Category Archives: Stupid People

How did parents get so stupid?

Leave a reply

Why do parents pretend that it’s hard to monitor what their children are doing online? I’m not just asking for a friend, I’m asking for myself, and for everyone else who knows that it’s not the job of the connected world to babysit your kids.

It’s not like parents have limited time or attention. We live in a world where it’s easier to be a housemaker than it’s ever been, due to the sheer number of appliances that trivialize tasks that used to take all day.

You no longer have to spend all day dragging clothing up and down a washboard, then hanging clothes out in the sun to dry. You can put them in a washer and then a dryer, then you can just walk off as they do what they do, then put the clothes away when they’re done.

People today don’t even seem to know what a washboard even is, to the point that both instances of the word in this article could’ve been replaced by spellcheck.

You’re not going to spend hours washing dishes, either. Automatic dishwashers are a thing. You just put dishes in them with some detergent, then let them run.

Vacuum cleaners themselves are already a luxury of the modern age, but now we have robots that do the job for you. Just tell them to get started from an app on your phone, then let them do their thing. You might not even have to be home as it happens.

There’s more. But if your parents and grandparents can raise children without these things, what makes matters more difficult for you in this age of climate control?

So basically, a stay-at-home parent has all day, every day, to monitor their child’s online activity like a hawk. There’s no excuse not to, certainly not because they were distracted by soap operas or something similarly asinine.

But wait, it actually gets easier! In addition to doing your job as a parent and actually monitoring what your children are doing on the tablet or whatever, there’s actually software which restricts how children can use these devices, some of which can be trivially activated on the User Interface level.

And if you know how, you can actually install software that makes it easier to monitor them. You may disagree with keyloggers on principle, but if it’s used by a parent to monitor their child’s online activity as a supplement to being present as they use their devices, then it’s use is justifiable.

To get right down to it, for a parent to do their job as a parent is easier than it’s ever been, eliminating any excuse for being lazy in this regard.

It’s not the job of the internet to babysit your children. If we did, they’d probably turn out like us. Think about whether that’s what you want.

Skeptic Officer Pushes Man Out Of Wheelchair, Arrests Him For Home Invasion

Leave a reply

I think we can agree that when a public servant carries out their duties, they generally get a pass. But when the servant is put in a position of power over other people, there’s much more on them to not act like a colossal smeghead.

Let’s have a look at one way a person could fail catastrophically in that regard: The officer who attempted to arrest a paralyzed man over an allegation that he kicked in a door.

You’ll likely find it evident what was wrong. But that’s assuming a typical level of intellect. The arresting officer was a special kind of savant who knows that skepticism is a sign of intellect, so he decided to take it to a whole other level.

When he met the man who was falsely accused, a man who was in a wheelchair, he called him out, saying that his alleged paralysis was a ruse.

Here he is, the arresting officer, Markenley Bolette:

This is the officer who wouldn’t extend the benefit of the doubt to a paralyzed man, who he knocked out of his wheelchair as he arrested him, insisting that he had to have somehow kicked in a door, then get into an altercation with a resident before somehow making a getaway on foot.

Before we jump to the conclusion that Bolette had already herped every last derp that was available on the market, then hocked them on eBay at scalper prices, let’s turn a look to the woman who made the complaint. Katherine Jensen had previously dated the accused, though it had been decades since the two last saw each other.

There are many reasons why you don’t date crazy. Among them being that there’s no telling how long she’ll stew over old wrongs and decide to get revenge in the most characteristically crazy way possible: with a bullshit allegation.

I don’t know why the relationship ended, but considering the facts surrounding this case, I think it’s reasonable to suspect that it was her fault.

For a bit more irony, let’s consider the name of the accused: Charles Read. For the arresting officer, the name Read probably triggered repressed memories of his time in the education system, when those judgemental teachers insisted that he develop a particular skill as a requirement for a middle school education.

