Hopes and Fears of 2016
I have friends and family members who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. There were a range of assumptions behind their various ballot choices. Some felt he would be good for business. Others that he would gain them ground in the courts. Some believed he was brilliant, playing three-dimensional chess at a level not understood by the press or the government apparatus.
Because I spend quite a bit of time studying history, and because I listened carefully to what Trump said, I believed he had the makings and the yearnings of an autocrat. In my profession, I’ve known and worked with too many actual geniuses to arrive at the miscalibrated conclusion that Trump was even close. And I was born and raised in a household of political extremism, conspiracy theorizing, and firearms fanaticism, so I’ve never had any illusions about the cult following that was drawn to his banner.
Four Years
Some of the folks I know who voted for Trump in 2016 did not cast a repeat vote in 2020. Business wasn’t so good any more. The daily chaos had worn away at the belief that Trump had a coherent three-dimensional chess strategy. The United States straggled at the tail end of pandemic performance, being shown up by too many other countries. The shine was off the boot for a number of 2016 voters.
But while Trump may have lost his luster for them, most still did not really consider him to be an actual danger. My own view was that Trump and his machine were becoming an ever more acute risk. The machine included four components: his government enablers, his media loyalists, his social media reach, and his slavish army of supporters. The Trump machine was a serious problem, but like all running machines, its gyrations carried a momentum that would not be easily slowed.
Pickup Trucks & Assault Rifles
I have told friends on several occasions that the group that worried me most in the US, particularly as the 2020 election cycle began to gain steam, was your typical Bubba and his cadre of gun loving, pickup-truck driving friends. My concern was with that segment of culture — rolling heavy, wielding assault rifles, and swaggering with action-hero inferiority complexes. Why? Because I know Bubba and his pals. I grew up with them for my friends and family. I know the militia type, the conspiracy type, the prepper type. I know Bubba’s mind, because my mind once ran on similar software. And while I changed my views when I encountered better data, I also found that the Bubbas of my life had not the slightest interest in modifying their beliefs. God and guns, and damn your facts.
Their style of belligerence is an ancient one, recorded ably by Josephus in his accounts of the madness inside Jerusalem during the siege of 70 AD. If you want to see the natural end of underdog-authored, good-versus-evil, all-in conspiracism, this is recommended reading. You might be surprised what large cohorts of conspiracy theorists can… achieve. Interestingly enough, god did not, in the end, appear to be on their side.
Same Ballot, Different Meaning
When November 2020 rolled around, a vote cast for Trump said something a good deal less ambiguous than a vote cast for him in 2016. During the first election, there was much speculation as to how he would actually behave if elected, and how different that might prove to be from his incendiary rhetoric. That delta between rhetoric and action had vanished by 2020. The manner of his presidency was fact, not speculation.
A second vote for Trump is difficult to excuse on the evidence. The evidence in the Mueller report (which you really must read). The evidence regarding the velocity and volume of his lies. The evidence of his present financial state and past financial dealings. The evidence of our pandemic performance, our tattered economy, our trajectory on pressing matters like climate change.
If you listened to the people who voted for Trump a second time respond to this evidence, they tended to employ two classic moves. They play the merchants-of-doubt card and attempt to diffuse evidence claims as any good Pontius Pilate might do: what is truth? what is evidence? how can we really ever know? Second, they advance alternate narratives, usually with good-and-evil plot lines and only fragmentary evidential support. They believe that they have a counter-story that is plausible, that is good enough. What it amounts to is excuse making and yarn spinning.
Most of the country is tired of the excuses. The unending lies, told at numbing velocity. The national shame. And this makes that second vote for Trump hard to overlook. Our collective cultural mulligan was already used back in 2016. What to make of someone who asks for four more years of this? What to make of the fact that they still want to be regarded by their friends and neighbors as moral people?
Two Americas
They say we have two Americas. Different echo chambers, different ‘facts’, different realities. I am sorry to say, there aren’t different realities. There are, however, different delusions.
I know and serve one principal master in my life, and that is Physics. She is a hard mistress. You can think you understand her, and you can find yourself wrong. She cannot be persuaded by your efforts, your tears, or you prayers. She doesn’t care how hard you tried. Whatever you think you know, it will be tested to often brutal conclusions. When experiments are finally over, you either find that you understood reality correctly, or that you did not. And having been right in the past means nothing, because she has no favorites. She is the same for every race, every creed, every nation — indeed, every planet and every galaxy.
