Written by by Christopher Monckton at wattsupwiththat.com
The traditional theology of the Judaeo-Christian world has a useful concept known as invincible ignorance. It is an ignorance so profound, so all-pervading, so irredeemably, pig-headed, so irremediably scatter-brained, that nothing can be done to save its victims from themselves except to smile, shake the dust of their one-horse dorp off one’s cowboy boots, get astride one’s Ducati and thunder off to the next dorp.
One of the most difficult and highly specialist tasks in the counter-intelligence community is that of interdicting the agents of influence of hostile powers so that they cannot create or maintain a climate of invincible ignorance by deploying linguistic warfare, gaining control of our news media, suppressing freedom of speech, corrupting the minds of young people in schools and universities, canceling those who dare to speak the truth and eventually prosecuting or even executing the few brave and independent souls who continue to commit the gravest of all mortal sins against hate-filled totalitarianism: to dare to step out of the Party Line and politely suggest that the Emperor’s valet must have been off duty this morning.
But what if invincible ignorance has become so well established that the enemies of liberty and democracy, free markets and prosperity do not have to do anything except sit and wait until the hated free West collapses all by itself?
Here is perhaps the most spectacular instance of invincible ignorance I have come across in a long career studying this phenomenon and working to prevent its weaponization and deployment by those who mean harm to democracy. Here is a verbatim clip from a recent interview. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to guess who the interviewee is.
Interviewee: “The US government can’t go bankrupt because we can print our own money.”
Dim interviewer: “Like you say, they print the dollar, so why does the government even borrow?”
Interviewee: “Well, um, the – er – so the – I mean – again, some of the stuff gets – some of the language that the – erm – some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money, which is why – erm, er – the government definitely prints money, and then it lends that money by – er – by selling bonds – er – is that what they do? They, they – erm – they – yeah, they, they – erm – they sell bonds – yeah, they sell bonds, right, so as they sell bonds and people buy bonds and lend them the money – yup – so a lot of times, a lot of times – at least to my ear – with MMT the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to – um, er, uh – er – so – um – yeah, I – I – I guess I’m just – I don’t – I can’t really talk – eh, I don’t – I don’t get it – I don’t know what they’re talking about, like, ’cos – it’s like – the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this that ’n’ defic – conversation, so I don’t think there’s anything confusing there.”