Nevertheless, after noticing this little nugget, I decided to send along some information to the folks. A painfully distorted justification is the only engaged response I'm likely to receive, but I can always hope...
Here's the message:
It is well documented that the Bush family, including both Presidents (and Dick Cheney) are very close personal friends with Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, going so far as to nickname him "Bandar Bush." Previously secret documents recently revealed in British courts show that the Bandar had threatened to make it harder for British officials to prevent terrorism unless they ended a corruption investigation into massive secret payments to Saudi royals by British aerospace company BAE, which promptly scuttled the investigation.
Recap: the President's close personal friend basically threatened to kill random civilians if the British government even thought about trying to stop the dirty money and weapons flowing to him and his associates.
This is of course just one small episode of corruption and disregard for human life from the Saudi royal family, whose deep personal and business ties to the Bush family has lasted decades. Put aside for a minute that the job of a President is to protect and defend the Constitution, not the nation. Does a man committed to doing everything he can to protect America cuddle up to a guy like Bandar Bush?
I just noticed that I used the words "scuttle" and "cuddle," which kind of rhyme. So I got that going for me.
2 comments:
"...but reality isn't something these types are good at seeing."
I'm reading a book that points out that over eons of evolution humans developed a revulsion to the smell of human feces and the reason is that human feces contain bacteria that can kill us.
Brain scans show that even a few molecules of the chemical responsible for that smell elicits strong negative feelings.
So if eons of evolution has hard wired something like that into our brains, wouldn't you think that we also would have had hard wired into us a tendency to reject believing what we WANT to believe in favor of dispassionately accepting reality?
It seems like when it came down to survival of the fittest, humans who rejected reality in favor of what they want to believe would often pay a high price (death) for that flaw.
In regards to the most important aspects of survival, yes believing reality is important. You can't believe that eating rocks is the same as food, or that a tiger is your mommy. B
ut there is plenty of evolutionary sense in being able to deceive others, for example about your motives. And one of the best ways to convince others of a lie is to believe it yourself.
Another evolutionary explanation could be that belief in ridiculous things is a signal of your commitment to a group. The logic is somewhat analogous to the evolution of the peacock's tale: to be able to bear this massive and ridiculous burden there must be a very strong and fit male underneath it, so he's an attractive mate. The human logic would be "I'm willing to believe an obvious absurdity so you know I'll never betray the group." That could then be valuable as long as the unreality isn't too costly.
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