Okay. Just a quick post to get the latest results in. We’ve now got the semi-final contestants in the Bracket of Bullshit. You can see who these winners were up against here.
First a recap. At the start there were 64 claims of bullshit that made it into the competition. These were split into two conferences: Donald Trump vs Everyone Else. Those two conferences were each split into two divisions. At this point we have the winners of each of the four divisions – two bullshit claims from the Donald Trump conference, and two from the Everyone Else conference. The final will be a Trump piece of bullshit versus one from Everyone Else.
I had an epiphany during voting this morning. All the way through I’ve been saying that I thought that the Trump’s Biggest Inauguration Crowd Ever tweet would win. When it came to casting my vote though, that’s not where I put it. I still think that’s the biggest bullshit, but it’s competition is also major bullshit and it also causes a deep emotional reaction with me.
The idea that there are good people amongst a crowd of people shouting things like, “Blood and Soil,” and “Jews will not replace us,” is sickening. “Blood and soil,” is, of course, a cry of Hitler’s Nazis. You cannot take part in something that looks like a re-creation of Hitler’s night march past the sickbed of Hindenburg and be a good person. So, it was Very Fine People on Both Sides That Got My Vote got my vote between these two.
Incidentally, I’ve been re-watching the History Channel documentary series ‘Hitler’s Rise to Power’ recently. Last time I watched it was during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. At that time I could see numerous parallels between the way Trump was running his election campaign, and the way Hitler gained power. Re-watching it, I can see even more. I can’t help wondering if someone like Steve Bannon planned Trump’s campaign using his knowledge of one of his idols – Adolf Hitler.
I’ve been watching another documentary series on the History Channel for the third of fourth time too: ‘Royal Cousins at War’. It’s about the First World War and the strong family ties that link so many of Europe’s royal families. In particular, the king of Great Britain, the kaiser of Germany, and the czar of Russia were first cousins. Again, the similarities to Trump were striking. This time it was how much his personality was a match for that of kaiser Wilhelm II.
Back to the Bullshit.
The two claims that made it this far in the Everyone Else conference are:
In the quarter-final, the Tucker Carlson claim was up against a bit of bullshit from Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly paid US$32 million, even though, he said, there was no sexual abuse involved! O’Reilly got my vote. My comment regrading the Tucker Carlson claim was that it was, “stupidity rather than full-on bullshit.”
As always, whenever there’s a competition for victims and one of the victims is women, women will be expected to suck it up. Anything that happens to them doesn’t matter as much as what happens to anyone else. The reason I think Tucker Carlson won is it’s the USA where there’s a history of slavery and segregation, and racism is still as common as apple pie. Therefore, there’s a natural reaction by good people to pick the bullshit that reflects racism.
On CNN the other day, well known civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump made the claim that of 75 unarmed men killed by Police since 2010, 73 were African-American. I have not been able to confirm this claim, but if it’s true, it’s an horrific statistic. Also, it may only relate to a particular jurisdiction. Thousands of people are shot by police every year in the US and 75 seems very low.
(FYI: NZ Police have fatally shot less than 50 people in the last century. All had weapons as far as I can ascertain, though not all those weapons were firearms. The NZ Public is complaining that the police are acting like Rambo with all these shootings!)
I also didn’t vote for the Parkland Conspiracy piece of bullshit because I think the way it was handled means no one was sucked in by it. It’s competition in the quarter-finals was a Paul Ryan tweet that represents a Tax Bill that will hurt millions. For that reason Paul Ryan got my vote.
So. My choice was between two lots of bullshit I didn’t vote for. However, despite thinking Tucker Carlson’s piece of bullshit is mostly stupidity, it’s still despicable. I still think the claim the Parkland survivors are crisis actors is dreadful. However, I’m also sure no one believes it at this stage. My vote went to Tucker Carlson because for him to even think such a thing shows that he’s an awful person.
Besides, whatever piece of bullshit wins the Everyone Else conference, I doubt it has a chance against whichever of Trump’s pieces of bullshit make it, so it doesn’t matter much.
When it comes to bullshit, Trump is a natural.
What do you think? Did I choose right?
And make sure to vote yourselves – you have just four days – this is where to go to place your vote.
If you enjoyed reading this, please consider donating a dollar or two to help keep the site going. Thank you.
