If you need proof that this blog has the dorkiest commenters on the face of the Earth, browse this thread on Peak Wingnut theory. This comment by Legalize is especially memorable.
I believe that the mistake observers make when looking for peak-wingnut is that they measure wingnuttery against a set of numbers. Wingnuttery can not be measured by any metric by which sane people would ordinarily measure other phenomena. I believe that we have always seen and known peak-wingnut. However, because of its size we are incapable of seeing all of it at one time. We are only permitted a glimpse of wingnuttery depending on its positioning relative to reality at any given time. This positioning simply can not be predicted or measured. In fact, it is irrelevant what position wingnuttery occupies relative to reality because wingnuttery is everywhere at all times. And it always has been.
Wingers will never be more or less sane, or more or less stupid. They will always be as bat-shit insane and pig-ignorant as they always have been. The only factor to be considered is our perception of them. It’s not that they get crazier and stupider. It’s that each time they say or do anything, we perceive them as advancing teh crazy/stupid ball one step further. This is not the case; we merely witness one more tentacle of an infinitely insanely stupid entity.
I will also shamelessly steal a term from Joe K: the Wingularity.
This punchy term nicely captures the way that rightwing argumentation has become gradually detached from independently recognized reality and into a state of total unselfawareness. The pace of change is also accelerating. Just weeks before the election I never could guess that wingnuts would organize nationally around an act that they call teabagging. Imagine being the traveler from the future of three months hence trying to convince Americans of our semantically awkward future. How would you even start?
Thanks to the magic of talk radio and the internet, these guys can talk to no-one but each other for extremely long stretches of time, so they have no idea how crazy they sound. The time could come in the very near future when it becomes totally impossible for any ordinary person to have any idea what they are talking about. They will be beyond ordinary logic, beyond spoof. The wingularity will have arrived.
KG
So, we’re going with Wingularity?
JenJen
The Wingularity Is Near!! Go, KG and Joe K, from just this morning. Beautiful!! I was laughing all morning over that one… I believe a catchphrase has been born.
KG
I am very tempted to buy the domain “thewingularityisnear.com” to start a new blog on. Or maybe I’ll just use one of the free blog platforms to start.
Mudge
Someone ( I think it has been attributed to Einstein) once said that genius has limits, but stupidity is infinite. If this is true, there will never be a state of peak wingnut.
JenJen
@KG: This is a fine, fine idea, KG. I’ve never had issues with Blogspot since Google eated them, fyi.
Jon H
Also known as the Fapture.
bago
Needs more timecube.
KG
I started off many years ago on blogger, then switched to blogsome, and the last one I was using was wordpress. but since getting out of law school, blogging just hasn’t been the same.
Warren Terra
I think I’ve seen it proposed that the Singularity will come when humans create, then merge with, thinking machines.
Clearly the path to the Wingularity is precisely the opposite: a political machine must create, then merge with, unthinking humans.
Jon H
@KG: Make it the Wingularity Index, akin to the Rapture Index site.
Warren Terra
@ #6 by Jon H
Perfect.
Rosali
Don’t forget the 2M4M movement advocating for the exact opposite of their clever little abbreviated name.
srv
I believe Cuil Theory may be useful in modelling Peak Wingnut.
Svensker
@KG:
Is that “The Wingularity, I snear”?
KG
@ 10: holy christ riding the FSM, how do I unsee what I have seen via the Google?
PaminBB
The problem I foresee with a Wingularity Index (WI) is that it implies that there are finite boundaries to wingnuttia. While most of us are familiar with a WI at or near 0, the other end of the scale must be asymptotic (I may not be using the term correctly, I haven’t taken any mathematics for decades).
gbear
I like that word too, but would ‘self-awarelessness’ keep the grammarists happier?
bago
Not the exact opposite. They still think threesomes among mormons are heathen.
Jon H
@PaminBB: Nono, the Wingularity Index would be a measure of how close we are to the Wingularity, like how the Rapture Index site tries to track ‘signs’ of the impending Rapture.
WereBear
I adore this.
Wingnut physics. We need a Theory of EveryWing!
The Grand Panjandrum
I just wonder if this wingularity is essential, isolated or removable? Anyone know? DougJ?