To drive the point home that officer Bolette is something special, he insisted that Read’s paralysis was a ruse as he apparently sought assistance on how to proceed with the arrest, and another officer had to lay out for him just why it was unreasonable to expect a paralyzed man to invade a home. By kicking a door in. Then attempting to strangle its resident. Then make a getaway on foot.

I used to think that stupid people were harmless. They’d do stuff like lose track of how much is in their food stamp account before going to the store, or pour energy drinks into their lawnmowers, or leave their clothes to sit in a washer for days to find them crusted in mildew. They naturally harvest the consequences of their own unwise behaviors.

But I see now that I was wrong. Stupid people have a corrosive effect on the world around them. They’re the ones who nearly cause vehicular homicides because they pull out at intersections, assuming that other motorists also have a stop sign. They’re the ones who hot box in their apartments, creating the risk that their neighbors fail drug tests. Also, Hamas supporters.

Their effect is more corrosive still when they’re put into a position of power over other people.

I know that this is a bit of an old story, at this point. But that doesn’t mean that anyone should think it’s safe from my scrutiny. There may be a statute of limitations for crimes, but there is no statute of limitations for having the stupid.

You Might Have This Weird Superpower!

Leave a reply

In times past, I would have used the term “simple situational awareness” to refer to an ability that I thought that most people had. As it turns out, this was projection, and this ability is more rare than I thought.

This was what I’ve learned through a long history of nearly bumping into people who back up without looking, or seeing people strike up conversations in doorways.

To me, one aspect of situational awareness is a reasonable understanding of your current situation, and where it’s taking place. After a long time exercising this ability, it’s almost automatic. I’d walk into a room, and note it’s layout, the exits, and likely high-traffic areas that a reasonable person would not want to poke around in if they don’t want to be annoying.

It can also be the wisdom that comes with avoiding certain behaviors, if the location is such that the behavior had the potential to lead to an undesirable outcome. For example, it hope it’s obvious why it would be risky to play pin the tail on the donkey while on an industrial mezzanine.

It seems like I’m one of the few who have this ability, which is why one of my previous employers had to put up a sign telling employees not to gather in front of the lunch room door to chat it up. It’s awesome that they put the sign up, but it sucked that they had to.

Come to think of it, I don’t recall anyone in management or anyone in a leadership position failing in situational awareness to the point of holding up foot traffic. And it stands to reason, because if someone is going to posture as an intellectual better, they can at least exhibit intellect.

When it comes down to it, the purpose of the brain in animals is to allow for decision-making for mobile creatures. To make decisions in light of our environment is one of the key features of the brain. It’s expedient to survival.

So then, why are there so many people who lack situational awareness? I’m guessing that it’s because the nature of society provides some amount of insulation from some of the worst consequences of recklessness. Sure, some consequences are still there, but they’ve been reduced to the point that people have relaxed some of their basic survival skills.

And, as you might expect, stupidity has filled in the resulting gap.

So it seems like simple situational awareness isn’t so simple anymore, it’s become more like a superpower.

Is this a superpower that you have? If you can use it, please do.

Leftists are planning a one-day “economic blackout” for tomorrow. LOL.

1 Reply

Hey look, another stupid one-day boycott:

Pictured above is the gameplan for a left-wing one-day boycott of major businesses and services, in the hopes of sending a message. That message being, “we show them who really holds the power”.

The boycott is being pitched as non-partisan, but considering it’s traction among the left, it’s plainly a reaction on their part because they’re upset that they’re losing their grip on culture. The claim of being non-partisan is clearly intended as an attempt to expand leftists’ influence when they know that they are not culturally dominant.

They are not the “silent majority”, and the 2024 Presidential election provided the numbers to prove it.

