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.