I am not a fan of the TV quiz show Jeopardy, though it graces our TV set each evening. I am usually busy playing Canasta or Rummy 500 on the iPad, and these days waiting for the show to end so I an turn on a baseball game. By that time of day, I am usually in vegetative state.
However, there is a contestant on now who has won sixteen times, and is racking up an incredible pile of winnings. His name is James Holzhauer. He is a professional gambler and holds a degree in mathematics. He is currently well over $1 million in winnings.
This made me curious, as another former big winner, Brad Rutter, had a high school degree and did some TV quiz show hosting on his own. Another, Austin Rogers, is a bartender in New York City. Such agility is not always a product of higher education.
(When Jeopardy has a streaker on, its ratings soar. Automatically I want to say “Rigged!” But let’s play nice today. Let’s assume this is all on the up and up.)
What Holzhauer is demonstrating is a very impressive and agile memory. He also knows to go after $1,000 and $2,000 big clues first, stockpiling some winnings, and then when hitting the daily double, going for broke. That makes it seem easy, like saying that being a really great bowler is just rolling a lot of strikes. It is not easy. Only a very few can do it.
So I have to ask, is Holzhauer smart? Of course! But he is demonstrating an aspect of smartness I think of as “SAT-smart,” a very good memory combined with coolness under pressure. The very highest scorers on the SAT exam usually get into the very best colleges. From there, they often excel in life, earning good money and attaining prestige and respect. A bartender, a quiz show host, or a gambler exhibit none of this.
The American people, at least 95% of us and including those who score high on the SAT, are perhaps the most brainwashed people on the face of the earth and in the history of humanity. I say this with reservations, as one commenter argued that this label is best applied to the Swedes. We cannot know who is right, or if the dubious title goes to some Micronesian Island or Baltic state. Let’s just agree to agree that Americans are deeply brainwashed.
Part of the art of brainwashing is that the victims cannot know their state of mind. If we know we are brainwashed, we know how to get out of it. Any American walking the street will tell you what they know, that we are the best country in the world, the freest, and the wealthiest, and that our citizens are well-informed and that we elect our own leaders. None of that is true, but holding those beliefs close to the heart helps in the mind-addling process. Our systems of education and news are designed to enhance that mode of thought, putting almost all of us beyond reach of reason.
What has any of this to do with James Holzhauer, or the SAT? Very little probably. I am just wondering if having such a facile memory makes a person smart in the basic sense. Has Holzhauer figured out our system of brainwashing? Has he seen through the fake events of our time? As a resident of Las Vegas, did he instantly realize that the mass shooting down there on 10/1/17 was a hoax? In other words, though being so smart on a tactile scale, knowing so many facts and being able to quickly access them, is he also brainwashed, like 95% of the population?
My guess, and it is purely a guess, is yes.
Piece of Mindful 
The route 91 Festival was not fishy at all. Resident in Vegas for 50 plus years. Nothing to see hear,just move along sheep. Love your blog.
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I am scratching my head trying to understand how being a resident of Vegas in any way makes you able to determine if an event you only know of through news reports was real. I lived in Montana for 58 years. It did not make me smarter.
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What I did do as a dumb Construction guy was to observe through countless hours observations is to see that there were many anomalies and holes abound, in the so called official story. The first 250 call to 911 had some head scratchers.Independent researchers are sure doing better then the lap dogs on T.V. Too bad so many follow those bobble heads that spew garbage at them every day. In the end I know nothing at all, other then what smells fishy.
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Thanks, Mark for the thoughtful article….without common sense, book sense is virtually useless IMO and a complete waste of money, time and energy. I have recently learned that my son’s youngest boy is now in week 4 of Boot Camp in Ft Benning, GA….following in his dad’s footsteps….fell for the propaganda, hook, line, and sinker…I had so hoped to prevent this from happening but to no avail. My heart is broken that this stupid war is still going on.
