The Republicans have become utterly bo-o-o-o-ogus. You don’t need me to say so. But there is more going on here than today’s headlines. Since human speech began there have evidently always been people trying to maximize bogosity, while others call out the bogus in human behavior and give clues toward behaving better. It is only recently, however, that this question has been put on a proper hyperpseudometascientific basis, in the Theory of Quantum Bogodynamics (QBD).
The basis of this theory is the discovery in the geek and nerd world at Carnegie Mellon University that the mere presence of Suits from the head office could mess up any technical demonstration of hardware or software. Upon investigation, it was determined that this was due to their emission of bogons, identified as the fundamental particle of bogosity. There are, course, many other easily identified sources of bogon emission, which we may call bogonators. Tucker Carlson of Faux Noise is a notable example. Then there is the Bogonator in Cheap [sic], He Who Must Not Be Further Named Except in Indictments and Subpoenas.
The discovery of bogons and the bogon field naturally led to the hypothesis of an antiparticle to the bogon named, in hope, the cluon. And it was not hard to identify many of the somewhat more elusive cluon emitters among us, going back to the ancient religious teachers and philosophers. Zen Buddhism was particularly intent on identifying them, and distilling the essence of cluonation, which turns out to be a great many of the Great Mysteries.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is about teaching the king to be a better person and king by giving him a friend, Enkidu, who then dies, prompting Gilgamesh to rage through the Earth and the Heavens in search of he knew not what. We know about the fundamental bogosity of the Greek Gods instigating and taking sides against each other in the Trojan War. Cursing Cassandra that she would always give true prophecies and never be believed is but one of many such episodes.
We know about the period when Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, and Biblical Judaism began, each offering all sorts of advice, while Athens invented tragic drama and democracy and Sophistry.
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou become like him.
Proverbs
The essence of cluonation was identified with the Hindu and Greek heavenly lightning bolts for smashing delusion to flinders and leaving no-self behind. This unfortunately led to the delusion that such gods and bodhisattvas mean to kill or eternally torture the deluded, not save them.
And so it is with the Rs. They have twisted every clue offered to them into the most utterly bogus and evil bogosity, and they are still trying to make it worse.
So what can we do about that? You know, I’m glad you asked.
A lot, it turns out. We are actually doing it to a far greater degree than is generally appreciated, in large part because an essential characteristic of the maximally bogus is the never-ending claim that they are winning, nay, that they have already won.
But we know better. We have clues, and we are sharing them. Millions of the children of the terminally bogus get a clue every year. As Molly Ivins pointed out, getting one clue can open you up to all of them.
I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point—race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.
In her case, it was her parents’ bogus claim that the Colored water fountains were dirty—inherently dirty, whether or not they had dirt on them.
I will not attempt any history of bogosity here. You know who your favorite exemplars are. Also,
Sufficient unto the day is the bogosity thereof.
and WineRev will be along in a moment with more, and with a number of social, scientific, and musical cluonators, which is where this story really starts. But first, we need a bit of introduction to the theory.
Quantum BogoDynamics (QBD)
Lest you doubt my abbreviated history of the QBD field theory given above, here are some historical references.
quantum bogodynamics [The Jargon File Glossary @ Zvon.org]
A theory that characterizes the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and suits in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption, of course, causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of the bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood and remain to be elucidated. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb. See bogon, computron, suit, psyton.
Here is a representative QBD theory: The bogon is a boson (integral spin, +1 or -1), and has zero rest mass. In this respect it is very much like a photon. However, it has a much greater momentum, thus explaining its destructive effect on computer electronics and human nervous systems. The corollary to this is that bogons also have tremendous inertia, and therefore a bogon beam is deflected only with great difficulty. When the bogon encounters its antiparticle, the cluon, they mutually annihilate each other, releasing magic smoke.
Quantum bogodynamics - Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
Bogosity is the property carried by fictional fundamental particles: bogons. The bogon is the elemental particle of bogosity, and has both particle and wave-like ...
Techopedia Explains Quantum Bogodynamics
In hacker jargon, the words bogon and bogosity have emerged to describe units of “bogusness” or failure. This is common in discussing internet protocols and other types of technology.
In quantum bogodynamics, a unit called the bogon has properties resembling a photon, but works on a different principle, impacting both machines and human systems. The idea is that high amounts of “bogosity” cause failure in both humans and machines and that various bogon fields and sinks can explain certain kinds of failure.
Car Talk: Bogosity, Defined at Last!
bogosity: /boh·go’s@·tee/, n.
