It seems like more and more often, I find myself shaking my head and wondering how anyone can think the things that some people think. I’ll admit, my political views tend to lean a bit Conservative, so most of the time the people whose thinking I’m thinking about happen to be Liberals.
Sometime over the last twenty years or so more people started going insane. Well, it’s not so much that more people actually are going insane, it’s that more people are being perceived to be going insane.
It used to be that people actually spoke with each other. Ideas were shared and discussed, and then after careful consideration, opinions were formed. The Internet has changed all that. It has shortened people’s attention spans to mere seconds.
Sufficiently-ignorant people are forming strong opinions after just a glance at a poorly-written headline or a well-designed meme. And once those opinions are in place, they’re nearly impossible to replace.
The problem is that there just isn’t anything providing a counterbalance to clickbait.
Hogan’s First Law stipulates, “To a sufficiently ignorant observer, a lie is indistinguishable from the truth.”
And we have a world filled with observers who are more than sufficiently ignorant. Which means that we also have a world filled with people who believe the first thing they hear.
Members of the media always wanted to be first to break the news. There used to be a thing called journalistic integrity which compelled reporters to work very hard to make sure that they had the facts straight before they told their story. Now it seems like they don’t even try.
What happens these days is that the media tosses out every salacious thing they run across without even the tiniest attempt to determine if what they’re reporting is true. And they repeat those lies and half-truths over and over just to get more clicks.
When all anyone ever hears is about “mostly-peaceful protests”, “the vackseens are safe and effective” and “baseless claims of election fraud”, how can we expect them to come to different conclusions?
And when something that’s not true is not only the first thing someone hears but also the only thing they ever hear, is it any wonder that so many people are so hard to convince otherwise?
The result of this is that any discussion about politics typically ends up with both sides of the argument assuming the other has gone insane.
I came across a quote the other day by famed sociologist Murray Davis that does a great job of describing this:
“Those who attempt to deny the strong held assumptions of their audience will have their very sanity called into question. They will be accused of being lunatics; if scientists, they will be called ‘crackpots’. If the difference between the inspired and the insane is only in the degree of tenacity of the particular audience assumptions they choose to attack, it is perhaps for this reason that genius has always been considered close to madness.”
He said those words in 1971, long before the Internet was even imagined. And his observation is just as relevant today as it was more than 50 years ago. Probably more so. Though one of the differences between now and 1971 is that it only takes a few seconds to turn an otherwise reasonable person into someone who is sufficiently ignorant.
Stated more simply, the stronger someone believes something is true, the more likely they are to believe you’re crazy for not agreeing with them.
It’s easy for someone to head down that path when they’re exposed only to things that reinforce what they already believe. After a while, a person’s assumptions can become so strongly held that anything that challenges what they believe sounds insane to them.
Now, usually here’s where I point out how insane Liberals are for believing what they believe. But this sort of behavior happens on both sides of the political aisle. Conservatives are just as likely to adamantly believe something as Liberals.
Keeping this in mind, I guess it’s possible that I’ve been wrong this whole time about a lot of things. Maybe it’s the Liberals who are right and I’m wrong. It could be that Conservatives views are irrational and irresponsible. I’m not saying it is, I’m just saying it could be.
Instead of just assuming that Liberals are nuts, I need a way to determine if I’m right.
Here’s what I’m going to do.
I’m going to take an unbiased look at several arguments and determine which side of the argument sounds more insane. For the sake of this exercise, we won’t consider if the argument is Liberal or Conservative, because if we did it wouldn’t be fair. So, let’s obfuscate who says what with an unbreakable code.
We’ll call one side “Side L” and the other “Side C”. I’ve written down the identities of “L” and “C” and placed them in an envelope. I won’t know which are the Liberal viewpoints and which are the Conservative ones until I break the seal. So, my evaluation can’t possibly be biased.
Let’s get started.
Issue 1 – Gun Control
Side C: People should have the right to defend themselves and their property. We don’t need fewer guns. We need better people.
Side L: If we make it more difficult for law-abiding people to have guns, fewer criminals will have guns.
Analysis: Because this is a blind test, I don’t know which is the Liberal take on this issue and which is the Conservative. But, just considering the arguments solely on their merits, I’d have to say that “Side C” makes sense and “Side L” just sounds insane.
Issue 2 – Girls Sports
Side C: We need to let girls be girls. Females should be able to compete fairly against other females. Records and athletic scholarships should be reserved for people who actually are girls instead of people who like to pretend that they are.
Side L: Roberta, who until yesterday was known as “Bob”, should be able to compete against “people who menstruate”. We need to ignore Bob’s, err…Roberta’s, muscle mass and massively high testosterone levels because it would hurt his,…err her, feelings if we didn’t.
Analysis: You know, this one isn’t even close. I mean, if you just look at the arguments, without knowing who supports what, any reasonable person will have to agree that “Side L” is fucking nuts.
Issue 3 – The Mexican Border
Side C: Our nation must protect its borders. Allowing people to illegally cross into our country isn’t fair to those who came here legally. And, giving those illegal immigrants any sort of government-provided (i.e., taxpayer funded) benefits is unfair to all Americans. A secure border with Mexico will make everyone safer.
Side L: First of all, you need to stop calling it the “Mexican Border”. Can’t you see how that might be offensive to someone? Not everyone you’re trying to keep out are Mexican. Secondly, stop calling them “illegal immigrants”. The currently-accepted term is “non-citizens”. And you’re racist if you think that the United States has the right to decide who to keep out and who to let in. And furthermore…um, what was the question again?
Analysis: Hmm. I wish this was more of a challenge. I have to go with “Side L” as being out of their collective gourds.
It seems that in each case, the argument that has been scientifically determined to be completely insane is from “Side L”. Now, let’s unseal the envelope to see if those viewpoints are Liberal or Conservative.
<ripping paper>
Wow! What a surprise! It turns out that all of the statements that are bat-shit crazy are from Liberals. I think it’s safe to extrapolate from these results and conclude that everything Liberals say is equally as ridiculous.
This exercise removes all question from something that I’ve suspected all along but couldn’t prove until just now.
Liberals really are crazy.
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