Here’s a list of their extended gameplan, which makes mention of companies that have ditched DEI, such as Wal-Mart and Amazon:

You might be wondering, “Raizen, what are you doing sharing their gameplan? Doesn’t that help them?” I’ll explain why passing this info along doesn’t help them in the following list of reasons the boycott is almost certain to fail:

  • Boycotters prep for one-day boycotts by making their purchases in advance, or making up for them in the days after, so the companys’ bottom lines are often unaffected. This is especially the case with products such as gasoline.
  • Investors who learn of the boycott in advance can reallocate their investments, and thus profit off the boycott.
  • Imagine consoomers not consooming for a day.
  • Some people may decide to spend an inordinate amount on the day of the boycott, out of spite.
  • People tend to have less money when they don’t understand how the world works. For that reason, if leftist foot soldiers decide not to spend for a day, it’s probably not going to be very impactful.

And a bunch of leftists presume to tell the rest of us about economics.

So no, it’s not necessary for you to make a big ol’ shopping list and go wild on Friday. The left-wing one-day boycott is largely self-defeating.

And with how much better off companies that ditch DEI are likely to be in the long-term, they probably won’t much care.

We’ve found the absolute fastest way to undermine your own cause.

Leave a reply

The race is over. We have a loser. She wasn’t the last one to reach the finish line, no. Before the starting gun even sounded, she was going full sprint in the opposite direction. Her desiccated corpse has been found, and it’s been drained of all fluid by reason of the many nicks and scratches she accumulated in her determined push through the dense bramble of abject failure.

I’m talking about Sammy Sludge, the dirtbag who went on a killing spree in a Christian school before personally ending any possibility for any redemption arc for herself.

And no, Sammy Sludge wasn’t her real name. As I see it, if anyone commits her category of crime, they should lose their real name, and instead be remembered by a demeaning monicker that they’d have been certain to have hated. Sure, she called herself “Sam”, but she also called the people she hated “sludge” in her manifesto (if her writing could be called that), so she’d probably hate to be remembered as “Sammy Sludge”.

So, Sammy Sludge, it is.

So, what did she do? She turned a gun on a few children in a Christian school, before turning it on herself. Why did she do it? Because she hated men. You know, half of all people who exist. A biological sex that is necessary for the continuity of humanity.

I’m not accusing her of thinking this through.

Her “manifesto” indicated that she was a TERF, a form of feminist which rejects even trans women. And her social media footprint indicates that she was interested in mass killings, particularly the Columbine shooting.

She was a TERF-orrist.

So, can we as a society address the brain-rot that drives people like Sammy Sludge to commit the kind of crime that she did, at just 15 years old? Maybe it’s about time that we admit that certain ideologies, when believed in with sincerity, turns people into bad people. Do we need more evidence?

Sammy Sludge, with her final act, undermined her own cause. Is there anything else a person could do to make it look worse?

Obviously, she doesn’t represent everyone from her own cause. I get that. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t undermine it. And that’s just what happened.

If Sammy Sludge was a victim in any sense, it’s that she was fed a completely one-sided argument in favor of a pile of bullshit, which she then believed in with sincerely. Her mind, as defective as it evidently was, was unable to mount a sufficient defense against the assault against her intelligence that turned her into a foot soldier for a debased cause.

What Sammy Sludge left behind was a world in which men continue to live, nearly all of whom are more virtuous than herself.

How is it possible that Walz doesn’t know what a whoopie pie is?

Leave a reply

The following is a video of J.D. Vance ordering donuts. According to the dead-enders, there’s supposed to be something wrong with the way that he’s ordering donuts. Let’s see if you can spot it.

What I like about the phrase “it’s worse than you even think” is the admission that normal people wouldn’t see anything amiss, but this isn’t hateful enough for leftist self-supposed intellectual superiors. What they want you to find disqualifying is how non-specific his order is.

Give me some glaze, sprinkle-themed stuff, some of these cinnamon rolls … yeah, whatever makes sense.

Which is exactly how you’d expect someone to order donuts if they don’t eat the stuff, but are buying them in quantity for other people, such as for a major event. But when you understand how litigious the hyper-left is, then you’d understand why they’d tend more towards specifying exact quantities of each variety of donut, even when it doesn’t make much difference. After all, they’re donuts. Who the fuck cares?

