MY friend Jimmy is smart alec. He seems to have an answer for everything. If one were to be playing chess, he would invariably offer suggestions on how to get out of a tight situation.
“Take his castle, sacrifice your Queen,” would be his unsolicited advice.
One day I was playing a game of Monopoly and with one roll of my dice I landed in jail.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “use your ‘get out of jail free’ card”.
That did it. His cleverness was beginning to irritate me. So, I decided to throw him something more challenging.
“Since you are such a smart cookie. How would you get out of it if you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar.”
My pun was obviously intended. By the way, for the uninitiated the expression “caught with his hand in the cookie jar” is taken to mean that a person is caught taking something that he is not entitled to. In plain language it simply means stealing.
Jimmy was unflustered. “I can think of at least four manoeuvres,” was his confident reply and went on to expound the how-to-get-away-scot-free scheme. So this week I recount some of my conversation with my smart cookie friend.
The first one he expounded on was the ‘big lie’. Apparently it was favoured by Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda chief of Adolf Hitler. He is purported to have said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
However, the challenge with this technique is that lies don’t come in singly. Once one starts to lie, one would have to tell more lies to cover that initial lie. Of course, needless to say to engage this tactic, one would have to have total control of all the means of communication.
Hitler and Goebbels might have had it easier in those days. They had built up an army of rottweilers that they would let loose on anyone who had the temerity to doubt their stories. Thus, they were able, and with total impunity, to burn mountains of books to stop the spread of independent thinking.
Admittedly now it is more complicated, for these days information is not confined to the physical printed form. Information floats around in the ether and to control it is as difficult as trying to control the wind. However, that does not stop the tyrants of the day from trying. So what ensues then is a game of cat and mouse between the seeker of truth and the promoter of lies.
The second method is a real classic. Why it even has an ancient Latin name. It is called ‘ad hominem’ meaning to the man or to the person. Simply, it means to win arguments by attacking a person’s character, rather than the content of his arguments.
For instance, if one’s action, which has the appearance of impropriety, were to be questioned by one’s predecessor. So instead of responding to the challenge to clarify the matter one can just launch a tirade saying, “Hey, you did such and such bad thing during your time and therefore whatever you have in mind now is not worthy of consideration.” The question then is neatly sidestepped.
The next method is purported to be of Chinese origin. Somewhere in the tome of a treatise on the ‘Art of War’ Sun Tzu wrote something about “attack is the best form of defence”.
“I have not gotten round to read this master strategist’s work thoroughly,” said Jimmy but he recounted that he had seen a television interview of one Manchester United football team manager who in response to a criticism that his team did not have good defence said, “Well, with our attacking force we do not need to defend.”
Finally there is the imaginative ‘a dead cat on the table’ manoeuvre. Let us suppose you are losing an argument. The facts are overwhelmingly against you and threaten to engulf you. The more people focus on these facts the worse it is for you and your case. Your best bet in these circumstances is to create something drastic and dramatic that will distract them – like a racial riot, a fire, or even the discovery of something that was lost a year and a half ago. It is like throwing a dead cat on the table. People will be talking about the lifeless feline and the very important issue you don’t want them to talk about is all but forgotten.
“Wow! That is a lot of ammo for a would-be thieving bully. Is there any counter move against these?” I asked.
“I am glad that you ask. In fact there is one very simple counter and it is taken from football,” said Jimmy. Of course he would, being an ardent Manchester United fan.
“What’s that?” I asked; my curiosity piqued.
“Keep your eye on the ball. The opponent may shimmy and dummy to throw you off balance but if you keep your eyes on the ball you would not be fooled.”
“Would it work?”
“Well, that depends if we are talking about a nation of sheep or something else. You know what happens to a nation of sheep?”
“What?”
“Check out the quote by Edward R Murrow.”
“Who’s he?”
“Just Google,” were Jimmy’s parting words.
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