Why I Hate Smart People

With no apologies to Hyperbole and a Half.

Contrary to what you might have heard, I am not a smart person. In fact, I might be considered exactly the opposite of smart. That is (for you people like me) dumb. If you've ever heard me saying something smart, I was probably just quoting something I once heard some Smart Person say.

The Wrong Side

“This project is moving forward. It’s going to happen. At this point, there’s nothing you or I can do to stop it.”

Marcus Marcellus regarded the pronouncement from the rotund man on the other side of the faux-mahogany desk with bemusement. He hid his smile, and thought of all the times he’d heard something similar.

His conversational partner, William Porter, took a long draught from the black cigar in his mouth and blew smoke from his nose like a dragon warming up to breathe flame at an unsuspecting knight. A dragon that had perhaps become slothful and old sitting atop his hoard of gold.

“I don’t mean to stop it,” Marcellus replied. “I only want to suggest that a solution may be reached that serves both my clients and yours.”

This time, it was Porter’s turn for bemusement. His lips curled and he let out a sort of coughing laugh, with little pockets of smoke escaping between the chortles.

Porter turned his chair and made a sweeping gesture towards the picture window behind him. Marcellus could see the crescent of the planet Cephas--its sun, Vega, illuminating it from behind.

“If your clients are served by getting off my clients’ planet, then yes, I agree.”

Marcellus ignored the snipe and pulled a packet from his briefcase, setting it on the desk. “We can offer to pay, not all at once, but the settlers are willing to enter into a deal to repay--with interest--over the next seventy-five years.”

Porter did his dragon impression again, blowing smoke from his nose without even looking at the packet. “Mister Marcellus, terraforming is a very expensive proposition, one that requires a significant up-front investment. My clients can’t wait a lifetime for repayment, and I seriously doubt the squatters will still be around in three-quarters of a century. I certainly won’t be. You’ll probably be long gone, too.”

Again, Marcellus hid his smile.

“I’m afraid your colonists will either need to pay now, or move.”

“Off their own land?”

“Yes, off their own land. The Interstellar Court has ruled, and upheld their ruling in multiple cases, that those who benefit from terraforming must pay fair compensation. Those who refuse can be evicted. Surely you know this.”

Marcellus looked down at his shoes. He had only one more gamble, and it was a long shot. “Then I can make one more offer,” he said.

“Yes? What is it?”

“They would like to invite you for dinner.”

Porter guffawed. “Dinner?”

“Yes, dinner. Then maybe you’ll see these people as just that--people. They’re honest. They’re hard-workers. They don’t deserve to be treated like cattle.”

The guffaw changed into a full belly-laugh when he realized that Marcellus was serious. Marcellus wasn’t sure how much of his plea Porter heard through the howling. Eventually, the larger man calmed down, removed his spectacles, and wiped his eyes, glistening with the tears of laughter.

“I thank you for the joke, Mister Marcellus, but I decline the pathetic offer. I must say I find the idea of dinner with these peasants revolting. What are they? Polaks? Latins? Israelis? Christians and Jews, the lot of them. No, Mister Marcellus, I’ve had my fill of their type. The leeches of society. The beggars. Those who demand help from others while producing nothing of value themselves.”

“I’m sorry you see them that way. If you could just spend some time with them as I have, it might change your mind.”

Like flipping a switch, Porter turned from mirthful to serious. “I doubt it. Tell the gypsies and robbers who hired you to pay their dues or leave.”

Marcellus nodded and reached for his briefcase. “Then I thank you for your time, Mister Porter,” he said, turning for the passageway to the shuttle back down to the planet.

“And Mister Marcellus,” Porter called out.

Marcellus turned back.

“A word of advice: you should give up working pro bono for those lowlifes. I think you’ll find your idealism quickly puts you on the wrong side of history.”

Read the rest here.

As always, constructive criticism welcome.

I Checked Snopes

...and this is not a hoax.



There is actually, in fact, a movie being made, based on this game:



And it is, in fact, being advertising as based on a game made by the same toy company that made Transformers.

No joke.

And Liam Neeson was somehow press-ganged into being in it.

And someone, somewhere, decided to invest millions of dollars in this movie.

The official site is here, if you don't believe me.

I wonder how anyone was able to keep a straight face at any point during the entire pitching, writing, and filming process.

And if no one at any point utters the line "you sank my battleship," I will be sorely disappointed.

I'm Still so S-M-R-T.

Me, 8/5/2010:

Take food for example. "Hungry? Why wait?" The Snicker's slogan perfectly summarizes this philosophy. I want what I want now. But wait! There are consequences to our actions! If we eat whatever we want whenever we want, we'll get fat. It should come as absolutely no surprise that the nation's biggest health risk is obesity and the most frequently performed medical procedure is abortion. Those are related. Of course, we want to forestall those consequences, but we don't want to work at it. The gym is hard work, as is chastity. We prefer our consequence alleviations in pill form. Introducing birth control pills and diet pills. Those, too, are related.