In an apparent jab at Vance, VP candidate Tim Walz stated at a bake shop, “Look at me, I have no problem picking out donuts.”

Yes we have receipts, and here you go. Just be warned that the audio quality is not great, and you might have to turn your volume up to hear him. It’s at about 1:26 that the line comes, though you’re free to watch the rest for context.

Okay, did you see the donuts that he picked out? Me neither:

Those are whoopie pies. Tim Walz’s attempted pwn just proved that he can’t tell a donut from a whoopie pie.

I get that the hyper-left is so disconnected with the typical voter, and therefore don’t understand why anyone would vote for Trump. But that doesn’t mean that they should get so full of themselves that they could just nominate anyone in their party and expect an undeniable, slam-dunk victory. If they’re going to take campaign donations, they have a moral obligation to put their best forward, and Harris-Walz is not it.

When someone picks out whoopie pies, and seconds later proclaim their brilliance in their ability to pick out donuts, that should give you an idea of the kind of illusory superiority that we’re dealing with, here.

But it gets worse, as Walz’s fan base on the very same post are not much better, as illustrated by these cherry-picked examples:

It’s sobering to think that Tomer’s vote counts just as much as someone who can tell the difference between a whoopie pie and a donut. But on the bright side, he’d probably get lost on the way to the polling place, anyway. So he’s probably not going to have much effect on society, after all.

Prior to filming, he probably already knocked a few back. But how much would it take to not tell a donut from a whoopie pie? I once drank to the point of throwing up, but wasn’t that impaired.

Could never what? Mistake a whoopie pie for a donut? Is this really what H.A. Davis considers firing on all cylinders? Because if Walz were to call an alligator a gecko, that’d probably blow her mind.

Okay, now I know that these people are trolling. Just how many people out there would mistake a whoopie pie for a donut?

Do I have to spell it out?

If space aliens were to abduct a few of us, and then stick them in some simulation that crudely apes our culture in the same way that a hamster cage crudely apes a hamster’s natural environment, I’d understand if they’d make this mistake. However, for a human being that was born and raised on earth, to mistake a whoopie pie for a donut would be totally unacceptable, just like how it would be unacceptable to mistake linguine with ramen, or grape juice with pinot noir. If you’re from this planet, you don’t make that mistake.

Oh yeah, Walz knows his donuts. You know what? Screw it. I’m giving Phil the benefit of the doubt. He’s trolling.

Desperate for any amount of intelligence, I scrolled through the comments, and finally found some:

Why did that take so long?

I know what you might be thinking, “What does one’s ability to tell a donut from a whoopie pie have to do with how to run a society?” And the answer is, if someone can’t tell the difference between the two, the expectations aren’t high. To see a whoopie pie and think, “donut”, doesn’t suggest the ability to convey their economic philosophy beyond just saying “capitalism”, “communism”, or “socialism”. You might expect such a person to attempt to sell bicycles by insisting that they can do everything that cars can do. From a position of sincerity.

It doesn’t take a Rhode scholar to comprehend that something is wrong.

The “Free Money Glitch” Shows That Stupid People Really Are All Around Us

Leave a reply

When I first heard about the “free money glitch” that was trending, I had questions. The first was, “How’s that working out?” And it turns out that the answer is, “Not well.” My next question was, “Is TikTok somehow involved?” And you could probably guess the answer.

A trend on TikTok shows people going to ATMs to take advantage of a “glitch” that lets them withdraw arbitrarily large sums of cash, and then showing themselves reveling over handfuls of squishy money.

I’m not going to share how it’s done, partly because I don’t want to catch the ire of the financial institution involved. Picking a fight with teams of billionaires is usually not a great idea, as a bunch of TikTokers are starting to find out.

While it’s sad enough that people are uploading videos of themselves committing check fraud to social media, having no idea what could possibly go wrong, it’s sadder still that enough people are falling for this to line up around city blocks for their turn to do the same.

You could probably guess what comes next. The same people ended up with their bank accounts frozen, with negative balances in the tens of thousands of dollars. And possibly also face arrest, because, you know, check fraud.

