1. The most interesting thing about Ben Shapiro (the only interesting thing about him) is his deep commitment to being ignorant. Some people don't have access to knowledge. But he went to UCLA & Harvard Law School. They have libraries. His ignorance is an (unconscious) choice. 
2. This tweet of Shapiro's is a perfect distillation of his commitment to ignorance. Anyone with even the most mild curiosity about history knows that in-groups oppressing out-groups have almost universally seen the out-group as abnormally “dirty.”
3. American whites thought blacks were dirty. The British thought the Irish were dirty. The Nazis thought Jews and Roma were dirty. Straight people thought gay people were dirty. You will find this out at the libraries at UCLA and Harvard—if you’re interested in life on earth.
4. So if Ben Shapiro were interested in life on earth, when the thought that Palestinians “like to live in open sewage” began roiling in his mind he would have wondered: do Palestinians ACTUALLY like to live in open sewage, or am I just thinking this because they’re an out-group?
5. Note that to wonder this Shapiro wouldn’t have had to do something terrifying, like talk to some Palestinians. He just had to know enough to utilize basic pattern recognition.
6. But Shapiro didn’t know enough to engage in basic thinking, because he’s not interested in life on earth. He was given access to all the world’s knowledge at UCLA and Harvard but chose not to make use of it, because he wants & needs to remain ignorant.
7. Shapiro needs to remain ignorant because he wants to believe Israel has the right to the West Bank & Gaza. This requires oppressing an out-group. And oppressing an out-group requires believing that they’re fundamentally different from your in-group. Which requires ignorance.
8. My grandfather, who was a historian of Spanish colonialism in the western hemisphere and "the father of the field of Latin American studies in the United States" (lcweb2.loc.gov/hlas/hanke.html) (😎😎😎) described this historical phenomenon like this:
9. This is all totally obvious. So Shapiro’s commitment to ignorance makes him appear to be mind-numbingly stupid. But he’s not stupid in normal terms; it's just his ignorance makes him functionally stupid. Here are four other people this has happened to: tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/00…
10. @WideAsleepNima and @adamjohnsonNYC and I just talked about some other aspects of the hilariously weird psychology of oppression on @citationspod. I feel you should read the transcript (medium.com/@CitationsPodc…) or listen to it: soundcloud.com/citationsneede…
11. That’s just one tweet in Ben Shapiro’s prolific bloviations, but as I say, it’s the perfect distillation of his fervent commitment to ignorance. And it’s this commitment to ignorance on which just about everything he has to say is based.
12. For instance, Shapiro’s commitment to ignorance is the basis for his “Facts don’t care about your feelings” shtick. In this case, he’s ignorant about himself: everyone who talks like this inevitably turns out, like Shapiro, to be wildly emotional and irrational.
13. The end. I can’t believe there’s anything about Ben Shapiro inside my head, and I blame society. Here is a gif illustrating the state of a country in which he is a topic of discussion:
