Cotto-Gottfried Talk

Hilarious commercials

Problem with guest posting is a change of styles and confusing who said what and subtle philosophical differences. Right now, we have consistency. People come here for Z-man thinking. If Z-man needs a break, simply skip posting everyday. On the other hand, Z-man has been very generous in allowing the comment section a good bit of leeway in posting and content. Some very good, and lengthy, posts are written by the readers. Also, folk here don’t shy away from topic suggestions to Z-man. If it ain’t broke….

The Russian hoax was a complete PR win for our side. Even if Sessions was duped, him allowing the left the rope to hang themselves was a constant plus, as it kept our side motivated.

Much like the dead sea scrolls just turned up to validate the history of Israel?

I think that article was great, mostly because I’m an easy mark for an article like that and I like lateral or unconventional thinking. I have to read through the comments and I’m looking forward to the followup articles.One of our shortcomings as good hearted, but naive ice people is to be too credulous. Perhaps I overcompensate with cynicism.Many people don’t care about our lofty principles. They only care about using them to extract the most rent out of a gullible people, that exist to be duped.Orson Wells made a great film called “ F for Fake “, that was about the oven dodger and art forger, Elmer de Hory, that tangentially touched on Clifford Irving’s fictional ‘autobiography’ of Howard Hughes. You might want to check that out.If you recall, the English historian Hugh Trevor Roper was fooled by the so-called “Hitler Diaries“ that were exposed as a hoax by David Irving, who is evidently the avatar of Hitler, or possibly the devil himself.My interest was in art forgery, connoisseurship and provenance, which led me to the biographies of conmen, types of confidence tricks and swindles; to heuristics in decision making and cognitive bias applied to split second influence, publicity and propaganda.We start without a clue, move on to the rationalization of comforting delusions, through self-deception and the denial, of the unpleasant reality, of the often brutal truth.There were a couple of great books in 2008 about the Dutch artist Han van Meegeren, who beat the charge of collaboration with the enemy, after he duped Hermann Göring, with a phoney Vermeer. He painted a new fake under police guard, to prove his innocence, then got thrown in the can for fraud.The working class English art forger Tom Keating, wrote a great autobiography; as did Eric Hebborn, another English artist and counterfeiter, who wrote both a how to book and an autobiography.Ken Perenyi is an American maker of quality knock offs, who also wrote an autobiography about swindling gullible Americans, who had more dollars than sense.Another American, named Mark Landis, duped Institutions, by insinuating his fabrications, into their collections by donation.John Myatt is another Englishman, who worked with a dealer named John Drewe, who used middlemen to hoodwink the connoisseur’s at Christies and Sotheby’s, to flog bogus work, to wealthy pigeons.I can’t help but think that our entire history has been gaffed with frauds, interpolations and omissions.First we believe then we disbelieve. Belief leads to disbelief to uncertainty. Uncertainty is a lack of faith and doubt is the foundation of wisdom.I can’t be certain that Julius Caesar said “ Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true “ however, W. C. Fields did say, “Never Give a Sucker an even break or smarten up a chump “https://youtu.be/mHgv4McMJUk?t=27time stamped to him saying it.Cheers !