He May He may Look Like an Idiot, but Don’t Let That Fool You. He Really Is an Idiot

In the 2007 sci-fi movie Next, directed by Lee Tamahori, a small time Las Vegas magician, Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage), is able to see into his future. At the beginning of the movie, we see Johnson use his abilities in a small Las Vegas nightclub. Afterwards he informs us, via a voiceover, that the truly surprising thing about some magicians who predict the future is that they really do. In other words, they hide their ability in plain sight.

Here we see a version of the logic that Freud explores in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious when he recalls the following story,

Two Jews meet in a railway carriage at a station in Galicia. ‘Where are you going?’ asks one. ‘To Cracow’ was the answer. ‘What a liar you are!’ broke out the other. ‘If you say you are going to Cracow, you want me to believe you are going to Lemberg. But I know you are going to Cracow. So why are you lying to me?’

This joke exposes how truth telling can conceal the truth. How we can tell someone a truth in such a way that people will think it is a lie.

An example of how the truth can camouflage itself in the truth can be seen in a 1922 article about Adolf Hitler in the New York Times,

Several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.

While it’s very likely that right wing politicians who express openly racist, sexist, or anti-semitic views are hypocrites, opportunists, and manipulators who don’t really believe what they’re saying, the point is that we should avoid falling for the trap of seeking their real intentions and locate the horrifying truth of their message in what they actually present.

When looking at the current Republican frontrunner it’s worth paying heed to the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who reminds us of the Marx brothers famous saying, “He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”