BALLS: An Introduction

Becoming a Little Less Stupid: An Introduction
By Victor Schultz

 

Let’s start out by admitting something: we are all biased. It can’t be avoided, as human beings we instinctively judge every new piece of data we get. Each objective fact is made subjective to our personal needs and whims as quickly as possible. It’s how we understand the world.

 

Knowing this, you can probably empathize with me on how difficult it is to provide information on polarized topics without unduly influencing your audience. The line between casual summarization and opinion piece is very thin. So, before the fun bits, a brief disclaimer: the goal of B.A.L.L.S. is not to convert you to a radical right wing cult movement, or to brainwash you into leftist liberal commune.

 

The goal of this column is simply to provide you more information on what’s happening around you. A secondary effect of this is that you will be armed for dinner parties where the conversation turns to global politics. If you ever find yourself in such dire straits, I recommend standing at least two feet behind a waiter (A sharp enough wit can pierce a full foot and a half through an innocent bystander) and using them as a human shield as you make for the door.

 

“Hilda, if you bring up Duterte’s hard stance on crime as a war against the poor one more time, I am going to shove this wine glass up your nostril.”

If there is no convenient waiter, butler, or other service staff whom you can shelter behind, you will have to be prepared to participate in the conversation. With no background knowledge of world events, your prospects are bleak.

 

Best case, you pull a Trump, and serenely glide through the conversation, borne aloft on a chariot of lies blown by the winds of denial, a lilting chorus of sycophants accompanying your voyage. At the risk of losing my impartial journalist image, Donald Trump has proven that you don’t need to be informed in order to participate in the conversation. The website Politifact, an independent fact-checking site, rates Trump as being “mostly false” 18% of the time, as well as “false” or “pants on fire” 53% of the time. Trump may be positioning himself as a political outsider, but he appears to have mastered the skill of lying that is so crucial to his version of Washington.

 

PolitiFact: A modest source

Most likely you will not be able to emulate Trump’s, shall we say, unique approach to facts and reason. Instead you will probably end up like Gary Johnson.  Johnson is running as a third party Libertarian．His platform revolves around “making the ballot appear less empty” and “giving the illusion of more than two choices in this god-awful, two-party system.” Johnson is best known for his campaign trail gaffes, most of which involve him being completely uniformed. Notable quotes: “What is Aleppo?” Aleppo is a major city in war-torn Syria, which is a topic we’ll likely cover in a later issue, unless the situation is resolved before we get to it. (Choked and hysterical laughter from John Kerry) Don’t be a Johnson!

 

“Gary Johnson? That poor fool wouldn’t know Aleppo from a filthy, carbon spewing coal plant.” -Jill Stein, probably

But maybe you aren’t a Johnson. Perhaps you are already an avid reader of at least one global new source, and are thinking to yourself at this very moment “I don’t need B.A.L.L.S.” Well, fine, you’re acting like Hillary Clinton. You would be the first dinner guest with a butter knife in their throat. If there’s one thing the American populace hates more than a misinformed candidate, it’s an informed one. Before you give up on B.A.L.L.S., just know that there’s something here for the informed reader as well. The column needs you, to laugh at jokes about Duterte’s controversial approach to drug crime, or John Kerry’s despair at negotiating true peace in Syria before the end of the year. Those Johnsons aren’t going to pick up on that. They don’t even know where Aleppo is!

 

In case you don’t know, either, here is a handy map that shows where cities used to be in Syria, before rampant posturing by multiple foreign powers took precedence over human life.

With any luck, this introduction captured enough of your attention that you’ll want to better yourself by reading the next issue. Regardless, please start reading a global news source, like the BBC or similar sites. You are a global citizen, and as a foreigner living abroad, global events tend to impact you much more than the average national citizen in any country. Plus dinner party conversations can be lethal without at least passable background knowledge of world affairs.

 

If you are an American that hasn’t registered for an absentee ballot yet, there’s a lovely article up already that will guide you through that process. Find it here. Also, sorry to my non-American readers, this and the next issue will be very much US-focused, since the US Presidential politics are, for better or worse, global politics.