Elites’ Bad Faith

Bad faith was central to Sartre’s philosophy. He should have known, being a magnificent example of it. Bad Faith is vicious. It has to be dealt adequately, that is it has to be outmaneuvered.

An example: the Nazis contacted the greatest photographer in Berlin. He was asked to present his ten best pictures of Aryan babies. The lame Goebbels (a PhD and information minister) selected the best. The picture was published all over the Reich, as the definition of the magnificent human being that the somewhat degenerate Himmler, Hitler and Goebbels were not. Unbeknownst to those idiots, the famous photographer had selected the picture of a Jewish baby, here on the cover of “Sun In The House”, a Nazi magazine.

Aryan Ideal: Jewish Baby Became Chemistry Professor

“I wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous,” the photographer revealed to the amazed parents (who then had to hide their baby, lest she be recognized, and fled to France).

However, Nazism was not about smarts. It was about grabbing riches and power. For that, smarts were the enemy. Similarly, nowadays, “conservatives” are not about smarts, or being, actually, conservative. They are all about grabbing power and riches, thus smarts are something that’s in the way. So they target smarts for destruction, and this is exactly what refined studies reveal.

A New York Times’ article reveals that divisions about facts, such as whether the biosphere is warming or evolution happened, commonly attributed to ignorance, is nothing of the sort. The divide “is wider among people who otherwise show familiarity with math and science, which suggests that the problem isn’t a lack of information…

[We] found that factual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions and can even backfire on issues like weapons of mass destruction, health care reform and vaccines. With science as with politics, identity often trumps the facts… Unfortunately, knowing what scientists think is ultimately no substitute for actually believing it.

… we also need to reduce the incentives for elites to spread misinformation to their followers in the first place. Once people’s cultural and political views get tied up in their factual beliefs, it’s very difficult to undo regardless of the messaging that is used.”

This is why I suggest that deliberate lying on facts, in a mass media setting, is a crime, and ought to be pursued with as much ardor as some forms of, say, pedophilia. A new branch of government ought to be created: TRUTH (independent of Justice, Executive and Legislative).

Paul Krugman chimes in “Beliefs, Facts and Money Conservative Delusions About Inflation” with: “The problem, in other words, isn’t ignorance; it’s wishful thinking.”

Wishful thinking? Wait a minute, Paul. It’s, conveniently, the thinking which plutocrats wish for Americans to have. It’s more vicious thinking than wishful thinking. The researchers mention euphemistically “elites”, because they want to keep receiving money. Elites with money, that’s plutocrats. Pluto, Satan, all that: it’s no good. “Elite” is a good word, though. A fresh coat of paint on Satan, should make Satan happy.

Krugman believes that knowing more about the issues widens the divide, because the well informed have a clearer view of what they need to reject, so as to sustain their belief system. Except, of course, and that’s not a small detail, that the “elites” don’t really “believe” in their rejection, as the researchers found. Instead they believe they have to exhibit belief to sustain systems of thought that are convenient for their way of life. In other words, they are lying.

I notice this all the time. I talk to the “elites”, and I notice they use “anti-ideas” namely slogans, while their body language and conversation strategies tell me they absolutely do not believe in the garbage they affect to consider self-obvious (“the climate changed before”) .

In any case, Krugman wrote the article linked above, inspired by the Bad Faith of the elite. He speaks of “Great Recession”, “Disdain for Government”, “Fiat Money”, but he does not go far enough. Either his semantics, or the concepts attached to it, do not go far enough.

So let’s correct Krugman gently:

Great Recession? Great Recession of democracy. How does one make democracy recede? By making the People really stupid.

Much of the pseudo-progress under Obama falls into that category: Obamacare is a pseudo-reform, giant wasteful programs such as the F35 have been left intact, environmentalism has been turned into a Macbeth like contemplation about a particular, irrelevant pipeline, banks have not been reformed back to the much more advanced system president Roosevelt had created in 1933, and plutocrats have been turned into the hidden government, somewhat officially.

“Disdain for government” in a democracy, means disdain for the People: in a democracy, the People is supposed to rule.

“Printing money”? Enough money has to be printed to support enough exchanges to support the employment that the potential economy, and the real society, calls for.

But that’s true only in a democracy. If one is attempting to change a democracy into a plutocracy, mass employment, aside from slavery, is counterproductive, as it empowers the People.

In the end all these economic theories that are obviously incorrect in democracy, are profoundly conducive to plutocracy. That’s no accident.

Krugman calls for “Fiat Money”… Through the Central Bank. However, the Fed creates the economy through private banks. That’s still plutocratic.

The really democratic solution is to create money through the Treasury as needed for mass employment projects projecting progress (in efficiency, ecology, hedonism, etc.). Let the government create huge spending programs, and run a so called “deficit”. Sell bonds, whatever. As in Japan. At worst, if there was a default the bonds would turn into a tax (of those rich enough to buy said bonds).

Those who want to reduce the money below what society demands, want mass unemployment, and thus the reign of those who have massive private capital, the plutocrats.

None of those crazily erroneous ideas of the far right and its attached financial and CEO class are thus crazy, when looked at as a system of mood and thoughts that drives towards plutocracy. Then they are entirely logical.

Bad Faith is a mood that produces solid logic. One needs greater emotions to break it, rather than meek reason.

Patrice Ayme

Tags: Bad Faith, Beliefs, Counterfactuals, Facts, Krugman, Lying., Science