An Editorial By An Imaginary Person

Steeple Jack is my City of Heroes character. He lives on the Homecoming servers on the Excelsior shard.

He insisted upon making a guest blog post here. I do not endorse, nor shall I be held responsible for, the views expressed by guest bloggers. Their opinions are their own and not those of the blog or the blogger. In other words: Blame Steeple Jack.

On Universal Deceit

By Steeple Jack

People use "conspiracy theory" as a pejorative term to deliver, in as few as possible words, the following insults: 

- "you believe things that aren't true," 

- "you're stupid," and 

- "you're evil."

But the thing is, as a civic culture degenerates to the point that the only things you're allowed to say in the public space are lies denouncing other people or apologies for things you know you didn't do, you more or less move in a nimbus of untruth. Universal deceit. 

You recognize that a conventional narrative has to have passed through the filter of mandatory lies to enter the realm of polite discourse.

And "conspiracy lore" and other outlier ideas, having been rejected by these same filters, acquire a kind of credibility in the form of the awareness that the guy that lies his ass off all the time says it's not true.

An age of lies make the ideas that it rejects plausible by attempting to refute or censor them.

The guardians of civic lore bitch about a monster that they create themselves 24/7/365.

I'm done bitching. I'm not going to pretend things are different from what they are. And I don't care what you think about it. That's what it's going to take to sort the good from the bad: truth.

So Memo to the guardians of civic lore: Let me save you some time.  

I'm stupid. 

I'm evil. 

I believe things that are not true. 

I literally do not believe in science. 

And I will not go educate myself. 

I've been educated quite well enough.

P.S.: I broke my  hand fighting Babbage.