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This reminds me, Annette, of the two Bronco football games I attended last year. The military was everywhere, flyovers at the beginning and parachuting in from above, and men and women in uniforms in formation on the field and marching around during breaks.
Who pays for all of this? The military. It is one of their primary recruiting tools. They know how military uniforms and big machines turn on the testosterone. It’s hard for kids to resist. (I never had any problem. I just went to college and they left me alone. Finally, in 1972 they installed the lottery, and my number was 336. My Mom would have been drafted before me.
All volunteer they have to work the ball games and college and high school campuses, and engage in a whole lot of behavioral psychology.
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so scary to me that it is so easy to fool young men and women into what they think is a noble thing to do…yea, USA, land of the brave and dumbed down….I found this wonderful video that puts the war in perspective. song by Mary Gauthier….certainly gives pause for the cause.
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another video that shows how much money has been squandered on this f**ing war and what could have been done with the money instead
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“Life’s just a game, you fly a paper plane, there is no end…” – Thunderclap Newman on the album Hollywood Dream (1970).
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I believe that the basic “hidden in plain sight” premise of the TV Show: Jeopardy, is that to stay out of Jeopardy, one must be asking the questions. Technically, from a LEGAL standpoint, if a POLICE OFFICER asks you a questions and you either answer or comply, it confirms or creates a CONTRACT, either tacit or otherwise. It must be remembered that the POLICE OFFICER/Peace Officer, wears 2 hats. As POLICE OFFICER, he can ACT against the ARTIFICIAL PERSON, through the live human, if the live human agrees. As a Peace Officer, he is sworn to protect you and all other living humans, sacrificing his own life if need be. The Highways and Roads must be kept safe for Equality of Commerce. The “right” to use the Highways and Roads is indeed a PRIVILEGE and is a result of “good behavior” and if you should swim eratically in the “seas of commerce” causing a danger to the other fishes, the TRIAL/TRIDENT JUDGE will PIN an extra FINe on you so that you may swim more peacefully in the future and if you continue your dangerous swimming ways, you may be forbidden from swimming in the seas of commerce altogether (loss of DIVERS/DRIVERS LICENSE)!
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Possibly, just possibly, you are overthinking. Stop it. That is my job.
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If it’s on television………..it’s by design. To what end? Hypnotize/Compartmentalize & traumatize the viewer into their line of thinking.
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Mark if in fact Holzhauer is real and not a plant I believe you are right unless he’s lived the bizarre and can speak about it then he’s 95% MSM brainwashed. I find the idea someone knowing all the answers off top of their head and synchronize themselves with hand held gadget and keep track of their own scores and other player scores and understand strategize game rules and not be brainwashed impossible. I know someone who can’t read or write who understands and believes in POM’s and MMC’s work. I read it to them and we discuss. A rare true and fulfilling experience for sure. I believe that unless at some point in their lives someone has actually lived the bizarre and was exposed to real stories of others who lived the bizarre and with honest open mind spoke with others who embodied the same mindset in relation to the believing in the anything is possible bizarre then it doesn’t matter how book smart or tactile smart one is. Because on a most important level they will be left incurably dumb unless they’ve actually lived the bizarre and understand its experience to mean that in this world it doesn’t matter who you are the impossible is always possible.
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It is easy to speculate about such matters, but without evidence, that us all it is, which is why I did not go there. There are freaks of nature, and there have been TV quiz show hoaxes in the past. I wonder if it is now legal … back during the time of the $64,000 question, some kind of law was passed to regulate Newton Minnow’s “vast wasteland.”
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Any signs of a wireless earbud in his ear? Maybe they give the answer sheet before the shows to study. James said he prepared for the show by reading children’s books and the interviews of his family seem kinda hokey. We’ll never see his bank statement, hard to tell if he gets all the money. Two weeks of teachers that sadly won’t be able to match his score, then his return and I think they’ll bring someone oddballish in to defeat him.
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If you want to have some fun, watch the annual Jeopardy journalists tournament. Dumb and dumber. [I think all it would take would be to show him the sixty or so answers beforehand.]
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