Florida Man's World and other stupid things

Stupid games will affect us in real life.

You know, there’s such a thing as the Florida Man Games, because if it’s stupid enough to make headlines, someone’s going to make money on it. But like everything that comes out of Florida, Georgia got there first. The Stone Mountain Highland Games have been around for a half-century plus two years, where attendees enjoy plenty of tartan, men in kilts, and heaving all kinds of heavy stuff—it’s even safe for kids (which I wouldn’t say about the one in Florida). For nearly 30 years, East Dublin has held the Summer Redneck Games, where anyone can compete in seed-spittin’, mud pit belly floppin’, and the ever-popular toilet lid toss.

Photo by Jack Hamilton on Unsplash

There’s a reason the Jackass television and movie franchise has an evergreen audience: stupid is entertaining. It’s funny to watch people make fools of themselves over and over again. This is especially true when those people aren’t people we care deeply about, and there’s no real consequences for the audience. But for the people who live by the Jackass code, they also die by it, and that’s sad.

I’ve got a point here, I promise, and I’m getting to it.

There’s a lot of other stupid things in the world, and many of them aren’t so funny. For example, for years, adults encouraged a child, Greta Thunberg, to be a spokesperson for the green movement that seeks to eliminate things like flying by jet or driving automobiles, so that the world can save itself from climate doom. Thunberg, now 21, was arrested Monday for blocking the entrance to the Swedish parliament in Stockholm. She’s upset that oil companies are against using less oil, and wants government to force them to heel.

To quote the estimable Kevin D. Williamson, “They don’t seem to understand that the choice is between stupid, greedy men and stupid, greedy men with an army and a police force. One of these groups of stupid, greedy men has to compete for your business, and you can say ‘no’ to them; the other kind doesn’t have to take ‘no’ for an answer.” In Kevin’s case, he was talking about “lefty and populist friends” who point fingers at badly run businesses, dysfunctional markets, and dishonest businessmen. But the point applies equally well to climate doom activists and their ilk.

It’s stupid to oppose both fossil fuels and nuclear power, because the latter is the solution to the former, much more than solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, or any other of the so-called renewable choices. Giant wind turbines are big, complicated machines, which are expensive to build, consume a whole lot of carbon footprint in their construction, and must be maintained for years. When they are retired, many parts of these turbines end up in landfills, where they will rest for eons.

But people like Thunberg are not doing it to get a gold star from Bill Gates, they are doing it for entertainment value, like the people who keep turning up throwing red paint in public places.

I could rag on the climate activist movement for thousands of words, because they are ninety-percent grift, ninety-percent religious nuttery, and ten percent real problem solving. Yes, that adds up to 190%, because there’s a whole lot of overlap. But I’ll stop here, because I want to get to my main point.

We are not the audience in world affairs. We live in the arena where the Stupid Games happen. We are not just observers of this stuff as it happens, alternately laughing and cringing at the spectacle. We have a responsibility—we being the people who have brains and can think critically about what we read and see on the news—to stand up and honestly say “this is stupid.”

The late writer Michael Crichton, who earned a Harvard M.D. and used it to craft “The Andromeda Strain,” “E.R.,” and “Jurassic Park,” was a great believer in the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. It’s worth quoting in long form.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”

Okay, we all relate here, and we’ve all done it, and continue to do it. So let me point out some things that are going on in the world and politics today that are not only “wet streets cause rain” stories, but are literally dangerous, stupid, Jackass moves.

I’ll go back to Sweden, which is now a full-fledged NATO member. Sweden is preparing for war. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wants to fortify Gotland, a good-sized island sitting off the coast of the Baltic states, which has been dubbed a “giant aircraft carrier.” The Swedish have a pretty well-developed military, and can make weapons like nobody’s business.

And Sweden is not the only country east of the Atlantic that’s preparing for war. Poland is building up. Germany is denying that leaked audio from senior officers deals with war plans. And of course, Russia is trying to become the Soviet Union again.

It’s stupid and dangerous to turn Europe into a giant armed camp. All we need to do is go back to (practically any period in) history to see the folly here. World War I happened largely because the elites who ran Europe had built big armies, and then those armies had to fight each other in trenches for years. Since NATO came online, there’s been a Pax Americana in Europe. The U.S. under the Marshall Plan rebuild Western Europe and sustained it through the Cold War. Countries like Germany didn’t need to build giant armies because America was responsible enough to keep just enough of ours there, which held back the Soviets from expanding their Iron Curtain. Well, gee, it worked for 80 years.

