First it was "The Science", now it's "The Ukraine"

Cruise missile liberals lob spitballs at Russia because they now believe in "The Ukraine".

Intellectual dishonesty is the surest way to buttress an indefensible position. As a tactic, it is meant to erode confidence in one’s ability to see with their own eyes, and view the world through the corrupted lens of the person who has weaponized it for personal or political gain. It adheres to whatever dogma is being promoted in power circles, serving as its handmaiden. It brandishes a torch - not as any kind of beacon lighting the way towards mutual understanding - but as a bludgeoning device aimed at heterodox viewpoints.

“Mutual” implies public input in policies that affect ordinary people’s lives, and carries the risk of rejection. For this reason, these policies must be presented as top-down, “emergency” measures that the public must accept. Refuse, or otherwise protest them, and you’ll be called a “nazi”. Never mind, that it is a literal Nazi regime that western governments are defending in the Ukraine at this moment. You can always rely on your own intellectual dishonesty to reverse-engineer truth to fit your own set of facts. Whether it’s “The Science”, or more recently “The Ukraine”, the deliberate deployment of divisive dogma is intended to subvert reasoning, and repel all critiques of it with the implied threat of ex-communication from society.

In politics and punditry, bad faith arguments rely on carefully scripted talking points and cherry-picked facts, delivered in a patronizing voice in language meant to obfuscate meaning, rather than convey clarity. It speaks to a domestic audience in a soft, placating voice intended to make toddlers (and voters) feel further diminished in stature and relevance. When speaking on an international stage, it hollers and pounds its chest to compensate for its own diminished stature and relevance. It confuses diplomacy with painful techniques of hair removal. It plays the victim while shellacking someone else’s balls.

In this latest crisis in the Ukraine, intellectual dishonesty has once again been deployed by our own oligarchs in their latest gangster scuffle against their Russian rivals. The correct application of intellectual dishonesty requires an operating manual. The weakness of one’s position can be construed as a strength if one knows how to wield intellectual dishonesty correctly and with impunity.

Step one: Paint your opponent as a depraved fiend. Depending on which oil or gas fields he lives near, make him either a cave dweller or a medieval bloodsucker.

Step two: Take a cue from Israel, and move the timeline of a conflict to erase your own culpability in igniting it in the first place.

Step three: Mobilize the left to denounce whoever it is that is making white Europeans feel unsafe. (See Israel) Have them replace their social media profile picture with a flag of a majority white country.

Step four: Mobilize the right to do the same thing, just focus less on the “democracy” angle, and more on the “communist” butt kicking side of things.

Step five: Sit back and wait for the spoils of war to flow into your pipelines.

Step six: Come election time, remind your own oligarchs of your delivered promise, and wait for their campaign donations to start flowing.