NOTHING BUT BULLSHIT In the essay titled Acting I suggested that movie writers/directors sometimes throw bullshit at us that is extraneous to the movie's plot, as when they overdo some of the kissing scenes. I offered the opinion that sometimes (with the emphasis on the word sometimes) such scenes were virtually "an advertisement for modern-day romance." Now there is nothing inherently wrong with an advertisement for modern-day romance, especially if it is presented to us forthrightly, as something that we clearly recognize as advertising. My beef is with the way the advertising is dumped on us. In essence, what they do is advertise to us without telling us that they're advertising to us, which means that we have ideas and values foisted upon us (or marketed to us) in ways that I would describe, at very least, as indirect. And there is something about that that just plain pisses me off. The whole devious process sort of reminds me of pork-barrel politics, that other bullshit process whereby legislators sneak all kinds of extra crap into a bill that has nothing to do with the original bill's basic purpose. We are tempted at times to think of this kind of shenanigans as conspiratorial, because it does feel like someone is making a deliberate effort to put something over on us. But I think there is a better word, although I'm not quite sure what it is (but as you might probably glean from the title of this essay I'm leaning quite heavily towards bullshit). Sometimes stuff happens just because people are just plain incompetent or downright lazy. Like with the AIDS thing. In the essay that deals with that subject I clearly stated that I don't believe in all the hoopla surrounding that utterly contrived disease. There are some who actually refer to the controversy surrounding HIV as a conspiracy, somehow suggesting thereby that something deliberate is going on, that some sort of scheme has been hatched by some ultra-secret enclave of elites intent on exacting a form of subtle population control on select groups. This, in my opinion, is bullshit. What is very likely happening in the AIDS drama is due mostly to incompetence and/or laziness, not to mention utter greed (on the part of the big business phenomenon so commonly known as Big Pharma). If anything, the AIDS debacle (for some reason I want to say the bullshit AIDS debacle) is nothing but clear evidence of the overwhelmingly persuasive power of the marketplace, of which Big Pharma owns a considerable share. I do not believe for a minute that the CEOs of the major pharmaceutical companies doubt that HIV is the cause of AIDS. I am quite sure that they do believe in such a myth. If they did not believe in it, yet still supported all the research and all the marketing aimed at supporting the idea (of the HIV-AIDS link), then they would indeed be guilty of engaging in a conspiracy. All it took for the whole AIDS thing to take off was a person of some authority (Robert Gallo) to claim (not prove) that a virus had been identified as the cause of the mysterious new ailment that had so suddenly appeared in the gay community. Such a pronouncement was all that the greedy bastards in the drug industry needed. They had the word of a recognized scientist to justify their goal of developing and marketing (selling) an outrageously expensive (and utterly worthless) product to the easily-duped masses, most of whom literally worshipped (and continue to worship) at the sanctuary of modern medicine and are as a result helplessly enslaved by its high priests (doctors), a group of unquestioned elites, who in reality are little more than conduits connecting the insidious drug industry to the same sick, helpless and oblivious slaves it seeks to bilk. Now that, my friend, is total bullshit. It'll Put the Fear of God in You, Boy
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