Reality is singular. Fantasies are plentiful. The conservative and liberal wings of the country appear to have very different understandings of the world, of Donald Trump, and of the larger narratives of this present hour. These worldviews are mutually exclusive. Therefore, either one or the other is wrong — or both. But they cannot both have a legitimate claim on reality. And no, we are not helpless to determine the truth. We can devise tests that divide fact from fiction.
But when reality is tested, there are losers. It could be that you are the one who has it wrong.
Failed Hypothesis
The sustained Republican protest of the election results provided an experimental testbed to determine which viewpoints were tethered most closely to reality. The conservative wing of the country asserted a conspiracy theory of systematic voter fraud; one that seemed to grow grander with each passing week. The centrists and the liberal wing of the country asserted a sound election and a valid outcome. These viewpoints were tested, via recounts and court cases. And as with all good experimental investigations, the tests were repeated. And repeated. And repeated.
We have now had over 60 court cases. The judges have varied — conservative and liberal. Appointments have varied — Republican and Democrat. Courts have varied — state, federal, and supreme. States have varied — eastern, southern, and western. Other factors that have varied included the types of claims, the attorneys representing the two sides, etc. This set of court “tests” provides a robust body of experiments to evaluate whether the right-wing set of narratives surrounding the election and our democracy were well-grounded in reality or not.
The outcome has been monolithic. The right-wing narratives of conspiracy and fraud could not meet the burden of proof. All the king’s horses and all the kings men did not, when proof was required, demonstrate systematic widespread fraud at any scale that could have affected the outcome of the election. Not once, not in a single state. Trump has been advancing what seemed to followers to be a plausible narrative. But in grown-up terms, plausibility isn’t good enough. Most novels are plausible, but they are fictions. The storyline might seam reasonable, but reasonable isn’t good enough. Reasonable does not imply factual. This is America — when you accuse others of fraud, you have to meet a burden of proof.
After 60 plus court cases, the reasonable citizen should conclude the conspiracy hypothesis does not stand. Some people prove to be too attached to the hypothesis to part with it. But when that happens, you move from the realm of testable hypotheses to the realm of faith claims. A more honest approach to conspiracy theories stays tethered to proof. It looks for tests, evaluated on the evidence, by third party judges. When a hypothesis cannot meet the burden of proof, grown-up adults concede the outcome and move on.
Trumpers like to decry people who simply believe “the lamestream media”. What about people who simply believe Trump? After 60 rounds of put-up-or-shut-up, the Trump campaign has managed to do neither. And as a reminder, put-up-or-shut-up is inherently a challenge of honor. What does one say about those who reject it? Those who cannot put up, and yet will not shut up?
Ecosystem Implications
The conspiracy theory of election fraud does not stand alone, but instead emerges as one thread from an overall ecosystem of information sources. It has been advanced, hot and heavy, by Donald Trump. It has been advanced by conservative news outlets. It has been advanced by different Republican leaders, pastors, and social media personalities. The information ecosystems and personalities that have incubated this need to be reconsidered. What else are they wrong about? What other story lines are mere conjecture, or only circumstantially supported?
Conspiracy theories are fundamentally lazy explanations for the world. They are lazy in that they propose explanations far outrunning what can be proven. They are often concocted rapidly without evidence, then cast about for evidence afterward. Ugly sausage, and the opposite of how legitimate court cases, historical studies, and science investigations are conducted. Information ecosystems found to have promoted conspiratorial nonsense should be considered discredited, and beneath the dignity of honest and intelligent people.
Insurrection
Yesterday was ghastly. January 6th, 2021, rightly called a date which will live in infamy.
Bubba came, in large numbers, and made me a prophet. Yet even as I watched the ocean of Trump flags and banners crawling up and draping over the walls of the Capitol Building, I told my wife that the conservatives would blame Antifa. Before the day was out, Fox News made me a prophet. The Trump apologists kicked into gear almost immediately, trying to recast what Trump had said and done.
One deeply committed Trumper mom that we know questions even the use of the term “insurrection”… Wasn’t it just a couple of panes of broken glass?… Mainstream media…. Black Lives Matter… Etc.
Maybe I should reconsider using that word. Then again, former President Bush used the word insurrection. So did President-Elect Biden. As did the former police chief of DC. And so on. The entire world stands in horror of what occurred yesterday. Nations like Turkey are instructing the US about our seemingly flimsy grip on Democracy. Leaders of the free world are condemning it. Generals and former chiefs of staff are running out of words as they breathlessly decry what took place. Since yesterday, advisors and cabinet members are resigning their posts over this final bleak transgression against democracy.
