Let's do a thought experiment.
You work in a big office with hundreds of other employees.
You are the supervisor of one division, the reason why lower ranking employees
come to you (as they do to other supervisors) in anticipation that an opening
will occur in your division, and you'll want to promote someone to fill the
position from the existing staff.
The culture in the office is such that people not only boast
of what they can do to set themselves apart from the rest; they denigrate the
others to make themselves look better by comparison. And so it happens one day
that rumors begin to circulate to the effect that someone will soon retire in
your division. The hot topic among the employees is that you're engaged in a
kind of informal vetting to get acquainted with potential candidates.
The effect of the rumors is that the circulation around you
increases dramatically during the lunch hour, the coffee breaks and when you
look like you have little to do. People come to tell you success stories about
themselves, and humbling stories about the others. They load you with so much
information, you wonder if there is a way by which you can separate the real
from the noise. You think up all sorts of approaches you might take, and when
nothing seems promising, you give up on trying to zero in on the perfect
candidate. What you do instead is try to avoid choosing the worst candidate.
You find that this approach is easier to handle because
those who come around you, exhibit a certain amount of madness in their
exaggerated talk and their demeanor. You think about this aspect of human
nature, and hit on a surefire and quantifiable way by which to gauge each
candidate's level of madness. If this works, you'll have identified the least
mad of the candidates, and you'll promote him or her.
You try your theory on the first candidate that comes to
talk to you this morning. He tells you how bad Rocco is, and so you ask if
someone else is as bad as him. He says no, Rocco is the only one he can think
of. You ask: what's wrong with Rocco, and the candidate says, he is a little
crazy. You do the same thing with every aspiring candidate that comes to say
how good he or she is, and how bad the others are.
The difference between the candidates is that the number of
others each candidate names as being crazy varies from one to five, with one
saying that everyone around here is crazy. This is how you are able to quantify
the level of madness. No, it's not the madness of the people who are fingered
as being crazy; it is the madness of the candidates who fingered them. The more
crazies a candidate thought he was seeing around him or her, the madder you
consider that candidate to be. The one that said everyone is crazy is the one
you consider to be the maddest of all, and he is the first you reject.
Now, my friend, if you think this is a far fetched story
that cannot possibly be used as metaphor to illustrate a real story, I have
news for you. There is an ongoing real story that is a thousand times more far
fetched than our thought experiment. Many articles have been written about it
already, and many more will be in the coming days. They deal with the United
Nations having rejected the notion that occupied Jerusalem can be considered Israeli territory
just because a bunch of fake Jews say they woke-up one morning and felt
connection to that city.
One of the articles is an editorial that came under the
title: “UN-acceptable madness as United Nations attacks America over Jerusalem ,” written by the editors of the New
York Daily News. It was published on their website on December 21, 2017.
Here is what the editors wrote: “Nikki Haley rejected the UN
General Assembly's descent into the insanity of mob rule on a vote that labeled
'null and void' the Trump administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel … Insanity indeed. The
two-thirds of the body that supported this act encompassed some of the world's
most despicable regimes … Jerusalem has been the
capital of Israel
since 3,000 years ago”.
The editors of the Daily News are saying that the whole
world is insane. This should make them the most insane in your eyes but you
withhold judgment. If you ask why they believe the world is insane, they’ll say
it’s because it is made of despicable regimes that suckered the righteous ones,
and got them to vote in favor of the wrong side.
They call despicable regimes the ones that do not occupy a
neighbor, and yet defend Israel
which is occupying Palestine .
This makes you strongly suspect that the editors of the Daily News, and all
those like them, of being really insane.
If you ask them how they know that America is correct, and everyone else is wrong,
they’ll say that Jerusalem has been the capital
of Israel
for 3,000 years. They say so with a straight face even if Israel has been
around for only 70 years.