Home > People Can Be Idiots, Republican Stupidity > When You Think about It, the Lack of Reasoning Makes Perfect Sense

When You Think about It, the Lack of Reasoning Makes Perfect Sense

May 7th, 2012

Heartlandboard

The Heartland Institute is a conservative “think tank” (read: propaganda engine) set upon supporting conservative and corporate agendas. Aside from denying global warming, the institute has famously challenged the adverse effects of cigarette smoke, opposes public health care and education, and essentially supports privatizing almost everything government does. So one cannot expect them to exactly come from a place of reason if their purpose is so deeply set in supporting positions not achieved by reason. When you are so invested in issues that deny the obvious because they fail to benefit the political and economic agenda you want to believe in, basic logic tends to fly out the window.

Even so, the billboards on climate change had me puzzled for a while, in that they seemed so stupid, so nonsensical, that I figured I was missing the point. I mean, a fifth-grader could figure out that even bad people can believe in true things. Adolph Hitler believed that pi equals 3.14159! Do you?

Seriously, that does not even pass the laugh test. Trying to apply guilt-by-association to common-sense facts is, well, stupid. It truly puts on display how divorced from basic logic people like those at Heartland really are.

  1. Troy
    May 7th, 2012 at 10:41 | #1

    you can fool some of the people all of the time . . .

    people don’t really think. They know what they want to believe and look for rationalizations to support that.

    The USA is so, so screwed.

    Wish I could figure out what’s going to happen with Japan this decade and next. AFAICT you guys are pretty dysfunctional politically, too.

  2. Troy
    May 7th, 2012 at 12:14 | #2

    “Climbing Takao” in your sidebar from 5 years ago!

    I loved that hike. Did it at least once a year as a sanity-saver — not during GW though!

    This was pre-car ownership and I rode my bicycle around Tokyo everywhere still so I was in great shape in the 1990s. I remembering jogging up the final steps like Rocky, LOL.

    Alas, that was about as far into nature I got in Japan. 戻れば、 I hope I can find the discipline (and have the resources) to maybe live in nature like in Izu, and only come into Tokyo once a month or so.

    Or maybe even try living in Shikoku! Dunno if I’d like that or not, seeing as I moved into the gaijin ghetto of Hiroo as soon as I could afford it.

  3. May 7th, 2012 at 23:28 | #3

    I hadn’t seen this before and it made my head hurt. I have to go to bed now with a cold towel on my forehead and hope my brains are not too damaged to go on functioning normally. Who do I sue?

Comments are closed.