Roger Moore
@Mudge:
The most common form of the quote is:
This is probably one of those clever quotes that’s attributed to somebody who never said anything like them.
JGabriel
@KG: I am loving “thewingularityisnear.com”. Go for it!
.
El Cid
Can teh wingularity be weakened by the loss to liberalhawking radiation?
JGabriel
@srv:
That should work, as long as we modify it to handle the Aleph and succeeding orders of infinity as per Cantor’s Transfinite Numbers Theorem.
Because I don’t really see how you discuss the wingularity with bringing transfinite numbers into it.
.
devopsych
Okay, just as long as I don’t have to see no naked wingularity.
El Cid
@JGabriel: I was just wondering if there could be high Aleph numbers of paths to the wingularity.
Bas-O-Matic
Do not click on this link.
devopsych
Which is why god abhors a naked wingularity.
gbear
So does Glenn Beck have the density to become a black hole in the fabric of Wingnularity? Or is he just their Death Star?
burnspbesq
This is, I think, one of the best things Ahn-drew has ever written. Concise, to the point, and obviously heartfelt. And also completely correct.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/the-nazi-comparison.html#more
burnspbesq
@Bas-O-Matic:
That’s gruesome on more levels than I can ever hope to name.
bago
The Dilduzi ranks among the best.
El Cid
Can I just say, as I can finally head out of work, that I love these Hubble telescope repair missions? And we’re going to see some really, really cool shots once this is all up and running again.
DougJ
It’s essential.
gocart mozart
The term “teabagger” is offensive. The more correct phrase is “scrotum licking American”.
Dave C
If the wingularity is truly as enormous you say, do you think its near-infinite stupidity could be harnessed and used to do political work? For instance, suppose that the change in rationality (call it &Delta R) experienced when going from a statement made by Joshua Micah Marshall to a statement made by Michelle Malkin is a very large negative number. Could this negative &Delta R be coupled with a statement whose &Delta R is positive but of a smaller magnitude (for instance, most of what President Obama says) to produce a rational statement or argument that might not otherwise have been made? In other words, can we take a statement that is extremely exo-rationalistic and use it to create a one or more endo-rationalistic statements?
Somebody should really look into the thermodynamics of wingnuttery.
El Cid
Could God make a wingularity so dense that even He could not teach it anything?
burnspbesq
@gocart mozart:
Is it safe to go outside?
burnspbesq
@El Cid:
He has. It’s called the Roman Catholic Church.
wasabi gasp
Would a theory of wingnuts involve a religious leader? Some kind of ignorant designer or immaculate cheeto?
El Cid
@burnspbesq: God made that? Looks pretty man-made to me. Though maybe they got some help on the Sistine Chapel.
gocart mozart
Yes. Jonah Goldberg, Sarah Palin, Fox news, et al.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
I have just one question – who is the prime wingularity? Who is the overstuffed gasbag that will go supernova first, collapse, and then begin siphoning in mass from other nearby gasbags, causing a chain reaction that will eventually end with the supermassive Wingularity? The obvious choice is Rush, but I don’t want to rule anyone out too early.
It’s fun to think of Rush and Co. being black for all eternity, isn’t it?
El Cid
@wasabi gasp: Just think of all the ways that the illogic would lead you to a theory of Unintelligent Design — ‘I mean, you expect us to believe that it was just chance, some sort of accident that led to this sort of perfect display of wingnut density? That’d be like a hurricane blowing through the world’s largest library of different editions of the works of Shakespeare (more than 3!), Darwin, and Newton, and the page pieces all recombined into Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fatcysm! That cain’t be no damn accident!’
dmsilev
@Dave C:
To do that properly, I fear it is necessary to start with the statistical mechanics of wingnuttery. I think there’s a promising avenue of approach using the tools of renormalization group theory and critical phenomena. Any theory which is based on increasingly wild fluctuations on all size scales is perfect for understanding the hot-air production of the modern wingnut.
-dms
El Cid
Is there a historiography here? Did pre-Newtonian Cartesians philosophize about the possibility of infinite stupidity in infinitely small spaces?
