Evil Loves Stupid

This post was primarily prompted by this excellent comment made by IB in response to my post Crocodile Dumbdee Strikes Again:

“sklyjd and many others like him have a completely incoherent worldview. It has no foundation and it contradicts itself. Also, many who subscribe to this way of thinking have no self awareness at all, which brings me to my real point. What I find so chilling is that I don’t think evil can see itself or recognize itself. We people tend to just rationalize and justify everything we do. Some of the worst evil is often sold to you as being, ‘for your own good’ or for ‘the common good.’ Almost no one gets up in the morning determined to just do evil like a supervillain.”

The thought that evil cannot recognize itself is indeed chilling.
It is precisely because “Almost no one gets up in the morning determined to just do evil” that evil involves almost always deception, lies and seduction.

Therefore, we have to ask the following question:´
If you were a con artist what kind of person would you wish to be the target of your efforts?

Obviously, you wouldn’t want that person to be smart, knowledgeable and wise.
Obviously, you wouldn’t want that person to have a healthy dose of scepticism.
Obviously, you wouldn’t want that person to understand logic and reason, so you can fool that person more easily.
Obviously, you wouldn’t want that person to have any self awareness.
Obviously, you would want that person to be very trustful of authorities in politics, science, religion or goverment so that you can fool the person by giving yourself the air of authority.
Obviously, you would want that person to be unwilling to test its own views and assumptions. Once such a person made a falsehood part of its own views it’s extremely hard to correct the falsehood.
Obviously, you would want that person to be as stupid as possible.

Obviously, evil loves stupid.

There are two kinds of stupid people.
Those very rare, genuinly stupid people who are born stupid and who are going to die stupid.
The overwhelming majority who are willfully stupid.

A perfect example for the first kind is our old friend sklyjd with whom I recently had an exchange of comments and posts.
I don’t say this as an insult or for the sake of being offensive. It’s just a statement of fact.

How do I know that sklyjd is genuinly stupid?
He still objects to a definition of evil which he himself has shown to be mostly true.
Still fixated with the covid “vaccines”, he still keeps using an argument I’ve definitely debunked and buried a long time ago.
He keeps insisting that the covid “vaccines” prevented long term health problems for many people.
That’s so stupid that it hurts. NO ONE KNOWS the long term effects of the wuhan virus or the “vaccines”. Both have been around less than 3 years.
While admitting that we cannot know the longterm effects of the virus he came up with an even more insane answer.
His reply at the time: Because we don’t know the longterm effects of the corona virus we should vaccinate people.

That’s nutjob logic for you: Because the virus MIGHT BE more damaging than we think it is, we should inject people with stuff that MIGHT ALSO BE more damaging than we think it is and wich MAY BE much more damaging than the virus itself.
At any other time prior to the wuhan virus this would have been considered medical malpractice and utter recklessness.

Back to the main topic.
Because most stupid people are willfully stupid, the stupidy can be reversed.
However, this is a herculean task.
Military experts often say “Amateurs talk about strategy. Professionals talk about logistics.”
Logistics is everything that has to do with supplying the men who are fighting on the front with everything they need to keep fighting (clothing, food, ammunition, arms, fuel etc.).

By reversing stupidity we can cut off the supply line of evil. This is no easy task and we cannot expect quick, decisive victories. This is a war of attrition.
It is not easy but it is possible. I know because I changed my political views and my views on religion radically. That process took years.

The first breaktrough is the toughest one to achieve but once you can convince someone that he is wrong on ONE thing it’s much easier and much more likely that the same person says: “I was wrong on this one thing. Maybe I’m wrong on other things too.”
Your best weapon is the question rather than the statement. Use it as often as you can. Statements can be easily dismissed and ignored. A question forces your interlocutor to think.

Sometimes the fight against stupidity and evil may seem utterly futile and hopeless but that might be a totally false perception.

On March 17, 1990 a spectacular boxing fight took place. Later dubbed the fight of the decade. the controversy that this fight sparked, lives to this day.
The two boxers, both in their prime, were Julio César Chávez and Meldrick Taylor. From the start Taylor dominated thanks to his phenomenal handspeed and quick movements and to most of the spectators it looked like Taylor was winning round after round.

Only few could see what was really happening. While Taylor responded to every punch by Chavez with 3 or 4 punches, Chavez hit harder and did more damage than Taylor. While it was obvious that Taylor’s eyes were swelling only few could see what kind of punishment Taylor was taking. In round 11 Taylor was ahead on points and all he had to do to win was to stay on his feet.

In the final round (round 12) Chavez desperately tried to knock out Taylor (his only path to victory). Finally, with less than 25 seconds to go Chavez knocked Taylor to the floor with a crushing blow. Taylor got on his feet and was using the ropes to stay on his feet. The referee counted to 8 and asked Taylor twice if he was OK. Taylor’s response was only a blank stare and with 2 seconds to go the referee stopped the fight. Chavez won by by TKO. The referee’s decision remains controverial but from this day forward Taylor’s health quickly deteriorated.

The moral of the story: Perceptions can be misleading. Even Chavez himself could not truly know what Taylor’s internal state was and he might very well have had for a second that sense of hopelessness and futility.
The effect of Chavez’ punches was cumulative and just as he had no way of knowing when the tiping point would be reached, we have no way of knowing when our efforts will cause our opponent to reach that critical tipping point where the opponent is ready for critical self-examination.

Everyone has to fight against the evil within oneself and against the evil from outside in one’s very own ring. We don’t know the internal state of our opponent. Our opponent is of course not our enemy. Our enemy is a spiritual one.
That’s why without God’s help we have no chance in hell of winning. With God’s help, however, hell has no chance of winning against us.