I
was talking politics with a right-wing friend recently when we got onto the
subject of the U.S. Civil War. To support one
of my points, I mentioned a book I was reading about Abraham Lincoln that was
written by Eric Foner, a
history professor at Columbia University.
Before
I could make my point, he interrupted me.
“Oh,”
he said with a dismissive snort, “some liberal East Coast college professor,
eh?”
Just
then, I heard a loud ‘CLICK.’ It wasn’t
a series of sounds or anything. Just one
loud, distinct ‘CLICK.’
“Did
you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear
what?”
“That
‘CLICK.’”
“I
didn’t hear nothin’.”
A
few days later I was talking about universal health care with another
conservative friend and I mentioned Michael Moore’s
documentary, “Sicko.”
Before
I could finish, he said, “Don’t quote Michael Moore to me. Don’t you know? He’s a George Soros puppet!”
As
soon as he said it I heard the same loud ‘CLICK.’
I
asked him if he had heard the ‘CLICK’ and again I learned I was the only one
who noticed it.
Am I going crazy?
This
has been happening a lot lately. Just
the other day I was talking to someone about President Trump’s many broken
promises, gaffes and outrageous statements. He
dismissed them all with a wave of his hand, saying, “You mean to tell me you
believe the lies of the liberal media?”
Again,
that ‘CLICK.’
This
phenomenon has puzzled me of late but, following an extended period of Deep and
Profound Meditation, I think I’ve finally figured out the origin of the ‘CLICK.’
It’s the sound you hear when someone switches off their brain, their critical faculty.
It’s
a handy tool, that switch. By flipping it, they save themselves the trouble of analyzing and refuting any arguments
with which they disagree. All they have
to do is label the argument as coming from a despised person or group and,
Presto!, it vanishes. They’re Bad People, the reasoning goes,
so everything they say is, by definition, untrue.
Full stop. End of story.
Case closed.
Of
course, use of that switch has its drawbacks.
Nothing’s perfect. Chief among
them is that it doesn’t really convince anybody but you. I mean, anyone with their critical faculties intact
will see right through it. But it will
soothe your fear of being wrong about something (or anything) without
requiring any of that pesky thinking stuff. (So
tiring!)
The greatest danger is that, if you throw the switch too often, it breaks. In other words, switch off your brain too
many times and the switch will get stuck in the OFF position. By accepting only those arguments that support your
preconceived notions and dismissing all others without bothering to examine the facts that
support them, over time you become…
…um
what’s that term again…
Ah
yes! You become STUPID.