If you’re wondering whether so many people could be so stupid, then you probably never worked retail. When you work retail, you’re going to see upwards of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people in a day.

As for me, ten years of my life went to waste on that bullshit, which is ten years too many. Afterwards, I went to school for Electronics, reasoning that if something is difficult to learn, the payoff must be great. So, I really applied myself and studied hard, and as most other students in my major dropped out or switched to something else, I got great grades and eventually graduated with honors. After that, I spent about a year in an electronics repair job where I made a dollar more per hour than someone stocking shelves at a nearby grocery store. I did get out of that place, but I was there long enough to see some circuit boards come back for repair again, because the customers did the same thing with it that they did before.

So, at that point, I still hadn’t quite managed to completely get away from stupid people. And I learned a sobering lesson about correlating effort and hard work to better outcomes.

But yeah, stupid people exist. And if you’ve worked retail, the memories of them that you haven’t successfully suppressed will be quite vivid. Sure, most people will be completely ordinary, and therefore, not memorable. However, 10% of the population are on the leftmost 10% of the area of the bell curve, and your experience with them might stick with you.

I still remember the guy who wasted ten minutes of time I could’ve spent on something else searching for some mystery product that he insisted that we regularly stocked. Eventually, I found out that he wanted onion rolls, except he was pronouncing “onion” in his own bullshit way, and I didn’t find out until he finally said “onion” normally. No, he didn’t end up getting jackslapped, because it just wasn’t worth it.

Or the one who was on a program that required her to only redeem her voucher for specific products of a specific size, but she tried redeeming for a box of breakfast cereal that was the wrong size. After finding out this wouldn’t work, she just threw the box down the cereal aisle. The program that gave her the voucher was intended to assist single women with children, so I had to contemplate that someone like her procreated.

There’s more, but I’ll just get to the point: stupid people exist, and they exist in great numbers. If you can avoid working with the general public for a living, then you’re going to be happier than people who do.

It’s no surprise to me that there are enough stupid people out there to line up around a city block to get what they believe to be free money from an ATM, entirely unaware of the crime that they’re committing, and that they’d be expected to pay back the money that they’d steal.

They’re no longer my problem, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t laugh when they do stupid shit, and face the obvious consequences.

I’ll leave this with some food for thought: Much of the internet is tricking people into doing things. Also, TikTok is corrosive bullshit.

The Chris Chan Body Cam Arrest Footage Is So Insane It’s Crazy

Leave a reply

It’s finally happened, the body cam footage of the arrest of Chris Chan has been uploaded:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f1agQE9Hr08

URL: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f1agQE9Hr08

If anybody has any doubt that Chris Chan believes what he goes on about on social media, there he is, stating it as matter of fact to a squad of arresting officers. I bring this up because there are more than a few people out there who read about Chris, and have their doubts, like he has to be playing a character online, like all those TikTok celebs who are willing to do just about anything for only a little bit of e-clout.

But there he is, rattling off to a bunch of officers about Sonichus and Rosechus in what could be the most serious situation that he could find himself in. Because in his mind, all this stuff about dimensional merges is as real as can be. When he goes on and on about the things the officer’s children consume to stave off boredom, there he is, speaking of them as though they aren’t just made-up bullshit.

Consider the implications of this for Chris’ other delusions. He probably actually believes that he’s the most important person alive, with millions of people counting on him to bring about a world where cartoon characters coexist among us. He probably actually believes that he can will himself into a woman by listening to sound waves on YouTube. He probably actually believes that he’s a goddess and the living incarnation of an old game console. His pony persona is milk to that breakfast cereal of delusion that he keeps spooning into his face because he can’t get enough of it.

But it just keeps getting crazier. As Chris Chan is led away to a place where people like him belong, the officers take note of unusual cars gathered around. For a moment, they entertain the thought that they’re arresting someone who’s on a watch list (a strong possibility), and they may have to speak to a few feds. But no, these were a bunch of weens chasing Chris Chan for clout. From the perspective of the officers, hearing the exchange between Chris Chan and online influencers had to have been surreal.