But what do all those people know compared to the true believers of god’s own Texas?
A Call for Disavowal
Friends and family members who voted for Donald Trump — first in 2016, and again in 2020 — we need to hear from you. The president has been making a steadily-escalating series of incendiary statements for some time. He made them throughout the run-up to the election, and yet he still got your vote in November. He pushed an overarching fraud narrative without evidence, before a single ballot was cast, and yet he got your vote. He has inflamed his supporters repeatedly, calling for them to gather in large numbers in Washington, DC. And after marshalling these followers, Trump and his son and his lawyer pulled the trigger of rage and directed the mob to the Capitol Building. Simply put: subtract Donald Trump, and yesterday does not happen.
All of this has happened, and up to this point in time, you have steadily defended every action of President Trump. You support him in argument, in funding, in marching, and in voting. Today, we need to hear two things from you. First, we need to hear that you flatly disavow the attack on the Capitol. We need you to make no excuses for the perpetrators, and concede it was as serious an act of insurrection as the entirety of the non-Trumper world does. We need to hear that you find it as reprehensible as the riots and looting of this past summer.
Second, we need to hear from you that you disavow this man and the role he has played in gathering and fomenting his mob of supporters. We need to hear that, whatever good Donald Trump may have done in your view, he jumped the tracks yesterday. We need to hear that you can still see black and white, and that you are against what Trump did on January 6, 2021. We need to hear that his actions are “a bridge too far” for you, and that you do not share his madness. And we need to hear this from you because you elected him, and you doubled down on it.
If you will not disavow, then you stand between complicity and enablement of yesterday’s architect and his anarchy. If you will not condemn the match that burns our country, nor the hand that lights it, then I’m afraid that we simply do not know you any longer.
Jericho Brisance 
Vladmir got his money’s worth.
Here’s hoping western democracies take this opportunity to revitalise our aliances and direction.
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Man, you said it – Putin is a sharp dude, and has made more progress on his nefarious objectives for the US than I think he expected to. Anger follows.
Yes, I’m hopeful that we can revitalize alliances as well. But if I were an ally, I would gauge the sustained support for Trumpism in the US with a wary eye. What they care about is not Biden’s term, but the long term reliability of the US. And if vascillate, yo-yo-ing our foreign policy violently from Red to Blue presidencies, then we cannot be counted on. Treaties and alliances and trade agreements that are abrogated every 4-8 years aren’t worth much.
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Globally, the US is still well positioned… Although a 2nd Trump term would have been irreversibly devastating. No one wants China (with their current posturing and practices) to be the central player, and Europe can’t easily fill that role. Trump pulling out of TPP (for no rational reason other than it was an Obama policy) was a colossal failure… and a gift to Beijing. But through all the debris Trump has left I actually see this is a great opportunity to rebuild. We were taken to the cliff, and managed to drag ourselves back just in time. Question is, how long until this lesson is forgotten.
Tell you what, though; this has been a brilliant living example of exactly how “Christian” Germany swung in behind Hitler. Did you see all the Jesus signs being carried by the evangelicals as they attempted their coup?
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Well, those are some good points. I may even feel a little better about things after what you itemized. 🙂
Yeah, lot of people talking about “seeing how Germany could have happened”.
The signs were telling: Trump. Jesus. Q.
These are people with filters set to fantasy mode.
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Something seriously needs to be done about NewsMax/OAN/Fox. I don’t know what, but you can’t have “news” outlets just telling lies 24/7.
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Well, the “free market” as an economic concept seemed solid. But ultimately it simply wasn’t stable, and it required some tempering. “Free speech” is likely the same. Simple ideas are nice, but they don’t often play out as monopoles.
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Dear Matt and John,
The USA has been damned by ignorance, dogma, falsity, blind faith, spiritual stagnation and epistemological impasse . . . . .
Evangelists and religious zealots have of course been living in some alternative universe in which evolution, climate change and solid science are all fictions, whereas god(s), heaven and hell are real.
Now Trump is their new messiah who is going to lead them to glory on Earth and the promised land!
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You pretty much summed it up. It is a fantasy land.
I read today about the horn-wearing Q-Anon Shaman and what he told the police. He too is trapped in a fantasy. He really believes things that just aren’t so. And that’s a problem.