Did some ancient Greek philosopher define the elemental nature of wingnuttia such that when you cut it, divided it, cut it again, in infinite sequence, eventually it would collapse from elemental wingnut stupidity into gibberish, and even then it would be hard to tell what had changed?
devopsych
Does the whole process become repulsive when it reaches the splank limit?
OriGuy
@tripletee (formerly tBone): A wingularity would generate a powerful gravity well, not just in a physical sense, but such that anyone who tried to escape it using reason and logic would tend to be pulled in toward it. I think we’ve see plenty of examples of that with Rush.
JGabriel
tripletee (formerly tBone):
It doesn’t really work that way. What happens is that each of the gasbags steal gas from other less pure gasbags, rendering them non-wingnut, through a process we don’t quite understand yet, though we know it involves spinning – which is why it’s called the Purity Spiral.
As fewer wingnuts become more bloated they spin faster and faster, violently expropriating gas from each other and expelling less pure gasbags ever more rapidly until only only one is left, which collapses in upon itself it, becoming a naked wingularity, or if there isn’t enough mass, a furiously spinning Wingnut Pulsar.
There are some who claim that the latter has already happened to Limbaugh in the early 90’s – which, frankly, would explain quite a lot.
.
gocart mozart
The weather chart says yes.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
I think it became repulsive well before that. And you’re also assuming that there is a splank limit, which I believe to be false – unless a supernatural entity intervenes and causes the Fapture, they’ll be content to continue splanking until the heat death of the universe.
burnspbesq
@gocart mozart:
Cool. What time is Earlie Pearlie picking us up?
JGabriel
dmsilev:
Yes, well, it certainly suggests a whole new approach to Lie Groups.
.
Little Dreamer
I don’t know about Pre-Newtonian, but I think it was covered in Deliverance.
wasabi gasp
@El Cid: Your grasp of the illogical is impressively wrongheaded, manly, and white.
Radon Chong
Note: We are following a trial the Editors blazed over five years ago, folks. For all of you who keep asking what turned Cole around, click the link.
gocart mozart
Some all hot half shot heading for her hot spot, snapping his fingers and clapping his hands has made Earlie Pearlie upset and she can’t find her keys now.
Frank Wilhoit
English Civil War, much? None of this is less than four hundred years old. These are the people who were with Cromwell, giving false information against their neighbors. As long as you think any of this is new, you can’t begin to understand it. Look up John Pym. Look up William Prynne. Change the names and no one can distinguish them from today’s Republican demagogues. And each of us is Charles I, drifting towards the block.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@JGabriel:
I’m going to need to see some numbers on that.
I thought that’s what happens to the purity-bracelet types once they leave home and move into a sorority.
Obviously not Limbaugh then. Maybe Michael Savage.
gocart mozart
Frank Wilhoit says politicians will be political !!11!!
Although, I do agree that Dick Cheney should “drift towards the block.”
KT
So would that be a new language, Winglish?
Or a dialect, Wingbonics?
KG
Ladies and gentlemen, I present…
The Wingularity
eemom
@Radon Chong:
wow, that is good stuff. Never heard of that place before.
It is heartening to keep finding good blogs. Ghod knows I was about to give up before I stumbled upon this one.
Steve
Looking over the Wingularity, I actually think what we can expect is this:
The Wingnuts will get Wingnuttier over time because they do live in their own tight culture. They are completely unable to understand the larger picture and have chosen to be deliberately ignorant. Their contacts with the real world either result in denial, or anger as it doesn’t line up with their perceptions.
However, anger is part of the Wingnut mentality. Wingnuts think ENTIRELY in negatives. They only know how to be against, as the things they’re for are hopelessly abstract, stupid, immesurable, or both.
So at some point, a part of Wingnuttia is going to snap hard. We can’t predict this easy since its hard to measure deliberate crazy. At some point though there will be some crazed wingnut act, group meltdown, complete freakout that will probably be violent.
At this point, the Wingularity will dissolve – some will back the act, some be against it, and the Wingnuts will turn on each other. They won’t go away, but they will be less unified.
Genine
I just want to say that the commenters here are awesome.
That is all.
JGabriel
@tripletee (formerly tBone):
Touche. Good point.
