Rise, Falsely Equate and Grind

A surefire way to be taken very seriously by very serious and thoughtful humans is to analyze current events -- from pop culture to politics to war and economics -- through the prism of equivalency.

Here's how to use such analysis to your benefit so that everyone standing in your circle, smartly sipping from their smart drinks, dressed in smart outfits, will nod with approval.

1. Even if you disagree with a lukewarm take, acknowledge that the take haver has the right to have her take. This is what people mistakenly believe to be free speech.

2. Start a sentence with, "While I see where you're coming from," then throw it in reverse, feel the transmission buckle, and find a way to say that someone who would vehemently disagree with this take is also very wrong.

3. Ramble a bit and smile. Be self deprecating. Keep talking about how everyone is wrong about everything, and maybe no one knows anything about anything.

4. Try to wrap up your take with something like, "So I get what you're saying and you're right on this point." But here's the kicker, the critical ingredient in the very serious soup: falsely equate this person's stance with the equal and opposite, because -- as the news has taught us -- there are two sides to every story, both being equally right and wrong. This is what smart folks like to call discourse.

False equivalency will help you make friends. You won't alienate anyone, anywhere, especially among groups of people whose self perception hinges on the ability to cast off all opinions outside a very narrow mainstream of cultural and political thought. These good folks say a Pepe the frog emoji is just like a rose emoji because they are opposite. And therefore, equal.

Like I said: smart. Almost too smart.

Father John Misty, the apocalypse-obsessed Jim Morrison of the Internet Age whose latest release, "Pure Comedy," is quite good, has a musical dedication to false equivalency on the track, "Two Wildly Different Perspectives." I get the gist of the song: our political culture is rife with hatred and fear due to extreme polarization that has divided states, counties, cities, and families, while creating two realities in which liberals and conservatives exist. In one reality, climate change will kill us all. In the other, it's a grand international hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

I liked this song until, well, I didn't. My backlash against "Two Wildly Different Perspectives" is complete, as I've come to see it as a crowning artistic achievement in analyzing the world through that old, reliable false equivalency prism: the laziest possible analysis.

Let's start with the middle stanza.

One side says "Kill 'em all."

The other says "Line those killers up against the wall."

But either way some blood is shed

Thanks to our cooperation

On both sides

I'm going to take the brave stance that killing is bad, even if you disagree with someone. This is a revelation to you, I know. Your world: it's rocked. Is there perfect equivalence between someone who shouts the first line -- kill 'em all -- and someone, with passions aroused, calls for the killing of the killers? The phrase, "Kill 'em all," connotes an otherness of the group in the crosshairs. Them, after all, is not us. This is a targeting of a group of people because of who they are -- perhaps it's their collective religious identification or their skin color or their country of origin. Maybe it's their socioeconomic status. Maybe it's their political affiliation. The long and bloody history of Kill 'Em All is, well, long and bloody. Is this not the rallying cry for every atrocity ever committed? Has there ever been a massacre of innocents without the call to kill 'em all? It's as ugly and devilish as human beings can get.

A longing for justice is innate. It cuts across cultures and eras. Desiring punishment for those who wrong the innocent other seems like something baked into our DNA. And in this song, it's simply the other side of the proverbial coin: the equal and opposite of the monsters who murder and destroy with the hope to kill 'em all. I reject the premise that those who want to kill the killers are the same as those who want to kill for power, or because a group looks different, or speaks differently, or because God told them to. It's true -- as the good Father says -- that "either way some blood is shed," but is all bloodshed created equal? Revenge fantasies, both in movie and book form, are based on the idea that these two acts are not the same. We know this in our marrow. One can avoid expressions of unfiltered glee when the killers are killed while recognizing the somber reality that bad people who did bad things were put "up against the wall" and now cease to exist. Though the lines between right and wrong is often so blurry it's barely visible, equating these two groups and their violent acts is not just morally squishy. I think it's wrong.

One side says "Man, take what's yours!"

The other says "Live on no more than you can afford."

But either way we just possess

And everyone ends up with less

On both sides

The song's final verse makes me break out in hives. It makes me fall to the floor and convulse and speak in tongues. This economic summation isn't so much falsely equivalent as it is fundamentally inaccurate. Father John Misty, with whom I attended high school in the late-90s (I'm very important), doesn't seem to have a firm grasp of the key differences in economic visions on the left and right.

The summary of conservative economic thought is on point: Greed is good. Self interest is the only virtue. The earth was made to be destroyed for monetary gain. The world would be a better place if everyone pursued land and money without abandon. Got mine, fuck you. The free market, in all its glory, will reward those who work hard and long and punish those who don't. Father John Misty, you've channeled all the great libertarian thinkers. Good job, good effort.

That leaves us with the good Father's second line about those who preach to never spend more than you have. This doesn't reflect leftist economic theory as much as it does the thinking of my conservative uncle who tells me the government should be run like a household (and other elementary school bromides screamed at him through Fox News). Perhaps Mr. Misty is trying his damnedest to channel the Karl Marx quote, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." That lyrical translation fell short. No, wait. It utterly failed, fell on its face, and knocked out its front teeth. Instead of presenting the opposition view to the "take what's yours" crowd, this line offers a slightly less brutal version of conservative economic theory. It's advice on how not to go into debt. It's not a counter to the laissez faire mania reflected in the first line. I suppose there's no false equivalency here. It somehow falls short of that.

The stupefying meaning of the second line invalidates the fourth line, which moans about no matter what is done economically, every single person on earth will wind up with less than they had. This is untrue in a couple ways: if everyone follows the directions of the second line -- to live on no more than one can afford -- those with very little won't see their lives change in any dramatic way. People with little or no access to credit, who have no savings -- this is most of us -- and who scrape by on a paycheck that never seems to budge are doing precisely what the song instructs. They aren't living beyond their means because if they did, they'd be homeless or dead. If everyone obeyed the selfish dictates of the first line, almost everyone would be left with less -- except those at the very top of the economic food chain. Wealth compounds and accumulates, creating yawning disparities that have reached unprecedented levels in this still-new century. Almost all new wealth today goes to the One Percent, rich folks marry each other, the wealthiest among us are buying political power in ways we've never seen, and the ruling class has money that makes money -- way more than you and I could ever earn in our 9-to-5.

They are, in other words, taking what's theirs. And they're bucking Mr. Misty's economic forecast. The rewrite of this song would end with, "On one side."