But the climax was when Chris was conversing with the officer driving him to the station. That was when Chris was explaining the dimensional merge, and the opportunity to meet characters like Spider Man. I could easily imagine the officer accidentally rear-ending another vehicle while attempting to comprehend the madness he was hearing.

And then, with no prompt whatsoever, Chris spills it about his polyamorous marriage with fictional characters, including his own creation Magi Chan and the Pokémon Mewtwo.

Let’s hear it for the officers, who maintained their composure throughout the whole ordeal. It couldn’t have been easy. And, without question, they played their part in making society a safer place for the rest of us.

But they had homework to do. It’s easy to imagine that at least one of them went home and looked up just how famous Chris Chan is online, and ended up bingeing Geno Samuel’s long-running documentary. And then probably entertained the idea of running off to somewhere like French Polynesia to escape all the attention they might end up getting.

Without a doubt, the Chris Chan arrest body cam footage is the single funniest piece of Chris Chan media ever produced, and it’s going to be hyper-analyzed by autists the world over for years to come.

Hold on… Do they actually believe this?

Leave a reply

I know that we’re well beyond the point of taking old media seriously. But I would have imagined that The New Republic would have been one of the publications that would have preferred that we go back to the good old days. You know, the days in which people were less connected and less informed, and willing to take old media seriously with big stupid grins.

It would seem otherwise, unless they were really sincere with their new cover, which depicts the man you’re voting for this November with a toothbrush mustache:

Wow, depicting Trump as Hitler! What a stunning and brave move, especially in the current political climate!

I would have thought that “American fascism” would have involved propagandizing the American people, but it seems like the American Hitler has a Jewish daughter, three Jewish grandchildren, authored a peace treaty between the Jewish state and a handful of formerly antisemitic states, and was the only president in the last few decades to not start a new war.

Intellectual dead-ends have been accusing their political rivals of being fascists for so long that it’s just become background noise, like the old music you hear at grocery stores. And I have little doubt that they believe it, because I know that stupid people actually exist.

What I’m starting to wonder about is whether their intellectual betters who have been propagandizing them are actually intelligent, as disingenuous as they may be, or whether they actually believe what they are saying.

Communism survivors have relayed that the point of struggle sessions was to get them to declare their loyalty to the state, whether they were sincere or not, because the very act of making such a declaration had a psychological effect on the one making it, where they eventually believed what they were made to say.

In the same sense, did the propagandistic arm of the establishment finally succeed in convincing someone with their pure, untreated verbal sewage? That is, did they finally succeed in convincing themselves?

What’s especially worrying is that if people can be convinced that someone has been doing something grossly immoral, it becomes easier to convince them to commit acts of violence against them. In light of this, such blatant defamation and dehumanization is not a harmless crime. Left-wing violence has long been a problem, but with the propaganda arm of the left egging them on, I fear it’s only going to get worse.

If the U.S. is heading toward a civil war, media pundits will have played their part in bringing it about. But trust me when I say that nobody should want it. Because the cost would be way too high, even for the winner.

Considering this, irresponsible journalism should be subjected to the ridicule that it richly merits. And with its new cover, The New Republic has certainly earned it.

The Emperor Has No Clothes.

Leave a reply

I sometimes find myself thinking that I have to explain old fairy tales, because it’s apparent that most of the people around us are yet to glean the subtle lessons behind them.

Such is the case when it comes to the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. To sum it up: A conman went to the emperor and sold him a new set of clothes. He was able to convince the emperor that the clothes were something special, when in reality, they were nothing, and when the emperor wore them, he was completely bare.

The emperor was so enamored with his new clothes, that he decided to parade about while wearing them. At no point did any of the emperor’s servants or advisors correct him, and he set out down the streets wearing his new “clothes”. And, for that matter, none of the assembled crowds questioned what they were seeing, either. They agreed with assent that the emperor’s new clothes were magnificent.

