• TrismegistusMx@slrpnk.net
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    8 months ago

    What’s always astounding is how much a person has to actually know to be as stupid as Ben Shapiro (and Matt Walsh, and others). They have to study and learn in order to misuse the things that they’ve learned. It’s impossible to be this wrong on accident.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Ben Shapiro isn’t stupid. He is talking to stupid people, because stupid people give him power by following him.

      Ben Shapiro is a conservative, which is to say he is a narcissist. He will say anything that benefits himself, and it is justified because he is Ben Shapiro, and Ben Shapiro believes Ben Shapiro is good. Therefore, if Ben Shapiro needs to lie, or obfuscate the truth, or speak to the emotions of his followers, he is righteous because it helps him win.

      He is not concerned with reality unless reality helps him win. Ben Shapiro sees himself as a Nascar driver, and the truth is a frog hopping across the track. He’s in a mindset that does not even register dishonesty as it’s farting out of the large hole in his face.

      He’s talking to the people who will never see the replies calling him stupid. He’s talking to the people who, like him, believe that they are the inherently righteous. They may or may not be stupid, but that doesn’t matter to them at all. Ignorance isn’t possible when you are good, because being good means you know and understand everything that a good person needs to know and understand. Anything more is elitist snobbery and deliberately confusing.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          He’s a professional who has spent his whole life aspiring to be the next Tucker Carlson (who aspired to be the next William F. Buckley).

          His entire career has been predicated on far-right ideologues promoting his identity as a brand. Dude is entirely a product of celebrity and he spends every waking hour working on the next self-promotion. If his mouth is dropping turds, that is only because shitting out your gullet is what publishers and media magnets want to see in their spokesmodels.

          If only Ben had been a staked 10/10 hottie or a roided up macho man, he’d be running for governor by now.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Dude thinks a wet vagina is a sign of health issues and not excitement… Ben doesn’t know the first thing about bodily functions. He probably even thinks that shit smell on his breath is normal.

      • TrismegistusMx@slrpnk.net
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        8 months ago

        No lies detected. I’m glad to see other people realizing that “Conservatism” and it’s uglier cousins, Authoritarianism and Fascism, are emergent from mass scale narcissism.

      • no banana @lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Also - I’ve read somewhere on the internet - that he, and this is not me saying this but the internet by the way, that he, Ben Sharpie, thinks about his sister a lot. It’s just something I’ve read somewhere I believe.

      • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        While there are other options than to become a conservative, conservatives are stupid.

          • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I don’t think it’s strictly a generation but more location.

            You could go to certain provinces and states all around the world and find all generations in the same stupid echo chamber. Hence red /blue states. Also what their socioeconomic background is is a huge factor.

    • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Don’t give them that much credit, all you need is a superficial understanding of something, done by skimming half a wikipedia page.

      • rtxn@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        No, this goes beyond ignorance. What that fucker is doing shows at least a fundamental understanding of the subject to deliberately arrive on the opposite side of reality.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          It has nothing to do with intelligence or stupidity. You can’t fail the way Shapiro fails at thinking being stupid. It’s malice, the cruelty is the point. When you uphold hatred and cruelty above all, logic goes out of the window and then this advanced stupid becomes possible. He is not arriving to a POV from an understanding of a subject. He decides what he wanted his POV to be first, then he uses whatever he has at hand to justify it.

        • Grayox@lemmy.mlOP
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          8 months ago

          Being a Rightwing Grifter is hella profitable. Chuds love throwing money at people that validate their shitty opinions with fancy talk.

        • flerp@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          In fairness, the misunderstanding of the first law of thermodynamics isn’t a new thing. You hear it come up from every bad theist apologist so it’s not like he came up with this argument on his own based on researching science and misunderstanding his own research. He just heard someone else say it and is parroting it like all of the other people who make similar bad arguments related to the laws of thermodynamics.

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            8 months ago

            Someone in the chain had to have some understanding of the issue. Most conservatives are stupid, but there has to be a few smart but evil ones to start the meme going.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        8 months ago

        Nah, the guy isn’t dumb, he just has zero integrity. He finds ways to reframe arguments to win arguments - that isn’t easy, the dude knows his takes are garbage. Every once in a while the mask slips

        Someone like Jordan Peterson on the other hand? The dude believes what he’s saying, his takes are also trash, but he’s so dogmatic in his world view that he can’t grasp anything outside them. He’s not really that dumb either, he just has issues.

        If you want just straight up dumb, Trump is the epitome. He doesn’t understand anything - he just has so much charisma it doesn’t matter. Try reading his speeches - you might listen to them and think “wtf is he on about?”, but without his delivery, it’s just incoherent rambling

        For an example of an idiot who can sound smart, Elon musk comes to mind. He memorizes facts the way a child does about the specs of their model cars, but he can’t apply any of that knowledge

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The difference between sophistry and philosophy.

      You become a philosopher to understand the world.

      You become a sophist to misuse your understanding of the world to profit off of others.