The crowd size tweet goes straight against the laws of physics and mathematics, the ‘good people on both sides’ not really. There might indeed be some well-meaning, misguided people on the wrong side. As a youngster I have been walking in demonstrations that had extreme left wing and anarchist slogans I did not -and do even less now (I’m actually ashamed)- agree with. So no, I’d still vote for the mind boggling, immediately falsified, ‘post stamp’ bullshit of the crowd size.
I’ll go for the ‘crisis actors’, it is not just bull, it is also insidiously, profoundly vile, and there is absolutely nothing in it. Disgusting.
In a literal sense the US did actually end slavery, it took a civil war, but still they did. “Around the World” is , of course the BS, especially since in several countries, such as eg Mauretania, it still exists. We have to give it to the British (AFAIK) that they took the lead in officially abolishing slavery in 1833. (It pleases me to think that Darwin and his family were fervent abolitionists, some more and some less active). After the US abolished slavery, it has always been more or less diligent in opposing it.
Note, I think the French already abolished it in the late 18th Century (specifically in Saint Dominique (Haiti) ? I’m not a historian), but it was later reinstated by Napoleon, and only re-abolished in 1848, well before the US Civil War, but more than a decade after the British.
Second note, the US installed a slave trade ban in 1808 , about half a century before actually abolishing slavery. In 1819, the US even sent a naval squadron to African waters to apprehend slave traders. So although Mr Carlson’s statement is clearly BS, there is more to it than meets the eye on first sight.
Well, he said they abolished slavery worldwide, and that’s clearly a load of rubbish. There are good things they did, but overall, they were behind most countries in their treatment of other than straight white Protestant men despite having a constitution declaring that all men are created equal.
For example, the US had nothing to do with the fact that NZ never had slavery. (There was a hierarchy in Maoridom, and the status of the lowest is translated as slaves, but they weren’t slaves in the same way that we understand it today.)
Legal slavery may have ended in the US, but there is still slavery. In fact there is still slavery in most countries around the world. It’s usually people taking advantage of those that want to move to First World countries. When they get here they end up working in fields and kept in compounds or working as sex slaves. Sex slavery is one of the reasons prostitution was made legal in NZ. Sex slaves weren’t going to the Police because they were told they would be imprisoned for prostitution. With it being made legal, it’s thought that sex slavery has been got rid of here.
I doubt that making prostitution legal will solve the problem of sex slavery, but it is a good step in the right direction.
No it won’t. And in some countries it would probably make little or no difference. But it was a big help here.
Legalisation will not always be a great help, but it is a sine qua non, without legalisation of prostitution the fight against sex slavery and human trafficking is lost beforehand. It is a precondition, but generally not sufficient in itself.
It could be the struggle between bullshit and stupidity and we tend to think of them separately. Actually though, they go together and that is why Trump is always in the running for bullshit leader. But I agree that Tucker Carlson makes it to the top with a combination of stupid and bullshit that is hard to beat. Only your common southern racist with that twisted education would think, let alone say, the U.S. ended slavery around the world. Next it will be the U.S. ended war.
See my notes above, although Mr Carlson’s tweet is clearly BS, it is not that hard to beat. In several ways the US has been instrumental in ending slave trade and slavery.
Opposition to slavery started in the US as early as the latter half of the 17th Century, mainly by Quakers and Mennonites.
Slave trade -as opposed to slavery itself- was banned long before slavery was abolished, Denmark, Holland , Sweden, Britain, Spain and indeed the US (among others) banned it in the early 19th century. Obviously, it was politically easier to ban slave trade than slavery itself.
The earliest abolition I know of was by Solon in Athens, about 5 centuries BC.
However, even after the slave trade was illegal a lot of it continued for some time. And ending slavery — only cost about 600,000 lives.
Ha ha! You could be right!
And the “Comey Fired for Being too Tough on Hillary” tweet, should have been here, but it was already eliminated in the third round by the ‘Biggest ever Crowd’ tweet. I think it beats the ‘Very Fine People’ tweet from a BS pov..
Yeah, I’d like to see that one still there too.
That cartoon about the Lyin’ fish is brilliant! A work of art!
I think so too. Trump as a species of Angler fish.
A small, but salient, detail is that the angler fish are female, males are just some kind of small appendix.
As always, Trump is an egregious anomaly.
🙂 🙂 🙂