.
different church-lady
Slight problem here: nobody can ever make “the last coherent wingnut argument,” because wingnut arguments are incoherent by definition.
wilfred
This is how Homeland itself sounds when you’ve been away for a long time.
Svensker
@Radon Chong:
That is hilarious. “Sully the Pooh” is pure gold. And beautiful mocking of Le Cole. Genius.
J. Michael Neal
The second clause of this sentence is pure gold, whether intended or not.
Bill E Pilgrim
Peak Wingnut.
It ain’t just a mountain in Alaska.
scarshapedstar
ACORN! ANSWER! Nancy Pelosi’s big plane! Birth certificates! Whitey! Objectively pro-Saddam! Aluminum tubes! Countertops! Headscarves! PBUH!
I think we’re already beyond the Event Horizon of the Wingularity. Not only are we accelerating towards it (and the third derivative is positive as well!) but as we look backwards, light from a non-wingnutty time no longer reaches us. The region of spacetime we inhabit is a closed curve. The further you look back, the wingnuttier everything is.
pdbuttons
hi/ i think u mite find me to be a wingnut
so/ i’ll engage…mmmm
for the last forty / fifty years
every inner city
schoolboard/ mayor/school committee[sp)
has been controlled by democrats
and then the dc voucher program
has been deee/funded
my question is..
y do u hate black people so much?
power?be nice/ i will be
thanks
Johnny Pez
It’s all because of that Large Hardon Collider they got in Europe. I warned you all that thing was bad news!
Matthew Hooper
Oh, thank you so very, very much for putting the image a naked, spinning, flatulent Rush Limbaugh in my head. That completely made my morning. Pepcid AC, anyone?
demimondian
DougJ is right: the Wingularity is essential. More than that, though, those who are discussing Contorian transfinites are also right. It is clear that the remnant of the Wingularity will be supercompact .
This suggests a new “Wingnut Setback Theory”, an alternative theory of everything political, functioning by analogy with alternative set theories in Mathematics…and, interestingly, having about as much relationship to the important questions of the day as they do.
IndieTarheel
I don’t have anything to say as witty as what has already been posted.
I just wanted to say this is the most jaw-droppingly awesome thread EVAR.
Nice job, everyone.
beergoggles
I like Legalize’s comment that was quoted. It’s similar to how I’ve always seen the wingnut – like the blind men and the elephant. It is why so many people exposed to different wingnuttia end up disagreeing as to what exactly wingnuttia is and how far it goes. We’re the blind guys; we cannot comprehend the vastness of the wingnut.
The only reason it appears to be infinite, is that the human mind grants us infinite ways in which to tie ourselves up in a loop to avoid reality from destroying our preconceived notions. Based on that I posit that the vista of wingnuttia isn’t infinite, merely ever changing.
snetzky
I had a conversation with my brother-in-law the other night and we both agreed that the wingularity will not truly occur ever, as the response to defeat by the wingnuts is to simply believe harder.
The wingnut view point is to pick a position and then find evidence to support that position, regardless of how they get it.
Torture is the penulitmate step toward just making stuff up and then executing anyone who presents to the contrary.
I’m sure that Cheney would have liked to do that, had he had the opportunity.
snetzky
@beergoggles
The blind men and the elephant is extremely apropo to the discussion, as wingnuttery is infinite and each person’s perception is finite.
I think part of the problem is that wingnuts are completely incapable of conceiving that they might be wrong about anything, which is why they react with such anger and vitriol when doubted or questioned.
demimondian
@pdbuttons: Troll alert — pushing de buttons, that one is.
That said, pdb’s comment would be a beautiful example of the reflexive narcissism of the Wingnuts — they hate African-Americans, but lie about it, so they project that onto everyone else. They are cowards, but lie about it, so they project *that* onto everyone else. They are crooks, but lie about it, so they project *that* onto everyone else.
(This, by the way, is a classic example of narcissistic projection that one sees in the psychological literature. Narcissists are deeply insecure, fearing that a certain modesty on their parts would be more than justified. Thus, in any case where they fail of the ideals that they demand others achieve, they use misdirection to distract viewers.)
