My Facts Trump Your Facts

Here's a relatively simple example of a big problem we have to deal with in some way: Sarah Palin misquotes a Wall Street Journal story to back up her earlier incorrect analysis of grocery store prices.

The actual details of the story aren't all that exciting. She said in a speech in Phoenix that grocery store prices had risen substantially. This was shown not to be the case by a journalist from WSJ, and she quoted the WSJ as supporting her statement: a quote from an article that actually contradicted her statement.

Grocery store prices aren't my concern here. Neither is Sarah Palin. In a minute when I start talking about government, don't think I mean Palin. What is my concern is that this case gives us an example of disagreements on two different levels. The first level, what do we do about the set of facts that we are faced with. That's a healthy, robust, necessary discussion. The second level, what the set of facts are. That is a dangerous, dangerous place to have a disagreement.

It's dangerous because disagreement on level 1 and disagreement on level 2, you'll find, are often used as mutually-supportive. When this happens, when two sides of a disagreement don't even have a common arena (e.g. the factual world) in which to disagree, the whole conversation is a lost cause.

What happens? No conversation. (In fairness, I should juxtapose that link with this one).

What's lost in all of that is that these disputes are being held at the level of governance. Which means, underneath some rather infuriating, obstinate fist-pounding ("My facts are the real ones, yours aren't!"), are real ordinary people, leading ordinary lives, who would rather have a functional government with some elasticity to handle the inevitable crises on our horizon.

But now we're faced with the problem of trying to sort out whose facts are correct (and convince the people who thought they had them that they really didn't. Good luck!). That can't be done perfectly, i.e. completely, but "most of the way done" or even half way would really be significant progress.

So, let me put on my Nostradamus hat for a second and predict that all kinds of candidates are going to be accused of blocking up the political process in 2012. When that happens, please remember, it's actually everyone's fault. Even ours.

I'll Back That Horse

Half as many 18-29 year-old voters came out in 2010 as came out in 2008. That wouldn't have turned the tide last night, I don't think. But I think it does tell us a heck of a lot about the demographic.

Not surprisingly, the young vote goes liberal (58% Democrat yesterday). Now, in 2008, 18% of voters were in that demographic, and this time 9%. In 2008, Obama was polling ahead of McCain, Democrats were projected to take over the Senate and the House, etc. The young vote backed the winning horse, after they had already been told who it would be.

Anecdotally, in 2008, when I voted, I saw several people in my generation at the polls. Yesterday, I was the youngest person in the building by a good 30 years.

This year, the projections were mainly in favor of the GOP, and young voters didn't turn out. Why? Well, it seemed like a lost cause to them. Of course, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in practice.

I stopped paying attention to baseball back in June when it was clear that the Cubs weren't going to put it together this year. The idea is the same: you minimize your feeling of loss if you make yourself apathetic about it ahead of time. And if you're apathetic about it, you'll certainly not bother to invest any effort, like voting.

Nevermind all of that "civic duty" talk, we don't want to hear any of that either. It reeks of Kant to those of us who know anything about Kant, and to those of us who don't, it sounds a heckuva lot like you're trying to tell us what to do. Well, buster, we are self-determining fully-fledged individuals, and goodness knows, we don't take orders from some vague concept like "duty".

I think the best way of getting my generation energized to vote isn't to hold Get Out the Vote rallies, or any of that. It clearly doesn't work. Instead, you should lie to us, and tell us we've got a sure thing here. We're going to win.

Heck yeah, I'll back that horse!