To try and fool a scholar is to make naked the Mark Inside. Any intellectual individual can easily flip the switch and turn the most nefarious raconteur into a sycophant without the would-be parasite understanding what has happened. Where the writer and scholar are concerned, the truly meritorious do not need night-vision goggles for they have olfactory senses as well as instinct. They live by their ability to know phonies and scum using eye-contact, reading body-language, word usage and paying special attention to speech and text patterns. They can play dumb better than one who is dumb and devour the foul who fancy themselves brilliant. No real scholar calls themselves brilliant or worse, proclaims genius. They do not have to. Others do it for them. This is the truth behind the saying, “My work speaks for itself.”
Any
good con-artist knows that pulling off a serious spoof means talking fast and living
the façade built on both self-esteem and self-image. However, the scholar spots
the con-artist for what he or she is by understanding “tells” de-clothing the
liar thus laying bare the Mark Inside. As William S. Burroughs said, “Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you
cannot beat; the Mark Inside.” What that comment means is simple. Be wary
that desire does not overcome set goals lest those goals be exploited by the
truly coherent. The scholar understands that reality does not lie only in facts
for facts can be spun. Reality; truth if you will allow, lies within the
subtext, the space between the lines where the tail is unable to wag the dog.
Most
facts are re-hashes of the truth and this goes double for politics and
government. The face coming out of the plasma screen cleverly reads a script
laid out of them by the true puppet-master, the one you will never see unless a
sacrificial lamb is needed in order to keep the farce alive. Karl Rove, Rod
Blagojavich, and Jesse Jackson Jr. are perfect examples of these sacrificial
lambs. By studying history any person can discover that once a high-ranked
member of the elite, a spinner of fact, outlives their usefulness the scholars
pound nails into their wrists, decapitate them, or worse, place them in a cushy
Colorado Prison outfitted like a Hilton. Facts, like all else, live by the whim
of the trickle-down effect; the barnacles answer to someone who answers to
someone else leading as high as the President and up to the Congress and
further the Treasury Department--the real string pullers--further up to perhaps
divinity itself if you do not mind a fun fancy.
Facts
are accepted through the credibility of the writer, journalist, pundit, and so
forth, by the common people. All of the above making money, the true folding
God, following rules set by a being unseen. He Who Hides in the Open.
That
is the scholar tugging the tentacles of the hustler. Rather than be bested
he/she pretends martyrdom and rises from the tomb leaving a stain on the
blanket that folds much like newspaper. The scholar informs the con on
scholarly knowledge which the con can use to spoof the dingbats. To test the
veracity of this claim all one needs to do is watch the evening news and look
between what is being said. Let the words pass through and study the eyes. The
sudden movement of the position in the chair. Facial tension resultant of
wishing like Hell the suit could straighten its tie while listening to either
balderdash or zealous honesty. Therein lay the subtext and the truth. To discover
nervous “tells” pay attention to those who have everything to lose. Test them
out in society. Do not take it from me, do your own work. The purpose here is
merely to point any reader in the direction of true north while leaving the
leash in their own able hands.
Average
Person says, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”
A
con will say, “I lead the horse to water and convince him to drink.”
A
scholar will say, “The horse can find the water alone if he is truly thirsty.”
Finally,
a warning from Neitzsche: “When you look
into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
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