Me, 4/16/2011:

Consider the phrases: "I intentionally ate the entire cheesecake and accidentally gained weight." "I intentionally jumped off the roof and accidentally fell to the ground." "I intentionally had sex and accidentally got pregnant." The first two make the speaker sound like an idiot, but the third one, for some reason, is how people actually think.

Mike Flynn, 2/13/2012:

The parallel with digestive rights is instructive. Both are the result of a collision between the desire to indulge an appetite (sexual or gustatory) without getting fat. The notion that one ought to be able to eat whatever one likes without gaining weight is generally perceived as a failure of the intellect and no one supposes that the government ought to mandate health insurance coverage to include emetics, so as to enable bulemia.

SMRT.

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Hope

Oh, what a world I'm leaving you, Damien.

He sits on my lap as I read him his bedtime story. He snorts and snuffs with the rhinoceros, ruffs with the little dogs, and quacks with the duck. To him, the world is so simple. Cows moo, sheep baa. The only confusion is whether pigs say oink or "la, la, la". He doesn't read the news headlines. How could he possibly understand how much the world is opposed to him? Why would I even want him to know?

We finish the book, and I turn out the light. I get out the rosary blessed by Blessed John Paul the Great (he will get upset if I don't), he makes the sign of the cross with it (always sure to kiss the crucifix), and we pray. I pray the sorrowful mysteries tonight. It seems it's always the night for the sorrowful mysteries. They fit my mood of late, as I really don't see much to take joy in.

One wonders where our country turned so very wrong. Why did we decide to abandon our foundational principles in favor of sexual licentiousness? I remember when I was a kid, hearing boomers apologize for how they had messed up the world, and telling me that the burden would be on my generation to fix it.

It looks like I'll have to pass that burden on to you.

We're about half way through the second mystery, when in the faint blue glow of the nightlight, I see an impish smile cross his face. He leans in close and rubs his forehead on my chin, giving himself a beard rub. I indulge him and he bursts into giggles. This isn't helping calm him down, or settle him for bed, but I can't help it. His laughter is so infectious.

After a few more surprise beard rubs and laughing fits, I manage to calm him down and continue with our prayers. I suppose I wouldn't be so uneasy if the haters would just leave me and mine alone. Just let me raise my sons in peace. But this whole kerfuffle over Women's Health™ is really just the beginning, and really not even a beginning, but a next step. Government will keep on pushing, keep on taking rights and limiting liberties, so long as they can get away with it. And it's not really even over Women's Health™ to begin with. This is about pushing the Church out of public life.

It's not the first time the Catholic schools in this country have come under attack. Only, back then, it was the WASPs who were concerned that all those lowlife Irish immigrants were indoctrinating their children in un-American thinking. Now, it's those backwards, homophobic, misogynistic Catholics who are against Progress™. The Catholic schools, ever a tool of the Church, must be walled off, their influence minimized.

To paraphrase a good king in a moment of hopelessness, what can one man do against such reckless hatred? How are we few to raise our children to know, love, and serve God, when the forces of the god-king and the weight of the world oppose us so?

All I want is for you to know Love.

We finish our Rosary, and I throw a Memorare—my in-case-of-emergency-break-glass prayer—on the end. I put the rosary away, and look back down. His eyes are half open, and his blinks are getting longer, his head becoming heavier and heavier against my chest.

But they can never get us here. This is Our Place. This is Ecclesia Domestica. Some boundaries transcend the power of temporal rulers. Some bonds cannot be broken by earthly force. "Christ is the head of this house. The unseen guest at every meal. The silent listener to every conversation." No HHS mandate can change that.

Damien's breathing slows, and soon he's full-on snoring. Now that he's asleep, I could put him in his crib, and go back out to whatever faces me beyond these four walls. But I don't. I just rest my chin on his head, and hold him close. And I realize it doesn't matter what happens. Even if the worst case of extreme conspiracy nuts came true, and a Soviet-style dictatorship descended on this country, nothing could take this moment from us.

Nothing can make me stop loving you.

(1000th post!)

Priorities

If you've ever stopped to help a homeless or needy person—and I mean truly help them by providing food, clothing, or shelter—you may have found yourself in the awkward and paradoxical position of being rejected by someone desperately in need of your help. While this has never happened to me, I have heard more than enough anecdotal evidence that this type of thing can happen. I don't mean to condemn all homeless people, or urge against offering charity to those in need, but merely to illustrate that sometimes, people will act contrary to their best interests, and attack those with their best interests in mind.

