Or Why U No Mad As Hell For Ducks Sack?
By Jethro H. Forclift
Will Generation Z be the one that takes a stand?
- 1.6 billion people have lost democratic rights since the birth of the first Zoomer
- The poorest 50% of Americans own just 2.5% of all wealth, the poorest 50% of Britons own less than 6% of all wealth and the poorest 40% of Europeans own just 3%
- The wealthy buy houses to convert the income of poorer people into more wealth for them
- They profit from selling us basic human essentials like power and water
- Their wealth makes more wealth while they play golf and sleep, yet they accuse the poorest of being lazy
- Oh, and the wealthiest 1% generate more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, but they don’t worry about climate change because they know they’ll buy their way out of future problems
For ducks sack, we should be mad as hell. So why aren’t we? Why do we fight among ourselves?
Skim through the highlights below now and you’ll know you have to dive into the oddest serious book of the year. We’ll laugh together as we consider so many ways that the wealthy divide us and take advantage of us. By the end, you’ll either be shell-shocked or mad as hell. Probably both.
Highlights
- Weird – some kind of special dedication with cheesy music? What?…well I think it’s fun and lovin’, not criminal
- You should be mad as hell, but if you’re not, here are 13 reasons to be so angry you could punch a nun (obviously, don’t punch a nun)
- Did the leadership of one of the world’s largest oil producers get away scot-free after committing a crime against humanity in the 1970s? Almost 50 years later, it looks like someone is finally going to pay for it
- Join Roger, Jeff and Gary as they illustrate the evolutionary secret that makes it literally impossible for us to develop societies where the majority don’t suck up to the few at the top
- What was the biggest dick-swinging contest in human history and why will you and I (and not the people who start it) be the biggest losers when it happens again?
- How about some fun for all the family with Autocrat Bingo – how many of these tactics do you recognise from your favourite and least favourite politicians?
- Introduction. Hang on, what sick puppy put this down here?
- Good news, the world is the most equal it’s been in 100 years. The bad news is Western democracies are more unequal as a result of the wealthy using cheap overseas workers to make themselves wealthier and the rest of us poorer
- Boris Johnson and Donald Trump were dreadful leaders and these three things prove it, except they were fantastic leaders and these three things prove it. Politicians like Johnson and Trump know we only see one side and use it to their advantage
- Some wealthy people insist that it’s smart not to pay tax, but this is why it’s not smart to believe them
- Will the wealthy really move abroad and take their wealth with them if we try to tax them too much? Yes they will and here’s why that’s a good thing
- Can’t afford a house because of the housing shortage? There is no housing shortage, the problem is non-productive wealth converting your income into someone else’s wealth
- Most people believe the media’s job is to inform and entertain. No, the wealthy use the media to divide and rule so we will never unite against them
- Autocrats ban books they fear that share ideas of freedom for the people, so how come a poem about unity has been banned by some American schools?
- Should free speech be an essential right for all human beings or should celebrities and students be barred from saying what they believe?
- Are you a great communicator? Let me tell you about Billy the gangster’s attempt to threaten me with a gun in a pub toilet and maybe you’ll think again
- A group of women would never think peeing up a wall could be an engrossing sport, so how come just 28% of members of the US Congress and Senate are women?
- Are you racist? Let me share a test to find out while simultaneously putting to bed one of the most vexing questions of the last quarter century – did Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta really have huge breasts?
- Religion is so divisive, believing in the same God isn’t enough to be on the same side. So who’s telling the truth – did God kill 10, 2,821,364 or more than 25 million people in the Bible?
- Have we misunderstood Hitler’s Nazis? Were they evil or were they just suffering from illusory superiority?