Why people want to undo that is a head-scratcher, like why people want to compete in the “run from the police” challenge in the Florida Man games. Maybe it’s mildly entertaining to see the Baltic states in panic, and Poland being friends with Germany, but it’s also stupid and dangerous in real life, and we have to live in real life.

Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, and their evil minions want bad things for you and me. Sure, if we just gave up backing Seoul and let the Kims have the land from Incheon to Busan, I’m sure North Korea would be our friends, and not want bad things for us (until they did). China is asserting that it owns the entire South China Sea. They want the East China Sea too—not just Taiwan—but everything from Kagoshima (Japan) to the Malacca Strait. A full 30% of global shipping goes through that channel.

If you remember your history, America rebuilt Japan after World War II. Japan is preparing for war. It’s a bad idea to have China, Japan, and South Korea all heavily armed and ready for war. It’s supremely stupid that America, who has kept the peace in the Pacific for 80 years, would put economics over diplomatics. Sure, our government can tax China for selling goods into America, and China will just add that to the price we pay at the store. But also, China knows that eventually, its investment in the U.S. will be at risk, and when its own economy is swaying dangerously, what other choice can the aging CCP chiefs see than “diplomacy by other means?”

The Chinese have learned from the west, like when England and the East India Company got snippy about them banning opium, the crown went to war to keep the drugs (and money) flowing. It’s really stupid to keep putting China in dark corners. Sure, we must be careful, because the Chinese government wants to control their own people, and by extension, to influence us. We shouldn’t use their tech, or their TikTok.

But some politician (you know who) met with TikTok executives then said it’s just peachy to use a Chinese-government owned app to fill your kids heads with whatever algorithm spews content to their phones. This guy said “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business.” Facebook is an American company that doesn’t do business in China because it won’t bend to the CCP’s demands. Mark Zuckerberg is an American businessman who went to high school in Exeter, New Hampshire, college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lives quietly in California.

It’s stupid to on one hand support tariffs on Chinese goods, while handing the Chinese government the keys to influencing millions of Americans. Sun Tsu would be swinging his sword to behead any leader who did that with a potential foe. And remember, China is a potential foe.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I am saying that the whole world is arming for war, and the battle lines are fairly clear. America is divided, and ripe to be torn apart by foreign influence and events. Our election is divided by events in an area the size of metro Atlanta on the Mediterranean coast. President Biden is worried he may lose Michigan and Minnesota over his policy toward Israel and Gaza.

Our politics in America is beyond Florida Man stupid. Both sides are playing every divisive issue: abortion, guns, the border, crime, climate, capitalism, healthcare, cyber ransom, inflation; to radicalize everyone who can be radicalized to one side or another. Our politicians are preparing for war. We may end up with some kind of civil war, like Haiti, which has devolved into a failed state under the control of vicious gangs.

Elections in our biggest trading partner, Mexico, are said to be the “bloodiest ever” as cartels go after politicians. Mexican gangs are preparing for war. Our border is as wide open as it’s ever been, and an open border for legal activity is what we want. But as more illegal aliens come over and strain cities like New York and Boston (who must provide shelter by law), we are playing politics with simple things like securing the border.

If parts of Mexico turn into Haiti, we might find ourselves in a more local military problem than the South China Sea or building a pier in Gaza. But we are playing spectator sport with our politics, with MTG defying decorum (something she slammed Volodymyr Zelenskyy for) at SOTU and telling the Sergeant at Arms to “drag her out” rather than take off her MAGA hat. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is no better than Greta Thunberg, but at least Thunberg has the excuse of being raised wrong.

We can only play these stupid games for so long before they begin to affect us in real ways, meaning in ways that affect our loved ones. It already has. How many of us have lost loved ones to suicide because of drug addiction? How many have lost people due to random murders, by gun or stabbing or being pushed onto a subway track? How many have lost kids to school shootings (not many, statistically, but tell me you don’t think about it, ever)? How many have had people they know, or relatives, sick with COVID and refusing to take a vaccine? How many have lost people to COVID who were unvaccinated by choice? How many have had people from their city, who they know, arrested for their role in January 6th? How many have fallen for conspiracy theories?

Our stupid Florida Man games are hurting America, and one day, like the Jackass co-star, it’s going to hit you in terrible ways. Don’t get stuck in the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. Sometimes the stories are bulls**t. But when there’s a hundred stories backed up by things you know to be true, it’s time to listen.

The world is hurtling toward war. And if you think that won’t affect you, you’re the kind of person the online scammers are looking for. It’s time to start believing something and stop being a spectator, isn’t it?