Quote of the Day: Wearing The Clown Suit
“Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, don’t kid yourself.”
– Frank Zappa, Burnt Weenie Sandwich
Now read this, over at Overcoming The Bias:
Lonely dissent doesn’t feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.
Damn straight, Skippy.
I know people who simply refuse to like anything they hear on Top 40 radio, simply because it’s popular, and they can’t tolerate along with the crowd.
Shakespeare’s bad, because, you know, he’s a cultural icon.
Most of them are against the war in Iraq, because, you know, they’re questioning authority. They’re speaking truth to power. They’re out on the edge.
‘Scuse, please, but they’re credulous starry-eyed sheep. Avowed skeptics and inclusive multi-culturists, they’re bowing down before the most racist, sexist, close-minded, anti-progressive religious cult to come along in the past thousand years, a cult that openly promises to enslave or kill them. They’re trying to elect a presidential candidate from the Chicago Machine they’re treating like the Messiah. Meanwhile, if I can keep from vomiting on the voting machine, I’ll vote for this guy.
I know, vaguely, what wearing the clown suit feels like, because I’ve come out to “liberal” friends and family as a gun owner. My advocacy of possessing a tool that would allow me to actually resist tyranny made me a pariah to folks who are very strident in their rebelliousness. (I probably also wore the clown suit a lot in school, but wasn’t aware of it. I don’t think that counts. Hm, I did almost start a fad for carrying Slinkies around, but the teachers put a stop to that, because they’re so damn noisy. Does that count?)
And mind, by the standards of the linked article, I’m still not a true rebel, because I didn’t figure out, on my own, how crucial the right to keep and bear arms really is; I picked it up from a chance conversation back in ‘76, and had it reinforced by Gharlane of Eddore, a nut job science fiction fan posting in the Babylon Five usenet forums.
I’m giving up on trying to be a rebel. I swear, from here on out, not to care how popular or unpopular my positions are, but only whether or not I feel they’re right. If I conform, too damn bad.
Now me, you know, I really am an iconoclast. Everyone thinks they are, but with me it’s true, you see. I would totally have worn a clown suit to school. My serious conversations were with books, not with other children.
But if you think you would totally wear that clown suit, then don’t be too proud of that either! It just means that you need to make an effort in the opposite direction to avoid dissenting too easily. That’s what I have to do, to correct for my own nature. Other people do have reasons for thinking what they do, and ignoring that completely is as bad as being afraid to contradict them. You wouldn’t want to end up as a free thinker. It’s not a virtue, you see - just a bias either way.
So I liked Madonna’s “Material Girl” video. So sue me.
[update]
Holy. Crap.
Overcoming Bias is a serious trip, particularly if you’ve let yourself get intellectually lazy. It’s a bigger, and far more productive, time sink than Wikipedia or even TV Tropes. Very, very strongly recommended.
Tags: Overcoming Bias