How to Brain Bomb Lefties

Jesse Cohn emails:

What do you say to the lefties that closely follow your economic commentary but write off everything you say at Target Liberty ?

There are certainly plenty of EPJ readers and even more EPJ Daily Alert readers who are not aware I also write Target Liberty, and that wander over here at some point, but I don't really get any noticeable flak from them.

If that did occur, I would "brain bomb" them, which is what I regularly do to lefties who I bump into or email me.

Everyone's brain has some type of structure by which they view the world and how it works. The structure can be thought out in great detail or can be weak and shack-like. Nevertheless, there is always a structure.

Lefties, by definition, because they are in favor of some sort of central planning have faulty structures. What I like to do is blow up parts of such structures by backing them into a piece of reality that doesn't fit with their structure of the world.

The mind hates a gap that can't be explained. This is where it will spend time thinking. If I can blow up a part of the structure, then long after I am gone from the scene it is possible that person will continue thinking about what I have said, to fix the hole in the structure.

Depending on the thinker, the hole may be patched up correctly or it might be a sloppy job but I always view brain bombs as a good thing.

Here are a couple of examples that come to mind. These aren't necessarily lefties but they displayed some lefty thinking and therefore were bombing targets.

I don't wear a mask outside in San Francisco but I do wear one when I go inside stores because it would just be too much of a hassle dealing with all the mini-Maos demanding I wear a mask. But I do not keep it over my nose, when I am challenged by an employee, and this happens all too often, most of the time I just say, "I have a medical condition" and I am left alone.

But if I am in the mood to drop a brain bomb, I will ask the mini-Mao clerk, "Do you know if masks are safe?" They will babble something about why they are. Then I will drop my first bomb to open up the bunker. I ask, "If masks don't interfere with normal breathing, why do they give exemptions for people with medical conditions?" Usually, there is no response to this, the bunker has been opened. Then I drop the heavy-duty bomb, "And you are wearing a mask in here all day, do you have any idea what that is doing to your brain?"

Then, I walk away. My bombs have been dropped, who knows how much impact they have. But they will occasionally hit ground zero.

An East Coast lefty friend that I talk to on the phone every few weeks said something about mask-wearing (he wears one) during a conversation. I threw the above about masks out at him toward the end of one of our conversations. During our next talk, a few weeks later, the first thing he asked me about is what were the other problems I saw with masks. My bombs had done their work. There was a gap in his thinking and weeks later he was still trying to fill it. I went on to tell him about my concerns about carbon dioxide inhalation (see here and here). Let him think about that for a while.

But be careful where you use brain bombs. I was once almost killed when I bombed a New York City taxi cab driver. This was some years back, pre-Uber, and the driver was ranting about how important it was to raise taxi cab fares, it was under consideration at the time. 

I asked him if he owned the taxi we were in or just a driver. He was just a driver, so I bombed him. "Well, then if rates go up, the taxi medallion owners will see the value of the medallions go up but the competition for driving jobs and wages isn't going to change so what you earn won't go up."

My bombing stunned him, you could feel it in the air and for a few seconds his mind was not on the road and he almost drove into an oncoming car, horns, screeching, swerving and all that occurred.

There are plenty of bombing tales that I could tell, they go on and on. Brain bombing is a hobby of mine.

The above are examples of drive-by bombings. They are quick and to the point and you don't know how long of an impact they will have but you often will sense the person's mind trying to adjust in front of you.

In addition to drive-by brain bombings, you can also launch massive waves of bombings on a person you talk to on a regular basis. The best instruction on how to launch short- and long-term brain bombings took place in a lecture, "How to Convince a Socialist to Become a Libertarian" delivered by Bill Evers in 1985. Fortunately, it is on video.

Evers doesn't use the term brain bombing but he is describing methods of brain bombing.

I have rewatched this video more times than any other. This is the Holy Grail of instruction on deep brain bombing.

-RW.