- It’s no laughing matter, but a nurse, a politician and a Belgian walk into a bar
- Capitalism and communism are two sides of the same coin. Communists want a Ferrari as much as capitalists, they just don’t hang a poster on their bedroom wall
- Everyone should be free to live their life as they see fit, so let’s make the concept of the Sovereign Individual reality for those who want that freedom – popping round to Gary and Tracey’s to borrow a cup of sugar will never be the same again
- If I asked you to share a stupid thing you’d done, would it involve viagra? Oh, so just me who suffered that hideous experience then. Before we shout at someone because we think they’re stupid, we could try listening
- The wealthy used to rely on politicians to help them steal wealth from the rest of us, but with more than 10% of billionaires having run for or held public office, they’re cutting out the middle-men
- We don’t want to know the truth, we just want to know we’re right. This is how confirmation bias is a key part of this process
- Is the comedian Russell Brand really Plato for the 21st century and what can Plato teach us about the way we form our own arguments?
- Perception is reality, as I illustrate with the 80s British comedy act The Krankies – are they a great laugh or horrible monsters? You decide
- When someone tells us this is 50% better, unlike Alice, most of us don’t think to ask the most important question and that makes us easy to lie to
- Few people believe they’d fight in a civil war, yet history is filled with them. I want to believe I couldn’t be manipulated to fight, but one afternoon more than 20 years ago still makes me wonder
- Hitler’s description of the big lie sounds absurd, yet it led to more than 50 million deaths. Surely we could never repeat that mistake, could we?
- Let me share some examples of how I’ve already presented some things in an attempt to influence you’re thinking. They’re not lies, but is it acceptable?
- The Gun To Head Question is a simple technique to help us make more objective decisions. Here’s a demonstration using the GTH Question simulator, ex-UK PM Boris Johnson and a sock puppet duck
- Discover the Dunning-Kruger effect explained in a way you won’t find in human psychology textbooks. This is the nearest you’re going to get to a sex scene in this book, so if that’s your bag, take it where you can get it
- Whoever controls the media, controls the truth. Here’s why politicians are so keen to discredit independent media and place controls and blocks on them whenever possible
- Why would the “#1 Trusted Media” ignore unfavourable recent data and use more favourable older data when showing why they’re trustworthy?
- Five times as many people will understand your written message if you use a serif font. It’s stated in a book first published in 1995, so it must be true – only it isn’t
- How could anyone claim that masks don’t reduce the spread of COVID-19? The photos published by MIT are impossible for an intelligent and rational person to argue against, yet some people still try
- How do 100 serial killers manage to find and introduce themselves to one another? Facebook? Craigslist? Work through this role-playing exercise with me to see how likely it might be in reality
- Later I’m going to share undeniable evidence of Trump’s stolen election, but first I need to show why the scrappy bits of non-evidence many claim prove it was stolen are complete junk
- The British people pay their king more than £80 million a year while letting him off the monarch’s liability for more than £16 billion that taxpayers also have to cover for him – so who’s the bunch of consanguineous dimwits?
- Are wealthy people stupid? When presented with evidence like this, it’s hard to argue against
- Did Joe Biden really use $153 billion of taxpayers’ money to pay off the losses of more than 4.5 million gamblers? Yeah, but no, but yeah, but…
- In 2011, Donald Trump asked where Boeing, Caterpillar and John Deere would find the money to cover the cost of Obamacare. The answer is so obvious, you’d have to be a bit simple to miss it (perhaps see list item a couple up)
- During the pandemic, we were told profiteering is bad, yet our societies tolerate one wealthy group of people who are constantly profiteering with an asset we all need
- You’d imagine that no-one would ever be fined just $30 for 16 violations of securities fraud that could have led to 320 years in prison, but in effect, that is what happened to this naughty, but lucky billionaire
- When is a crime not a crime? When the crime is done by rich and powerful people like these
- Autocratic leaders are above the law and we all know how badly that works out for their citizens. So why do some people think it’s a smart idea for democratic leaders to be above the law too?
- What is lawfare and how do the heffalumps use it to stop people like you and me from using our right to free speech?
