Pleasant Valley Sunday

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday, charcoal burning everywhere.

— Gerry Goffin

Facing a $1.3 billion defamation suit, Donald Trump's wormy shyster Sidney Powell now says "no reasonable person would conclude" her claims of election-rigging "were truly statements of fact."

Yet, thanks in part to Powell, 64,829,709 adult Americans believe Trump won and are backing bills in 33 states designed to suppress Democrats' votes in the future.

What's wrong with them? How can they be—to borrow Powell's defense—so unreasonable?

A logician would say they're guilty of the fallacy known as the argument from incredulity.

These 65 million adult Americans claim that, since they can't believe Trump lost, to say he did is simply false. 

Their flawed reasoning looks like this:

1. We can’t explain or imagine how this thing—Trump's loss—can be true.
   
   
2. If we can't explain or imagine how the thing is true, then it must be false.
   
   
3. Therefore, this thing is false.

Their second premise is clearly unsound. (I can't explain or imagine, for example, how a paper cut can be worse than a knife cut; but I don't therefore deny that it is.)

Why 65 million adult Americans can be so patently illogical is mystifying—until you consider the Pleasant Valley pseudo-reality in which they live.

As conceived by philosopher Josef Pieper, a pseudo-reality is a deliberately maintained "fiction," a pathological interpretation of reality. 

A pseudo-reality allows anyone who lives in it to shape the world to suit his biases, and to accommodate others who, like himself, can't accept the world as it is.

A pseudo-reality is, in effect, a playground for psychopaths. It can persist, Pieper says, only as long as the kids outside the playground—in other words, the normal kids—don't challenge it.

Writing in the 1970s, Pieper's prime example of a pseudo-reality was Nazism. 

Today's prime example is the GOP. 

Its members are all delusional psychopaths, water-carriers for a destructive lie. As such, they cannot be logical. 

Because logic only applies to the real world.

No Time for Fascists

Nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge

from an association between us.

— Bertrand Russell

Social media provides no sanctuary from fascists. They lurk behind every rock.

An example.

I'm a new member of "Steven Wright Quotes," a Facebook group that recycles the "best of" the quirky standup's material.

Fascists have joined the group for the countless opportunities it offers to comment on Wright's old gags—even though they're apolitical.

Lines like, "I planted some bird seed; a bird came up," and "I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize."

Facebook is funny 24/7; but I don't have that much time.

And I have less time for fascists.

In 1962, the head of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley, invited the philosopher Bertrand Russell to debate. Russell declined by letter:

Dear Sir Oswald,

I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. 

It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterized the philosophy and practice of fascism.

I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from an association between us.

I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.

Yours sincerely,

Bertrand Russell

So, you might ask, how do you spot a fascist?

It's easy.

Based on the work of historian Robert Paxton, a fascist is:

• Obsessed with community decline and his own victimhood
  
  
• Obsessed with the need for "cleansing" lower social groups
  
  
• Obsessed with plots and the need for redemptive violence
  
  
• Obsessed with the tropes, metaphors, code-words, and jargon he learns from fascist propagandists
  
  
• Obsessed with the need for a national chieftain, who alone can incarnate the nation's historical destiny
  

When you encounter a fascist, do not engage; because, as Russell said, "nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge."

UPDATE: Since publishing this post, I have dropped out of "Steven Wright Quotes." The administrators cannot keep up with the fascists who leave their Troglodytic comments there.

White Noise

When these black fiends keep their hands off the throats of the women of the South, the lynching will stop.

— Rep. Thomas Sisson

I despise Sen. Ron Johnson.

He postures as a "maverick," when he's merely a chickenshit White Supremacist who thinks it's gutsy to preface race-baiting with "this could get me in trouble."

Were he brave, he'd speak with candor, as Rep. Thomas Sisson did a century ago during the Congressional debate of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. Instead, he employs tropes.

Fortunately, Sen. Bob Menendez has called Johnson out on the Senate floor.

"I get no one likes to be called racist, but sometimes there's just no other way to describe the use of bigoted tropes that for generations have threatened Black lives by stoking white fear," Menendez said. 