People like to say they are entitled to believe whatever they want. We’re living at some odd inflection point of history right now, and that notion is proving its own deficiencies. The fictions of one’s neighbors aren’t their private affair, because sooner or late they spill out into the real world, and they get on everyone else.
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Or just over a cliff… Hopefully soon.
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Matt: “If you will not disavow, then you stand between complicity and enablement of yesterday’s architect and his anarchy. If you will not condemn the match that burns our country, nor the hand that lights it, then I’m afraid that we simply do not know you any longer.”
Zoe: This.
A great post Matt and it is my opinion that those you are trying to reach already fear their own complicity in the matter and that alone will cause them to defend themselves, rather than accept that they have been duped. I remember coming to this cross-road myself when before us we faced the truth. Either we get up out of our chairs, resign our ministry positions or we go along with it all and try to reason that it’s all okay. And you might reach some but you will reach them without their acknowledging so. They will quietly shift which in itself is still complicity. Facing truth is the most gut-wrenching thing we humans face and I think for the most part I think we prefer not to chose it. We prefer alternative facts, alternative realities, manipulated data . . . all to assuage the existential threat, the end of our existence.
The truth is, we don’t know them any longer. However, my greatest wound is knowing they don’t know us any longer. My own mother has chosen Trump over her own children and grandchildren . . . and we are Canadians! I am depressed and have a broken heart that she has fallen prey to conspiracy theorists like Dr. Christiane Northrup and there is nothing I can do about it.
Recently, I watched another of Northrup’s videos. It was the day before the insurrection. I came away saying to myself: she is complicit – domestic terrorism. The next day I reached my good friend in Michigan. We were both watching it. I called it domestic terrorism. Later that day I noticed CNN used the phrase.
There will have been people there believing they were simply there to demonstrate peacefully their objection to the election but also it goes deeper than that. They believe they are demonstrating against “forced-vaccination” and against being injected with DNA-attacking vaccine components. There’s so much, just so much more behind all this than just a bunch of Bubba’s showing up and I think it’s missing from the conversation. I remember saying to Biker Dude, she’s (Northrup) complicit because (mostly women who follow her) will show up thinking they are doing the right thing and people will get killed because of the people who are there to fight.
I know I’m soap-boxing to the choir here. It’s just that they don’t believe it’s “madness.” They believe we have been deceived or simply yet to be enlightened.
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. . . and we are Canadians!
My mum in Australia says many of her friends have gone nuts over Trump. Murdoch has Sky News there (our version of Fox), and she says that is all they watch, day and night.
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Australia has a lot of conservatives based on what a friend there tells me. Murdoch — a guy the world would have been better off without.
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Conservative in Australia is left of your Democratic Party. I generally vote Liberal (our conservatives) in Australia, and I’m a happy lefty. After Port Arthur, John Howard (conservative) was the PM who took all the guns away… and everyone was like “Yeah, no worries, that’s sounds reasonable.”
You guys need to move your centre back into “the centre.”
Apart from that, Happy New Years, Mat. Every good with you?
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Pretty good overall John. At least until the sixth. We had 5 excellent days in the new year. 🙂
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Biker Dude told me there were pro-Trump rally’s here in Canada on Jan. 6th too. Seems he heard it on the news. I haven’t seen the reports.
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Small dicks all over the world, UNITE! 🙂
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Thanks, I needed to laugh. 🙂
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For interest sake: Here’s a link to reports on yahoo.ca
Scroll down for videos.
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/canada-not-immune-to-attacks-similar-to-us-capitol-white-supremacy-domestic-terrorism-232805954.html
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That was a really interesting read, thanks for posting
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Dear Matt and Zoe,
I concur with both of you.
Needless to say, 2020 had been a difficult year, not to mention having to deal with the pandemic. It was all quite surreal, perhaps in some ways more bizarre than ghosts and the paranormal (not that I believe in them). One could say that we live in interesting times indeed, but often for the wrong reasons.
2020, the Year of the Rat, has brought us not the plague (black death) but Covid-19. And 2020 also brought out the worst of divisive politics and demagogic incitement. Could it really get even worse in 2021? What a day it was to unfold with sedition, insurrection and coup d’état on the 6th!
Whilst some of us may take some comfort in our living somewhere else, there is the danger that oppressive politics may spread elsewhere or be mirrored by other corrupt politicians outside their origins.
