How Stupid Do They Think We Are?

Patrick Armstrong

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“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Consumers of the print or electronic output of the League of Copy Typists and their Instructors are expected to believe many impossible things and believe them, not just before breakfast, but all day too.

• Putin kills his enemies by using spectacular methods that can easily be traced back to Russia and preferably when he’s staging some high-profile event like the Olympics or World Cup.
• Russian submarines only fool around in the waterways of neutral countries whose elites want to get into NATO, never in NATO ones.
• Poison is smeared on the front doorknob. This requires the roof of the house to be replaced.

Come to think it, believing any part of the official Skripal story, from the incredibly lethal nerve agent that didn’t kill them, to the spectacular coincidence of the British Army’s chief nurse being on the scene, to the re-wrapped perfume bottle would tax the White Queen’s ability. Here’s a list. But that’s not to say that we’re finished yet: there always seems to be another absurdity like the dead ducks.

• Assad only uses chemical weapons or nerve agents when he’s winning.
• They bomb hospitals on purpose, we bomb them by accident.
• The USAF bombs with great precision and accuracy. But the cities it bombs are turned into rubble. Its “precision” is indistinguishable from random carpet bombing. Fallujah. Raqqa. Mosul.
• Washington’s enemy-of-the-moment always attacks just when Washington warns it might: vide recent Gulf of Tonkiran episode. Or shoots down innocent drones which are absolutely, positively, in international airspace. Or perhaps they aren’t.
• RT is tremendously effective at influencing people even though nobody you know actually watches it.
• Satellite photos vary between amazingly blurry and sharp as a tack. Obviously some mysterious law of optics is at work here: Russian artillery in Ukraine – blurry; Russian aircraft in Syria – sharp.
• Despite spending billions on intelligence agencies and equipment, NATO depends on Bellingcat and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights for its information. They are credible sources despite being on NATO’s payroll (UK in the case of SOHR and the Atlantic Council in the case of Bellingcat); Russian sources are not credible because they are on Moscow’s payroll.
• Putin is unable to rig elections in Ukraine or Georgia but he does it with ease in the USA and Europe.
• Russia is on the edge of collapse but tremendously powerful (Cleverly termed “Russophrenia” by Bryan MacDonald.)
• Democracies are inherently peaceful but always at war.
• No one knows where refugees come from; they just appear. See above and below. (They were warned.)
• NATO, despite its record in destabilising Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and the Balkans, is a force for stability […]

Source: How Stupid Do They Think We Are?