"For one of our colleagues to cast those who attacked the Capitol as harmless patriots while stoking the fear of Black Americans is like rubbing salt in an open wound."

The gutless Johnson has denied he race-baits, saying, "There was nothing racial about my comments, nothing whatsoever.

"This isn't about race. It's about riots."

Sheer disingenuousness.

Imagine Rep. Sisson saying, "Lynching isn't about race. It's how Southerners practice knot-tying."

Crawl back into Mom's rectum, Sen. Johnson. 

We're sick of your white noise.

Hardened

To conquer a nation, first disarm its citizens.

― Adolf Hitler

After the Las Vegas sniper took out 60 concert-goers three years ago, Bill O'Reilly called the killings "the price of freedom." 

"Government restrictions will not stop psychopaths from harming people," he said.

To protect ourselves, according to O'Reilly, we need guns, the more—and more lethal—the better. 

"The Second Amendment is clear: Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection. Even the loons."

The two latest mass shootings prove to me that, for fascists like O'Reilly, freedom is dear—and life, cheap.

That's a degree of callousness most Americans find hard to swallow.

Callous, by the way, was borrowed seven centuries ago from the Latin callosus, meaning "thick-skinned." 

Callous means "unfeeling" and "hardened in the mind."

Callousness is a personality trait, I've noticed, among all fascists. 

Psychologists say it stems from self-loathing.

They're probably right.

Pulp Fiction

If these yarns were trash, then they were the best trash. 

They were trash for connoisseurs of trash.

― Don Hutchison

Frank Munsey dreamed big.

A mid-level manager for Western Union, Munsey quit his job and moved to New York in September 1882, with the dream of becoming a publisher. 

In less than two months he launched Golden Argosy, a monthly boys' magazine he conceived as a replacement for the "dime novels" so popular at the time.

But Munsey had to scramble for readers—boys worked long and hard to spare a dime in the 1880s; and many couldn't—and after four years found himself going broke.

Rather than give up his dream, Munsey repackaged Golden Argosy.

His decision gave birth to an industry. 

First, he shortened the name of his faltering magazine and shrank its physical dimensions by 60%. He also replaced its expensive cotton-paper pages with wood-pulp, a move that allowed him to price Argosy at just five cents a copy.

Most importantly, Munsey expanded the magazine's audience to include adult men.

Argosy became a runaway hit, attracting over 500,000 monthly readers. 

To keep his audience coming back, Munsey made sure his "pulp" dished up every sort of story the American male craved—romances, adventures, sex stories, war stories, crime stories, mysteries, Western tales, historical tales, and sci-fi thrillers.

Appearing in droves, copycats soon launched competing pulps—by the hundreds. 

Within a few years, they crowded the racks of drugstores, newsstands, tobacco shops and confectioneries nationwide. 

Their titles included such gems as Black Mask, Marvel, Nick Carter, Clues, Dime Detective, Nickle Western, Fight Stories, Railroad Stories, Pirate Stories, Saucy Stories, Pep Stories, Spicy Adventure, Weird Tales, Wild West Weekly, Dare-Devil Aces and The Mysterious Wu Fang.

Not only did publishers cash in on the pulp-fiction craze, but writers did, too.

About 1,300 of them wrote short stories for two cents a word, in order to feed men's insatiable demand for escape.

While most pulp-fiction writers are forgotten today, some are well remembered—even lionized.

Among the latter are William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Earle Stanley Gardner, H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke.

A paper shortage during World War II, the debut of the 25-cent "pocketbook," and the proliferation of movies, radio programs, and TV shows displaced the pulps.

Bleeding readers, magazines like Dime Detective and Dare-Devil Aces simply shuttered.

Those that didn't abandoned fiction altogether, moving into the category of "men's magazines" and devoting their lurid pages to topics like Nazi sadists, serial killers, Bigfoot, and the Bermuda Triangle. 

I still remember seeing those throwbacks in the confectioner's stores in the early 1960s, on the racks above the comic books and the copies of Mad. 

By then, the age of the pulps was over.

"The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters were forced to be literate," pulp-fiction writer Isaac Asimov lamented.