Democracy is not a given. It can be quite fragile, can fail rather badly, and often is approximately as good and benevolent (or bad and malevolent) as the members who practise, control and/or legislate it. We all need to do our parts in contributing to the smooth and equitable functioning of a civil country and democratic society. I have done mine in highlighting many of the most fundamental causes through my writings, and I hope that you will find more answers and solutions to these thorny issues in my latest and recently expanded post entitled “Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic: Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity” and published at http://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity/
I would be delighted if you could kindly submit your comment to my said article, as I am very keen and curious to know what you think or make of it regarding the increasingly pressing issues that many of us are facing, worsen all the more by mental pitfalls (or even mental health), social media, digital globalization, populism, Trumpism, illiberal democracy, and other behavioural and sociopolitical factors.
Please be informed that you might need to use a desktop or laptop computer with a large screen to view the rich multimedia contents available for heightening your multisensory enjoyment at my blog, which could be too powerful and feature-rich for iPad, iPhone, tablet or other portable devices to handle properly or adequately.
In addition, since my blog contains advanced styling and multimedia components plus animations, it is highly recommended to read my posts and pages directly in my blog so that you will be able to see and experience all of the refined and glorious details. Hence, it is prudent to refrain from viewing my blog in the WordPress Reader, which tends to ignore or strip away some styling and formatting components, and also fails to display animations, all of which are aplenty in my posts and pages, which will look very different and even improper or amiss in the WordPress Reader.
By the way, I would like to wish both of you a very happy New Year. May you find 2021 very much to your liking and highly conducive to your writing, reading, thinking and blogging!
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SoundEagle,
I will do that – I am a big proponent of infographics. The one I built on Easter has made the rounds online — lot of work to build graphics.
Where do you hail from? You implied that you’re not in the States, and you used an “s” that speaks more to British or Australian variants of the language, perhaps?
Cheers…
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Dear Matt,
I’m from Australia. Greetings to you all the way from down under!
If, according to your observation or determination, you have some infographics that will suit my published post(s) or page(s) on my blog, please kindly let me know, for I shall gladly adopt them with due credits to you.
Yes, I agree with you that there’s always a lot of work to create graphics, even more so in animations. You will discover the fun and fanciful side of SoundEagle at the post entitled “🎴 If My Name Were Moon Tonight… 🌛🌝🎑🈷 with Clair de Lune 🌕”. For best results, you will need to use a high-resolution, large screen and adequately powerful computer to achieve full experience and multisensory enjoyment in the post, where I hope that you will snap up the good chance to watch my dynamic animation produced in high resolution (1920 x 1280). Please enjoy the animation on the big high-resolution screen of your desktop or laptop computer.
Switch the video playback to full-screen mode. The animation starts calmly and will gradually climax. As you can see, the post also comes with my rhyming poem and musical performance. I am definitely very keen and curious to know what you think or make of my mixed media offerings and presentations there. Please let me know what you think by submitting a comment to my said post.
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Wow, that sounds very involved – I better plan a time block. 🙂
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By the way, I have (much) more British accent than the average Australians do.
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Easter Infographic: https://jerichobrisance.com/2015/04/02/taking-easter-seriously-revised-enhanced/
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So, that infographic page had a dead link. The PDF link for it is now working again. Sorry if you clicked for the PDF and found it dead.
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Your Easter graphic is still on my desktop Matt. 🙂
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I’ve already been to your site and read that post as well as comments SoundEagle. 🙂 A positive experience.
Wish the best for you in 2021 as well. Thank you.
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Dear Zoe,
Thank you for your reply. Please be informed that I have received neither a “Like” nor any comment from you, and therefore I cannot assume that you have been to my blog or read the said post without any further evidence.
May you have a lovely weekend!
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I believe I did *like* the post as it shows as one of my likes in the left hand margin of my blog along with some other recent *likes*. Unless of course, it’s moved down the ladder with the addition of more *likes* from other blogs. As well, my *Z* avatar doesn’t show up on all blogs like it does here. It shows up as a bluish/purplish generic avatar on some blogs. I don’t know why.
I would comment if I had the cognitive wherewithall to manage it right now but those days are fleeting for me as the days go by. I struggle. The amazing thing for me is, I managed to make my way through the entire post . . . and truly that is something. That usually happens when a post hits home, as does yours and Matts.
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Dear Zoe,
Your previous comment on my academically written, very extensive and highly analytical post are so general and brief that it could well apply to any post, for it boils down to just three or four words “A positive experience” or “truly that is something”. Please kindly look at how others have commented on my said post, given that there are about 70 comments there.