Fierce Pika
@80: You’re completely right about how wingnuts pick their position, but this is the ESSENCE of the wingularity: all time and space is relative, meaning that normal physics and certainly reasoning do not apply. This aspect is INCREASED as you approach the wingularity. Think of the end of “2001”. That is the world that the wingnuts occupy.
And can I just say: between the physics/math dorkdom and not one, but AT LEAST TWO catchy terms (“wingularity” and “the fapture”), this is officially the best thread EVAH.
Joe K
OMFG, I think that was my 15 minutes!
Cannot stop grinning at the headline. I believe my face is stuck.
Joe K
I think there’s a real sense in which the Wingularity is modeled by a very simple logical formula: A -> ~A (that is, “A implies not-A”, a direct contradiction and obviously false).
Well-known fact: any theorem follows from a contradiction. I tend to strongly associate wingnuttery with Christian social conservatism, which bases its view of reality on a text riddled with factual errors and inconsistencies. (Any text that can offer moral support for both the statements “God is love” and “Bombing abortion clinics is a Good Thing” isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, logically speaking.)
Ergo, the wingnut leadership has the freedom to advance any agenda that fits their interests, while remaining fully within the letter of what many of their base consider their foundational document.
Further, mathematically, the statement A->~A is closely related to the notion of an algebraic singularity: it represents a situation that cannot be represented by the system under consideration, and once you’re there, you have no idea WTF is gonna happen.
QED
pdbuttons
hi/ back again/
just had…y’know..shit to deal wit
like
mmm
how can i make a sarah palin ice sculpture in july?
eehhh/
tea bags somehow work…
so…
y are inner city/ utes so screwed up?
dick cheney?
u obama lam bots got…til…
june next year…
btw/ i hate big govt/
but i like ballons/ ha
pdbuttons
by the way
i’m donald rumfee comin here in
mmm good heart/
just wanna know how now brown cow can
understand each other [loser talk
u win/
so the cycle begins
we all suffer!
well/ some of ouu less melatony …
peace/ lets talk nicely
i will ignore insults/ unless they be funny
then i’ll torture u
thanlks again
0
pdbuttons
my buttons have escaped from the
zoo…
i’ve tried to zipper his pie hole
but he keep blabbin’
about 4 horses,,,
repent/ juicy ballons!
pdbuttons
demo dian
u can’t deny that inner shitty schools/ the commitee board
the mayors…
the…hole process/ has been a lefty power grab…it worked
congrats!
but to.. phycoli-conform me…
if u can’t even steven come near me
go huddle
pdbuttons
every 4
i say bobby orr
Gerald Fnord
Quick. Someone pay Stross to write a book titled Wingularity, Why?…may the publisher will re-title it Festival of Fools.
Leisureguy
You’re right on target with your observation that wing-nuts mostly talk to each other, reinforcing their insane ideas and drifting further and further from reality as most people know it. James Fallows quotes this column by Don Rose in the Chicago Daily Observer:
Out of towners often ask me how it is that folks in Chicago and Illinois put up with all the hanky and panky that goes on in our political snakepits.
I tell them about my cat litter box.
Currently I have two cats—once I had nine. In any case, I used to think I kept their potty clean and odor free. Then, every so often someone would come to the door, sniff the air and whisper in confidence, “I think your cat box needs changing.”
They were right, of course. They came from cat-free environments and could sense a drop of urine at 30 paces, while I had grown so desensitized to the aroma that my schnozz would tell me I was romping through a fresh pine forest.
So it is with the denizens of our city and state.
Ron Sullivan
the last coherent wingnut argument
And the last shall be first.
coolgeek
The Theory of Infinite Wingnuttery.
The Wingularity.
I just don’t see how a Nobel Prize can ever again be awarded that doesn’t build off of this post.
Jim
For the untimate experience Google “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology)” and “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty.” Definitely not recommended by LaHaye, Lindsey, or Van Impe. Jim
Joel
PRETRIB RAPTURE RUSTLER
While you’re wondering why everyone featured the “Tribulation Index” (using the essence and not the title) for 1800 years before a Nebraska “rustler” changed it into the “Rapture Index,” check out “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty” on the “Powered by Christ Ministries” site. But gulp down some tranquilizers first!