But then, one guy spoke up. “Why is the emperor naked?”, he asked. Though one might think it was the most obvious thing in the world, only one guy either noticed or cared to acknowledge what was really going on.

While we might like to imagine that the guy was praised for his insight, the people around him “corrected” him, saying that the emperor wasn’t naked, he was wearing new clothes. They were either saying this because they were just that ignorant, or because they were just that dead-set against gainsaying the emperor.

And when the emperor heard what the man was saying, the emperor was angry, because if he was right, then this meant that the emperor, who was supposed to be the wisest and most insightful man in all the land, was duped by a con artist.

The specifics of the story will vary depending on who is telling it, possibly blunting the intended moral of the story to various degrees, and diminish it’s commentary on society and human psychology. But the main takeaway is usually either that there isn’t much benefit to being the one person who sees what’s wrong, and speaks up about it, or that if no one else in the room is pointing out what’s wrong, that makes it your duty.

If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, I’ll get right to it: The emperor is bare-ass nude. He has been for a long time, and the corporate establishment and much of the body politick refused to acknowledge it. His peepee is showing, and rather than squint to be sure, they instead turned and said, “Nuh-uh! Stupidhead!”

But then last week’s debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden had taken place. And Biden failed miserably. Not only did people finally start to notice that the emperor was naked, there was his willy, on full display.

Some people coped. There were those who pointed out that Biden had to have had a cold, because his voice was raspy. But I think we’ve all had the cold at some point, and we know that the cold doesn’t cause us to lose our train of thought in mid-sentence, nor does it cause us to ramble incoherently.

We got this routine for years, especially the few of us left who still trust the corporate press to be something besides the propaganda arm of the establishment uniparty, or its controlled opposition. “Biden is actually spry, I’ve seen it behind closed doors!” they’d tell us (and themselves), but it was hard to tell whether it was legitimate ignorance or cope. I know that the political left tends to be more algorithmically segregated, but imagine ignorance to the degree that a person sees someone like Joe Biden, and thinks “lucid”.

Imagine how terrifying and confusing that the world must be to someone who is that isolated from reality. None of us have to labor our minds to imagine a world where the costs of rent, food, and utilities have been skyrocketing, because that’s been our reality for the last few years. But there’s a difference between those who are so ignorant that they’ll circumvent the part of the brain that’s supposed to be inquisitive, and end up attributing price increases to “rich people being greedy”, and those who know that the cost of energy and taxes on property are going up, resulting in higher overhead costs of running businesses, necessitating increases in prices to the end of survival. The difference being, the latter have been actually paying attention.

A basic understanding of economics also helps. And I maintain that that’s the bare minimum to having a political opinion that’s worth anything.

But now, with last week’s debate between the presidential frontrunners, those who have succeeded in isolating themselves from the reality of the matter are now experiencing the kind of dread that’s comparable to the existential horror that comes with the contemplation of souls disappearing when people die. Joe Biden is not all there, and with only about four months until the presidential election, is replacing him as the nominee something that can be realistically accomplished?

Then there’s the way that Trump handled himself. While his typical poise was there, he was able to rein in his usual bombastic tone, and was surprisingly well-behaved. Whether you agree with him or not, he was able to manage a level of decorum while on stage.

Up until that point, Trump was the left’s Hitler, considering him completely incapable of saying anything that could be construed as reasonable, and whatever he might have said that might have been reasonable certainly wouldn’t have passed through the occluded lens of the left’s algorithmic isolation, and into their hermetically-sealed echo chambers.

But, if they tuned into the debate, then they would have actually heard him speak, and even if they weren’t convinced, anyone who was reasonable among them would have had to admit that there were compelling reasons for the convictions of his following. And when you realize the potential for this happening, the left’s insistence on not listening to the other side speak naturally suggests itself.

However, last week’s debate made his insight difficult to avoid. While that may have been revealing depending on who you are, last week’s debate showed us something even more revealing.

The emperor has no clothes.