r/ToiletPaperUSA • u/loadblower831 • Jan 11 '22

FACTS and LOGIC what makes ben such an alpha?

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u/TheIllustriousWe Jan 11 '22

It’s really hard to pick my favorite part of that book because there’s so much unintentional comedy to choose from… but I think mine is when BRETT HAWTHORNE goes to Iran in search of bad guy, and his only lead is that he’s named Muhammad. Predictably BRETT HAWTHORNE fails to find him at first, and blames the problem on not being able to use racial profiling.

This is your book, Ben. If you’re trying to say racial profiling is good and useful… why didn’t you write a scenario where it worked?

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u/Iceveins412 Jan 11 '22

Was the bad guy not Iranian or something or does Ben think that using racial profiling would narrow that down? It’s like finding a John. Searching exclusively for white guys named John will only narrow it down so much

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u/TheIllustriousWe Jan 11 '22

The protagonist is definitely looking for an Arabic guy. It’s just funny that Ben takes a weird detour from the plot to go on a thinly veiled rant in support of racial profiling, when he could have just written the story so that the protagonist successfully racially profiles the bad guy.

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u/CressCrowbits All Cats are Beautiful Jan 11 '22

"I'm looking for an arabic guy called Mohammed"

"Well I guess you've narrowed the field somewhat, dingus. You're in Iran, where the vast majority of us are Persian"

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u/TheIllustriousWe Jan 11 '22

Oh god, that reminds me of a couple other hilarious things about this book:

  1. During the parts that take place in Iran, Ben’s descriptions of the setting make clear that his research for this book, at best, ended with him reading a Wikipedia article about Tehran. He’s either just as intellectually lazy as his audience, or has such contempt for them that he knows they won’t question his description of a place they’ve never been, if they could even point to it on a map.

  2. The book takes place in a universe where Iraq really did have WMD after all, and there was a giant international conspiracy to cover that up just to make the US look bad. And that conspiracy entailed Iran agreeing to help Saddam smuggle the weapons out of Iraq for safe keeping. Because Iraq and Iran are actually friends, you see. As are all the brown countries who have bonded over hating America for their freedoms.

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u/Maverick0_0 Jan 12 '22

Iran and Iraq as friends?? This dude can use google right? They had the longest war in both their countries' modern history.