1. [orig. CMU, (Carnegie Mellon University) — now very common] The degree to which something is bogus. Bogosity is measured with a bogometer; in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say "My bogometer just triggered." More extremely, "You just pinned my bogometer" means you just said or did something so outrageously bogus that it is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest possible reading (one might also say "You just redlined my bogometer").
bogon: /boh’gon/, n.
1. The elementary particle of bogosity. For instance, "the Ethernet is emitting bogons again" means that it is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion.
Alternate:. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its derivative senses 1—4. See also bogosity, bogus
quantum bogodynamics: /kwon’tm boh‘goh·di:·nam’iks/, n.
A theory that characterizes the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and radio show hosts).
Other bogus-derived terms:
- amboguous (having multiple bogus interpretations)
- bogotissimo (in a gloriously bogus manner)
- bogotophile (one who is pathologically fascinated by the bogus)
- paleobogology (the study of primeval bogosity)
Car Talk is the source of the utterance “bo-o-o-o-ogus!”
Now, if you really must know, I can give far more information than you require on these points. Don’t ask unless you mean it.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Cluonators
(H/T James Agee and Rudyard Kipling and the Book of Sirach)
For their work continueth,
And their work continueth,
Broad and deep continueth,
Greater than their knowing!
This is, of course, what we do every day here in the Good News Roundups.
Let us take stock of a few of today’s leading cluonators.
- President Joe Biden, who has the superpower that whatever he says immediately sounds entirely reasonable, even to many of the bogus
- VP Kamala Harris, who has been tasked with spreading many of the clues around
- Nearly the entire Biden Administration, especially Fauci
- Numerous House and Senate Democrats, mainly excepting Joe Manchin (Debby-Downer WV) and Kirsten Sinema.
- Stacey Abrams and all of the others registering new Democratic voters in all of the Red states
- Marc Elias and the rest of the lawyers fighting against bogus legal challenges to the election and the raft of voter suppression bills in nearly every state.
- The Freedom From Religion Foundation, including Ron Reagan
- The Lincoln Project
- Your favorites here
plus everyone who contributes genuine information anywhere on the Web.
My point, which I have made frequently, is that there is much more information than misinformation on the Web, even if the radically misinformed make all the news. Rs, bad cops, mass murderers, warmongers (including the Armageddonists, Christian and Muslim, stirring up the Middle East)...Fuggedaboudit. I mean, OK, do the necessary, but don’t assume that we are doomed. There are far fewer tyrannies and civil wars than there were before the Soviet Union came apart. Even the US is doing much less invading and other meddling, and we are all doing a lot more about poverty and global warming.
MLK, all these decades after his death, is still one of our greatest cluonators. Frederick Douglass, I hear, is still doing great things.
Look at all of the other people whom we could not hear for so long who are now being celebrated and even listened to. Women, Blacks, Latinxs, LGBTZOMGBBQs… I am not, by the way, making fun of anyone with that last except the haters who have their knickers in a twist over our brothers and sisters and however you identify yourselves now.
I have personally been gathering clues into a short list.
- The great Hindu sage Narada was annoyed that Vishnu appeared to him in the form of a baby. So Vishnu transformed Narada into a woman who was seen bathing by a prince, who determined to marry her. And after a long life and many children and grandchildren, she died and Narada found himself before Vishnu again.
- Men turned into women and women into men in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
- The eight-year-old daughter of the Dragon King in the Buddhist Lotus Sutra, who teaches the dharma and is then revealed to be a bodhisattva of great development
- Queen Ozma of Oz, who spent her entire childhood under a spell as a boy
- Ranma 1 of 2, who changes sex when getting into hot or cold water
- Various Timelords in Doctor Who, now including the Doctor herself and the Master/Mistress
Hans Rosling is one of the great cluonators, too. He discovered how out of date and frankly racist most of our information about the world is, and devoted his life from then on to passing out clues. See Gapminder for details.
We have tested thousands of people and they were systematically wrong about all this.
Grand Disunified Bogosity
QBD has not reached its peak. The Bogonators are resolute in their pursuit of the ultimate, which I am calling QDB. One could also describe the ultimate goal as the Bogosity of Everything (BOE).
Some of my previous publications on the matter.
Grokking Republicans Book List
Both of those Diaries contain links to all of the Diaries in those series.
Good News: Rs "Resolved to Die…
in the last dike of prevarication.
Edmund Burke
News of the Day
Gaetz, Cheney, former guy, covid denial, voter suppression, Manchin...Never mind.
I leave it to the Finest Comment Section on the InternetTM to fill in further specific Good News of the day. And cats. We must have cats.