Sunday, August 25, 2019 Opinion The Shallow Cynicism of ‘Everything Is Rigged’ By GREG WEINER (Political Scientist)

A Stupidity Inoculation, In Plain View Q.: When is common sense "shallow cynicism?" A.: When the intra-class warfare between the major factions of a capitalist dictatorship have reached an intensity where: A prisoner awaiting trial has to be murdered to avoid exposing the depth of the dictatorship's criminality. Where principled persons are extra-judicially imprisoned for even partially revealing the dictatorship's criminality. Stupidity is the HIV of infected intellectuals, and it is characteristic of the propaganda apparatus of a ruthless dictatorship that it will deliberately expose its people to such individuals in the hope of spreading their disease. This Op-Ed by a political scientist is an obvious attempt by the NYT to stigmatize the by now common sense observation that the U.S. political system is corrupt. The stigmatization proceeds on two tracks: Creating a "straw man" by crudely paraphrasing the common sense observation into "Everything is Rigged," Calling it not merely cynicism, but "Shallow Cynicism." On the subject of euphemizing stupidity into its opposite: Prof. Hito Steyerl of the Berlin University of the Arts has coined a relationship between artificial intelligence and artificial stupidity in this short clip from a much longer talk: