your life and, to paraphrase Voltaire, “tend your own garden, let others tend their own gardens and when appropriate lend them a hand.”

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No matter how many countries are invaded, how many people are tortured or imprisoned or how many bombs are dropped there will always be some lost, entitled or deranged individual willinging to drive the Sophists or Fundamentalists Clown Car. They will voluntarily climb in for reasons never making sense to a secular and tolerant society or critically thinking, educated person.

Every nation, every age, every civilization has had terrorists. There will always be a segment of the human population willing to believe they are imbued with special insight and tilt at the windmills of progress and rationality. The cold hard truth: America will be attacked again.

And again.

And again.

As will Europe, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, Kenya, Russia and China. Every nation is struggling with someone’s else’s fundamentalism and sophistry. Living with terrorism is not a uniquely American experience.

Can terrorism, tragedies, accidents and crime be stopped? No.

Can they be mitigated? Of course.

Solutions require a willingness to be honest and the ability to recognize, accept and act on the realities of the nuances. Stop chasing a fundamentalist’s solution or accepting the sophists explanations.

Life is full of issues of nuance. Unfortunately, the Microphone Clowns won’t allow for even the conversation without hyperbolic and fundamentally simplistic demagoguery changing the focus from solutions to distortions to caricatures. The goal is purely power. It plays to their audience and gives them authority over others.

The Clown’s goal is to find someone else to pull the trigger or push the button. Hence, a 144 character tweet from a Microphone Clown can be interpreted by parrots as permission to attack an embassy in Benghazi, firebomb a Planned Parenthood in Georgia or stalk other human beings into a Kohl’s bathrooms.

Unfortunately, in the modern American political and media landscape Microphone Clowns have more market value than the nuanced bridge-building statesman. There is no benefit for Clowns if the statesman builds bridges for progress and understanding; A Clown only benefits in the scrap found in tearing down bridges.

Building a bridge requires vision, leadership, commitment and time. Dynamiting a bridge takes only a moment. The flash, bang and smell of destruction is exciting for the audience. Watching a bridge going up over four years is not nearly as exciting as watching it come down in thirty seconds.

I’m practicing the sin of oversimplification but the reasonably intelligent individual will get the point without taking it to extreme conclusions. I know my audience and, like me, they have no use for Clowns. It’s all about understanding nuance, the bane of Clowns.

The zealots will miss the point, of course, and rally around the “genius” of their Clown de-jur. The paranoid, self-important clowns on the right, and their hanger-ons, will think I’m talking about them and become indignant, defensive and overly sensitive questioning my Patriotism, masculinity or lampooning me with some caricature they fear. The clowns and parrots on the left will think I’m talking about, well, the right.

I would laugh if it didn’t make me feel like crying. Where’s a real clown when you need one?

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