- Sure, it’s an out-of-the-box, left-field, blue-sky-thinking kind of idea, but the figures show that cremating the wealthiest 1% of the population could reduce climate change pollutants in less than 15 days – trust in the science
- It doesn’t matter if climate change is man-made or natural, it’s going to screw us all in these ways regardless, but don’t worry, the wealthy will be okay
- We’re all suckers for the power of celebrity. Let me share the parable of Fat Boy Slim, Zoe Ball and the chainsaw juggling otter to introduce you to the danger this presents to us (don’t worry, no ducks were really harmed in the writing of this chapter)
- Should people receive inheritances? Trump said “all they do is take money out of the productive economy that creates jobs”. He wasn’t talking about inherited wealth, but I’ll show that he may as well have
- The African slave trade was an abomination, but should people born generations later pay compensation? In reality, we need to answer these two questions
- Politicians say what they think we want to hear with no concern for reality, maybe we could offset that by combining voting with Russian Roulette
- Could these 36 questions be the key to a new era of more civil and bipartisan politics?
- As undemocratic as it sounds, maybe we could create fairer and more effective governments by banning elections to vote for our representatives
- Trickle-down economics says we can make the poor better off by giving money to the wealthy. I know I shouldn’t need to explain why that’s crazy, but some politicians and wealthy people actually seem to believe it
- Few things in this world are quite as pathetic as a strong leader, but that doesn’t stop some in the West getting all fappy about them. Let Princess the dog and the film Hopping Mad show just how pathetic they are
- Discover the total truth of Trump’s stolen election – if the Russian people were cheated by Putin like this, the Western media would be hyperventilating for weeks
- Is illegal immigration the biggest threat to democracy across the planet today and does it weaken both the countries left behind and those that migrants head towards?
- Conservative right-wing parties are seen as the parties of business and illegal immigrants provide cheap labour to businesses. Could that explain why those politicians talk tough on immigration, but never actually stop it?
- Do individuals really spend their money more wisely than governments? Juandyman and a mini-digger produce shocking new evidence that suggests otherwise
- What lessons can pet insurance teach us about the true reason the wealthy want us to turn our back on big government?
- Businesses are more efficient than governments at running things, so let’s make governments operate like businesses, including higher wages and performance-related bonuses
- Why are the wealthy free to profit from supplying the rest of us with essential human basic needs? Even when the sums show we have to pay more as a result
- In democracies, when should politicians have the power to decide who is guilty of crimes? Never, that’s the job of juries, but these politicians disagree and want the power of autocrats
- Great news for black Americans and any American wrongly convicted of a crime. The House Speaker, Mike Johnson, and his Republican colleagues are now on a mission for equal justice for all…if I’ve understood them right
- One of the problems with autocrats is their power to appoint judges, so why does the President of the world’s greatest democracy also have the power to appoint judges?
- I thought 50% of the people plus one was a majority, but it turns out I’ve got that wrong. At least according to these people and states
- Ignore my detour to consider respectable racism and ask why might a Republican in the US want to remove the vote from people aged under 25, unless they’re in the army? Yes, the answer really is that obvious
- Lawyers and financial advisers have a legal duty to always act in the best interests of their clients, which makes it seem very odd that politicians don’t have any similar legal duty to the people they serve
- “Nigerian prince” scam emails are deliberately a bit crap so that only the most gullible respond. Do the media push fake news to qualify their audience as being gullible for their advertisers?
- If stupid people are put in charge of newspapers, we probably shouldn’t be surprised when things go very wrong like this
- The media gives grown men the power to bully others to their heart’s content. Is giving them dolls to play with really going to make things better?
- Can a Kit-Kat teach us anything about how the media may help to persist racial biases in their readers? Obviously yes, not even I’m that clickbaity
- Don’t miss out on a published sentence even more bizarre than “World War 2 Bomber Found On Moon” and “3 Inch Dog Ate My Missus” as you discover when a crime is only an “alleged” crime
- Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin was slagged off by many. If an interviewer asks questions like “what’s your favourite colour?” and ” your house is on fire, what’s the one thing you save?” that kind of response should be expected
- Closing thoughts including:
- a George Bernard Shaw quote that gets to the heart of the problem
- how Biden is like a harmless old man and Trump is more like a Roman Emperor
- 27% of Britons believe unemployed people should have to walk around naked, which doesn’t seem right to me
- the most incredible con-trick that makes us hate what we should love
- a simple explanation of how inherited wealth steals your future
- to really achieve change to fairer societies, we need to be ready to achieve massive chaos first
- Afterthought – well that was bleak
If you prefer a more traditional table of contents, then go here