F4F | Guilt by Association

Hello, fellow internet user! If you're watching this, then I'm sorry to inform you that you've committed the illogical fallacy known as Guilt by Association.

Now, before I inevitably take your poor excuse of an argument and metaphorically take it out behind the woodshed to give it the

WWE -style beatdown it deserves, I will courteously give you a functioning definition.

Hold on a moment there, Mr. Savage. We're not quite ready for you. Okay there, buddy. According to LegalDictionary .net,

Guilt by Association is defined as the idea that an individual is guilty of a crime because he associates with the person who actually committed it.

For those of you in the audience who have a functioning prefrontal cortex, you can end the video right here because you have a reading comprehension score above that of your average third grader undergoing a debilitating

Halloween -induced sugar rush. Alternatively, if you happen to be a close -to -40 -year -old -ish troglodyte still living with his mom who thinks filming themself eat a microphone for eight hours is a valid form of discourse, then stick around.

Just for that, I'm gonna make another eight hours. We don't care! So what exactly constitutes a Guilt by Association fallacy?

To better illustrate this, we're gonna travel into the magical world of Make Believe, where...

The characters and events depicted are entirely fictitious, and any similarity to names or incidents are entirely coincidental.

Here we go! For today's logical fallacy demonstration,

I'm gonna call upon our friend Mr. Troglodyte from earlier. I didn't consent to this! Now let's say that, uh,

Mr. Troglodyte finds himself in a romantic relationship with a woman from across the ocean.

Let's say she's from... South Africa! Nothing sounds bad so far.

And let's say that Mr. Troglodyte, after courting said guiltless female, flies her to the States and conducts a wedding ceremony.

Still sounds aboveboard to me. Without applying for, or signing, a legal marriage certificate.

Uh -oh. Mr. Troglodyte then consummates the not -legally -recognized marriage. Uh, please stop.

Then, when our guiltless female's work visa expires, Mr. Troglodyte dumps her onto the next available flight to South Africa and deports her.

Upon said dumpage, he then severs all forms of communication. I - I - Look, look, look, look.

You don't understand, I can explain. All of these things are clearly heinous and wrong. Anyone who would treat another human being this way has some serious soul -searching to do.

But this has nothing to do with your bi -association. I'm getting that part, Mr. Troglodyte.

Now let's say that Mr. Troglodyte is asked to perform his amazing microphone mastication skills at a convention being put on by his friends.

Remember, in the land of make -believe, anything is possible. Up to and including Mr. Troglodyte having friends. Hey! It is time to get in the pod and eat the bugs.

I mean, microphones. Following the twisted standards of guilt by association, it is now possible to conclude that all of Mr.

Troglodyte's friends, and any other individual who spoke at the microphone consumption convention, are guilty of marital abandonment.

Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. But I'm not. Such conclusions are of course insane and slanderous.

Mr. Troglodyte isn't off the hook for his crimes against his abandoned wife, but to insinuate that merely speaking at the same conference as someone who has committed a horrendous sin, thereby makes you guilty of said sin, is a leap of logic.

Evil Knievel couldn't jump. Aaaaaaaah! Stop applying my own standards against me!

That's not fair! I'm gonna - Oh, Mr. Simons! Ooh, yeah! Isn't the land of make -believe a glorious place?

So now we know what guilt by association looks like. For contrast, let's discuss an example of someone voluntarily destroying their own credibility by openly endorsing someone else's malfeasance.

Oh, this ought to be good. We're still not listening to you.

Our prime example for today comes to us in the form of our good pal Doc Obbs, whose greatest hits include believing that owning and operating a private jet is more frugal than flying

Goatch, ardently defending the fictitious sneaky squid spirit, denying the existence of the new apostolic reformation when people are clearly running around claiming to be active leaders of it.

We hit it to the east, we hit it to the east, and command it, you go to the east.

And who could forget, never dealing with the arguments of his detractors, but rather hiding behind the ad hominem attack of labeling them

Hypercritics. We get it! In any case, known peddler of heretical teachings

Kevin Zadai recently wrote a New York Times best coffee table paperweight book called

Mystery of the Power of Words, a volume where Kevin Zadai makes the oh -so -heretical assertion that Jesus Christ's work was not completed on the cross, but rather he had extra work to do while residing in hell.

He really wrote that? Even by my non -existent standards, that's totally whack.

On this, we can agree. So how does this tie back to Dr. Michael Brown, or Doc Obbs for short?

Well, it turns out, he wrote the foreword to the book! What does that even mean?

Well, my socially maladjusted miscreants, it means that Doc Obbs boldly endorsed the book filled with objective heresy.

We over at Pirate like to call this guilt by participation. So unlike being found guilty of a crime you didn't commit simply for breathing the same air as another person,

Doc Obbs demonstrates how to tarnish your own name by loudly endorsing the heinous writings of another person.

So why did Zadai still have a ministry? Because when asked about the endorsement, he stated that he wasn't very familiar with Zadai's teachings.

So I didn't, not aware of what Kevin had claimed or not claimed, et cetera, aside from the one time we spent a couple hours together talking face to face.

And to top it all off, to his own son -in -law under the bus for introducing him to Zadai in the first place.

If not for my son -in -law, Ryan, recommending Kevin to me and mentioning that I really liked the book, then

I wouldn't have done it just because we get asked to do this all the time. Wow! Yeah, it's pretty messed up.

So just remember, if you commit the illogical fallacy of guilt by association, I'll personally send the ghost of Macho Man Randy Savage after you.

And after I'm feeling extra ornery, I'll send Care Bear Jesus instead.

That's all folks! Well, Kevin also claimed that Jesus took him up to heaven in a space elevator.

Do you believe that? I'm not aware of that. Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met

Lydia? Lydia the tattooed lady. She has eyes that folks adore so, and a torso even more so.

Lydia, oh Lydia. That encyclopedia. Oh Lydia, the queen of tattoo.

On her back is the battle of Waterloo. Beside it, the wreck of the

Hesperus II. And proudly above waves the red, white, and blue. You can learn a lot from Lydia.