The drunk who curses at the helpful soul who offers food or a job instead of a handout is, of course, addicted to his vice. He cannot, through strength of will, alone, overcome his temptation and has become so dependent on it that he refuses the basic help he needs. Another way of stating this is that his appetites are not subject to his reason, and he cannot freely choose what is good for him, but is instead enslaved to the dictates of his passions.

With me so far?

Now, to shift gears and approach my thesis from another direction: an argument made by the Other Side during the whole Komen/Planned Parenthood debacle, was that sure, Planned Parenthood might have its flaws, but can't we put that aside for the sake of helping women with cancer? One of the slogans I saw along these lines was, "Instead of having my cancer detected by an organization under government investigation, now my cancer won't be detected at all!" It, of course, ignores the reason that Komen halted some funding for Planned Parenthood, namely, that Planned Parenthood wasn't very good at detecting cancer in the first place, but at least it's a step in the right direction. Rather than screaming ad hominem arguments or beating down straw men, it is an actual attempt to engage in rational debate. Credit where it's due.

So I can understand that argument. Put petty squabbles (where "petty" involves the extermination of 300,000 human beings a year) aside in the interest of some greater cause.

But that argument should apply both ways, shouldn't it?

Let's take a look at some recent events.

Miscellany

(Source)

In light of the whole Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood PR fiasco.

It's hard to say exactly what is going on here. News headlines boiled down to "Komen to defund Planned Parenthood" and "Komen reverses decision", but neither is strictly true, from what I can tell. As the founder of the Susan G. Komen foundation said in an interview, they never defunded PP, and PP still has several grants from them. Of course, the pro-choice crowd immediately launched in hysterics, claiming that the Komen foundation must hate women, hacking the SGK website, etc. etc. Not one of them appears to be at all interested in what or why SGK is doing what it's doing: they simply changed their grant policy to try and give money to direct providers of cancer screenings, rather than referrers. Since Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms, or really any breast cancer screening aside from what you can do at home by yourself, SGK simply decided there was better use of its money.

To put that in words that even liberals can understand, SGK "defunded" (for certain values of defunded) PP because PP is not very good at providing cancer screenings.

Komen's "reversal" appears to be a rephrasing of their original policy shift. At this point, it is unclear what exactly is going on, other than PP is trying to bully SGK in some sort of mafia shakedown ("Nice charity, you got there. Would be a shame of somethin' were to happen to it"). Canonist Ed Peters (how do I get a title like that? I mean, aside from studying Canon Law) summed up what was going on pretty well. Of course, they have the media to assist them on the shakedown, and Get Religion has an excellent piece on the atrocious reporting of the story.

On Martyrdom.

Years ago, back when I went to the YMI day retreats, one of my group leaders asked us if we knew what it meant to be a martyr. Me, always the over-achiever, raised my arm high and proclaimed that it was someone who died for their faith. The missionaries laughed at me. "Not in America!" they proclaimed.

And I think they are right. The idea of feeding Catholics to lions, or burning them to death as was the fate of the Ugandan martyrs, seems highly unlikely. The American character is too averse to such open persecution, and the evil too blatant, to really grab hold in this country. So what does martyrdom look like in America?

(And you are fooling yourself if you think there aren't American martyrs. The world cannot simultaneously hate the Church and tolerate Her presence. A sinner hates nothing more than the guilt of his sin, and cannot help but harbor a grudge against those who reinforce that guilt by denouncing the sin.)

About once a year, a priest from Vladivostok, Russia, makes the tour of Orange County, preaching at parishes, and asking for support for the missionary work in Russia, undoing the evils of the Communists. He tells the story of what happened to the Church in Vladivostok at the beginning of the Revolution. Most of the city's inhabitants were Orthodox—too many to openly persecute—so the Soviets simply bombed the churches. One Easter Sunday, in front of all the faithful, they simply closed the Orthodox churches, save one, and blew them up, to be rebuilt for The Party's use. The Catholics were not so lucky. They were a small minority, and the Communists saw no reason to try and tolerate them. Catholics were simply rounded up and executed, and the city didn't notice much difference.

So there is strength in numbers. It's hard to imagine a relatively peaceful country killing off a fifth of its inhabitants (or even a twentieth, if we only count those who meet the bare minimum requirement of weekly Mass attendance). 60 million (or 15 million) is a lot of graves to fill. But the tactics of the Soviets may lend an insight. If there are too many to round up, simply keep them out of their churches.

Of course, even the American government closing churches is a bit too much to take seriously. But a literal shutting of doors is not necessary, and probably not even desired by the secularists. Instead, the tactic will be to keep them in their churches. Shut the doors with the faithful inside.

"Leave your religion at the church door," I suspect, will be the descriptive phrase for the age to come. If the world can't keep people from being religious, it can at least try to keep religious people from being in the world. And this is the persecution that we are already seeing.