Volume VII No. 13
April 1, 2024
What Kind of Fool are YOU?
Larson
 
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

At the end of the 1962 Broadway musical "Stop the World - I Want to Get Off," the character played by show co-creator, Anthony Newley, asks - and answers - the musical question: "What Kind of Fool Am I?" His answer is to confess to being the kind of fool that never fell in love. The reason, revealed in the lyrics penned by Newley alongside Leslie Bricusse, is owed to a life of deceptions Newley's character perpetrated upon others and upon himself.

We are told his deceptions are born of selfish desire. Today, we call such self-deception willful ignorance. It is one of the ways we fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. Such acts of self-deception lead one to pretend that one's self, or what one feels, is not true, or to believe what is not true because it suits us.

Kierkegaard's quote is a distillation of this concept. He bisects the universal set of fools into two sub-sets. The fools in the first sub-set actually believe that which is not true. They are not willfully ignorant. They are just plain ignorant.

The fools in the second sub-set are those that know the truth but refuse to acknowledge it. Their refusal to believe the truth is a willful act of self-deception. It is willful ignorance.

Within the first group there are those who, when made aware of the truth, simply cannot comprehend it. Perhaps they are congenitally predisposed to always being wrong. According to both his former boss and a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, our current president falls into this group. Their analyses are matters of public record, expressed long before our president began to exhibit the symptoms of a human being in both mental and physical decline.

For many in this group, there is little hope of being able to see and know the truth. However, those in this group with an "open mind," may indeed one day experience their own personal epiphanies and be able to finally discern what is true and what is not. Insofar as they are able, there is some measure of hope for them - and for the rest of us!

However, for the second sub-set of fools, those who refuse to believe what they know is in fact true, there is no hope. The reason is simple. In this group, we find the demagogues. They are motivated solely by self interest. Though they may be keenly aware of the truth, they will not acknowledge it if it does not serve their own selfish purposes. These are the pernicious fools we find populating the "newsrooms" and editorial boards of the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and too many others to list. They have proven themselves willing to promote any hoax, perpetuate any perfidy and regurgitate any calumny so long as it serves their purposes. They are perfectly at ease remaining willfully ignorant in the face of what is true and what is false, so long as it fits the narrative they wish to advance. Those in this group pose an existential threat to our freedom as individuals and as a people, insofar as they promulgate the unequal application of our laws, and the unequal protection of our rights and liberties as citizens.

This is because, historically, they were the ones on whom the citizenry relied to ferret out the truth and expose the lies. Having abrogated that role, it now falls on the individual to take on the mantle of "investigative journalist" so that, in the words of Pete Townsend of "The Who", "we won't get fooled again."

So here at the end, we find ourselves back at the beginning to ask of you the one simple question we started with: "What kind of fool are you?"

Write us. We'd love to find out. - The Editor

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