If you have indeed expanded considerable time and energy to read the post in its entirety and truly have “a positive experience”, then good on you! However, one would hope that you could or would have more specific things or matters to say about the post rather than something so general that it does not reflect anything unique or specific about the post. In addition, the appropriate thing to do in giving feedback about the post is to submit a comment there.
There is definitely no “Like” from you, because had you indeed “liked” the post, I would have also received an email notification.
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I checked your post and my *like* shows in amongst your 150+ comments. It also shows in my left hand margin of my blog. It would not show there unless I had clicked a *like* on your blog post. 🙂
SoundEagle, this will be my last comment to you. I sincerely do not understand if you are being defensive with me or rebuking me for not participating in a way that meets your expectations. My apologies for participating in a general manner.
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Dear Zoe,
Thank you for your clarification. No apology is needed. In the absence of some better explanation(s), perhaps one would have to designate this as another instance of WordPress glitch(es). A person by the name of Charlotte just liked my said post, as WordPress just notified me next to the bell. I took the liberty to look at the list of recent likes, and your like is the fifth most recent in the list of folks who have recently click “Like”. I do not understand how the notification did not occur when you first liked the post. In addition, you can also see that Charlotte has also just commented on my said post about five minutes ago.
You are very welcome to notify and advise me anytime if or when you encounter or think of something relevant or worthwhile that you would like to be mentioned, included or hyperlinked within my said post. Thank you in anticipation.
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Dear Zoe,
In your previous comment, you wrote “150+ comments” in your first sentence. I shall interpret that as a mistake or typo on your part, as you probably meant to type “150+ likes”, given that next to the “* Like” button provided in my said post, there are 150+ likes from bloggers, not 150+ comments.
Beside the issue of notification that I mentioned to you in my previous comment, I would like to inform you that if or when you have liked someone’s post or page, your Gravatar will always be visible to you as the first one in that list within the person’s blog post as displayed next to the “* Like” button whenever you visit the post. This is so because WordPress needs to make sure that you know that you have liked the post.
However, from the other person’s perspective, your Gravatar will not necessary be visible to that person in the list because, as far as I know, WordPress only shows at most 90 Gravatars when you (or anyone for that matter) click the link “153 bloggers” located below the Reblog button to reveal more Gravatar beyond the ones already displayed by default in a single line. Specifically, the 90 visible Gravatars in the list did not include your Gravatar in this instance. I have a feeling that the 90 Gravatars are randonly chosen, or could have been chosen in some other way(s) by WordPress (using some algorithm). To find your Gravatar, I have had to access the full list of likes in another way.
In any case, I tend to be very punctilious in my approach and take commenting very seriously insofar as I take the time and care to comment on my blog and others’ blogs, and to acknowledge and even reward commenters in various ways, not to mention going to the length of creating bespoke and specially designed comments in replying to my readers.
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Please excuse my typo. I meant “Your previous comments….”, not “Your previous comment….”
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We’re in conversation with a relative right now who appears, sadly, to fully endorse what took place in the capitol. Not seeing the seat shifting and toe glances of someone who maybe is afraid they were party to a bad thing that happened. I’m sure those folks exist – but I’m not sure that’s the folks that we’re dealing with on our end.
“And you might reach some but you will reach them without their acknowledging so. They will quietly shift which in itself is still complicity. Facing truth is the most gut-wrenching thing we humans face and I think for the most part I think we prefer not to chose it. We prefer alternative facts, alternative realities, manipulated data . . . ”
I agree, people do this. What I tell them is that, being blunt, this isn’t grown-up behavior. This kind of thing in a professional setting can get you fired. Your credibility is often tied directly to shooting straight, and you can lose clients in a hurry if they realize you’ve gone from an honest broker to a BS-er. Not always of course, plenty of folks play the lying strategy to good effect.
I’ve personally had to make god-awful, painful admissions of having been wrong. Not merely in life, but also in my work. Being in a science field, this is expected… Drop of a hat, the day the data comes in, on the spot — you have to admit it if you were the person whose idea was wrong. Or if your calculation was in error. Or if a massive amount of money was wasted on a failed execution. It hurts every time.
But, this is what grown ups do. This is what real truth seeking looks like.
So, this question for these folks is pretty straightforward. Shall we treat you like adults? Shall we expect grown up behavior on points of fact and fiction? Or would they prefer we regard them as children who cannot admit to losing, cannot admit to having been wrong, etc.? They earn the regard others have for them.
And as you said, I realize I’m soap-boxing to the choir as well. 🙂
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To sum it up: We can’t change what we don’t acknowledge.
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