Washington never told a lie.
Twinkies can never spoil.
You have to wait 24 hours before you can report a person missing.
Buddha was fat.
Adam and Eve ate an apple.
Jesus was born on December 25.
Obama is from Kenya.
Barstool knowledge.
The things that people tell each other while consuming their drugs of choice.
Barstool knowledge is defined by another term, one-upmanship.
That lame practice in a conversation where one person states an experience and a round-robin follows of everyone else saying how their experience tops the previous.
Barstool knowledge starts out reasonably innocent.
A white lie that once it has played its way through the group think of fellow sloshed minds metamorphose into fire breathing dragons.
It's been a fact of human society since one monkey sat on a branch next to another.
When one monkey said that the sky God told them that they had to give them half their food or God would become angry.
Oh, yes, must obey here's half my food said the first monkey.
Happy in the belief that once appeased the God would no longer send them misfortune.
It's interesting how easy any of us can succumb to barstool knowledge.
Barstool knowledge generally is easy to hear from your uncle, aunt, father, mother, brother, sister, friend who at every family gathering causes that uncomfortable moment.
When the uncle tells that racist joke and everyone chuckles but is really embarrassed.
The party guest exclaims their story is a joke, but everyone knows it is true.
Barstool knowledge.
Psychology informs us it's because it feeds our expectations.
Our prejudice.
Our individual experience.
But our individual experience does not necessarily mean it conforms to reality.
We meet one jerk, and because there is this inherent need in humans to categorize, we label everyone similar to that one person as a jerk.
We had an unfavorable run-in with an individual and we forevermore see similar people as jerks too.
Barstool knowledge.
None of it is valid.
It gives comfort to ignorance.
It pads the truth, keeps reality out of our minds.
It sponges away our responsibility to others as well as to ourselves.
Barstool knowledge is an adolescent mind preferring a lie to the truth.
A preference for fantasy, the way we wish the world should be, the world should be under our control, there to please us, not as it really is.
Barstool knowledge hasn't destroyed nations up to this point in human history…
At least not until this past week.
This past week the President took it up a notch and demonstrated his lifelong affiliation and confirmation of his Doctoral with barstool knowledge.
If you are not familiar, the President used direct quotes from fascist leaders of WWII Germany to say he is the chosen one, that Jews are not loyal to our democracy.
He also said he was the second coming of Christ, he was in fact, Jesus, the economy is the greatest ever, we have great background checks, climate change is a hoax, Putin played Obama, the President wants world peace, his tariffs aren't being paid by U.S. citizens, did I say he said he was Jesus to the Jews and that was all in a three day period?
The President indeed demonstrated his barstool knowledge of theology specifically in regards to Judaism as well as his professed love of Christianity.
Sociopath.
I said, sociopath.
I have had and continue to have direct experience with a sociopath.
Now you do too if you are residing in this Republic under this President.
They live in a world created in their own minds about their perception of the world and how it is there for them alone.
Their reality is in their mind and has nothing to do with the group's experience with reality.
At its core, sociopathy is a self-defense mechanism allowing the individual to survive in an adverse world.
However, sociopaths are not conducive to a stable government, a stable economy, stable relationships, both personal and impersonal.
You can never pin a sociopath down to the truth they are experts at moving their own goalposts.
It is also conclusive that sociopaths attract other sociopaths.
That's why all those people with barstool knowledge are so drawn and attracted to their messiah.
Sociopaths at their core cannot and will not ever share.
Like Homer Simpson at the buffet table, they will take the whole tray of fried shrimp with them back to their table.
The world is their actual oyster.
The only thing that will ever stop a sociopath and their followers is a consequence.
Something or someone has to draw a line in the sand and say stop.
They will not do it on their own.
They will not recognize the house is on fire.
They will not for any reason in heaven or hell stop on their own accord from wreaking havoc.
Only the good people, the good person who with conviction moral purpose has the ability to stand before this President and tell him to stop.
The confidence the insistence upon the belief in barstool knowledge is so deep…
How deep?
Have you ever tried to convince someone to give up their religion?
It's that deep.
I'm reminded of the beloved song, We Shall Overcome.
The only way that brotherhood of man can be made to come true is if the good people stop allowing the bad ones a seat at the end of the table.
We got to stop allowing the relative or friend from telling the racial joke.
We got to call out the fan at the sports game for yelling a gender slur.
We have to walk together arm in arm with those who want a better world and step over and around those who don't.
We have to understand we can't save everybody only those who want to be.
Here's some real knowledge to drop.
Love expects more of every one of us every day.
Tell the uncle to pass the potato's, act civil, or leave the table.
Peace.
DFrey
