Believing in impossible things: the third option between stupid or liar

“Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. — Lewis Carrol

Stupid or liar. It always comes back to stupid or liar — Adam Carolla

When I was in college, some NPC lefties were arguing about George W. Bush. One said that Bush was dumb and the other said that Bush was an evil manipulator. Somehow they agreed. I am no Aristotle, but I have some logic in me. I pointed out that Bush could not be both dumb and an Othello of country rubes at the same time, just as two objects cannot exist at the same place at the same time. I felt quite satisfied with myself, and I went to sleep. I was wrong to do so. I should have stayed up and done more to understand why people didn't care about what is logical, which would be a bit more useful than what I learned in classes the day after.

Since then my memory has been collecting instances of illogic, and I have concluded that there is something between stupid and liar. Adam Carolla has a bit he does after somebody says something that is obviously false. He asks, "So is this person stupid or a liar." He has asked this question so many times he just goes "stupid-or-liar," like it's all one word now. After deep contemplation with some Pallet Jack IPAs, I have concluded that there is another option between stupid and liar.

One of my favorite stories ever told by John Podhoretz seems to frustrate the stupid or liar binary. I know that JPod isn't all that useful for his political takes but he has his finger on the pulse of upper-class New York people. Not so much the rest of the country, but New York he knows about.

During the Democratic Presidential candidate debate in 2016, Kamala Harris accused Joe Biden of being a racist because he opposed some form of forced racial bus integration at some point. JPod recounted how in New York, both black and white parents hated forced bussing. The kids had to get up forty-five minutes early to go to a school they didn't like, and they were too sleepy to learn anything. Everyone universally hated it according to Pod. Then something interesting happened: After Kamala Harris accused Joe Biden, some leftists thought, "Well... maybe forced busing wasn't that bad?"

Now Kamala lying to play the race card makes perfect sense. It's conventional falsification for political gain. It's as common as sunshine in July. But according to JPod, the lefties who ought to know better actually reconsidered the policy that they knew from past experience had horrible consequences.

JPod's dogmatic lefty friends are not stupid, and I don't think that they were being dishonest. Something about political allegiance twists the plain truth. You see, people were worried that Joe Biden was a moderate squish, so it might be politically helpful to pretend that there were benefits to forced bussing. But rather than merely pretend, JPods lefty friends believed it in some way, even though the logical parts of their brains had direct experience that it was a bad policy. There was a middle ground between stupid and liar.

There are a lot of examples of this in the more degenerate versions of Islam. Ayan Hirsi Ali was saying that the Quran advocates for wife beating. The Islamist girls she was arguing with at university mentioned that the Quran said no such thing. She then took out a Quran and went to Surah 4:34 which says exactly that. Then immediately the girls defended the Quran saying that the Quran said that she could not be beaten with anything bigger than a toothbrush

Likewise, it is not uncommon for anti-semites of the Muslim variety who say that the atrocities of October 7th did not happen, were actually carried out by Jews, or that if Muslim Palestinians did carry them out, they were justified. A lawyer friend of mine thinks this means that everyone knows the Truth and just lies about it constantly.

I am always nervous to argue about lawyers as it is similar to asking an NBA player to a game of hoops. But I think my lawyer friend is a bit off there. I think the Muslim girls who argued with Ayan Hirsi Ali did not read the Quran. They read two arguments online. That the Quran prohibits wife beating and that the Quran says that only light wife beating is permitted. Whatever supported Islam and her victimhood status was right, so they didn't need to think about this contradiction (this was a college campus, after all, so it was important that the girls got victim points by being Muslim).

As John Derbyshire has noted, humans aren't really wired for Truth, scientific rigor or objective accuracy. As he puts it:

The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, and social. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the esteem of our peers. For most people, wanting to know the truth about the world is way, way down the list. Scientific objectivity is a freakish, unnatural, and unpopular mode of thought, restricted to small cliques whom the generality of citizens regard with dislike and mistrust.

Good scientists operate with the idea that there is a greater Truth to how the physical world operates, and that greater Truth is independent of whatever the tribe, the King or the church says. So obviously scientists are genetic freaks. A pitiless evolution selected for human beings who believed in whatever tribal gods were useful at the time. Group cohesion is necessary for immediate survival for the last 100,000 years or so of human prehistory. The pursuit of Platonic Truth, not so much.

Think of Socrates being killed for questioning the Athenian gods or Jesus being persecuted by the Pharisees. It's been a risky move to base one's opinions on the truth as one can see it, rather than follow the tribe backed by religious orthodoxy.

Adam Carolla needs to understand the psychology of someone like Pontius Pilate. Christ said, "Everyone on the side of Truth stands with me." Pontius Pilate responded, "What is truth?" (John 18:34). Power and politics determined what truth was for Pontius Pilate. He was a skilled politician, after all, and politicians are men of the world. How fitting that before Pontius implied the relativity of truth Jesus said that he and his disciples were not of the world (John 17:14).

Adam Carolla is an atheist, but he is a comedian, and a comedian is about as far as you can get from a worldly politician without being a monk or the logos made flesh.* He has to speak as truthfully as he can or his comedy falls apart like a shoddily made building.

So the contest between Truth and worldly power is eternal. There will always be politicians like Pontius Pilate and there will always be citizens who ignore their own direct experiences. But the Truth, like the Gods of the Copybook Headings, will always return, and comedy will always be funnier if it adheres to the Truth.