My friend Benny doesn’t seem to understand things. I’ll listen to him talk, and I know when he’s going off the tracks. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes his derailment is a real doozy.
You can almost get a feel for it when you hear his takes on the rules of various sports. They always make for good entertainment. Watching a baseball game, you might hear him say out of the blue, “You know, right-handed batters should get to run the other way around the bases.” During a football game you might hear, “Extra points should be according to how far away they’re kicking from. If they kick from the 10, it’s 1 point, and from the 20 it’s 2 and from the 30 it’s 3. That way, if they score a touchdown and are still down by 6, they can try to kick a 60-yard extra point to tie it.”
And no matter how outrageous it sounds, I honestly think he doesn’t get why it isn’t that way.
So when it comes to something so complex as voting and election results, well, forget it.
“I don’t understand how Trump can be winning in all of these states that are important, and then suddenly they count a bunch of votes and he’s losing.”
“Well, Benny, I think it could be that rural votes get tallied more quickly because they’re spread out and of much less volume. In a town of a few thousand, they might be able to count their votes and turn in the results faster than in the bigger cities, and people in bigger cities are less likely to vote for Trump. So early results might look far different than the end result. You ‘ve got to wait until all of the results are in.”
Someone walks in the door.
Benny: “Hey, did you over notice how Trump was ahead in all of these states, and now all of a sudden he’s behind?”
Sigh.
Benny’s just the kind of guy who might find credence in rumors of “found” boxes filled with ballots that all choose Biden, or that a state has more votes cast than there are registered voters.
A good part of this is the force of propaganda in which the Trump campaign has been engaging for months now. Because he’s spent all of this time convincing people that there will be voter fraud and the Dems will try to steal the election, true believers are not only seeing it happening everywhere, they’re willing to believe the slightest hint of it.
And so you need someone who sets them straight. Journalists are supposed to be the defenders of truth, but I’m sure I’m naïve in thinking that maybe we can get a few good journalists to actually run down these rumors. “We went to Wisconsin and dug around as best we could but found absolutely no evidence of a mysterious box of Biden votes showing up at the last minute.” Or, “There are 10 million registered voters in Minnesota and there were 8 million votes cast.”
Simple things like that.
I guess the problem with that is that the president has also convinced half the nation that you can’t trust the media to tell you the truth about it anyway. Sadly, it only seems to work one way, and a sizable portion of the population apparently doesn’t see that. He says things that are clearly false, but it’s always the media that lies. I can’t figure that one out. With him the standard of journalism is not about whether something is true or not – it’s about whether it supports him or not. It doesn’t take much thinking to see that. The problem is, there are far too many people who don’t want to do much thinking.
And so let’s get to the root of it all. It goes much deeper than having journalists actually investigate and tell. It goes to the ability of the receiver to process, and so it’s clear what we really need is a revamping of our approach to education. There’s still nothing wrong with the fundamentals of reading, writing, and math. But the primary thing that should be taught in our schools before all else is how to think critically. The ability to see and evaluate multiple perspectives. The ability to spot not only falsehoods but even more so manipulations and omissions of fact. The ability to see bias in oneself.
It’s all like a puzzle. I’ve learned more about this just by being in a foreign country. I find out a lot about Korea by reading its media, but unlike in America where I have the deep cultural background and an accompanying understanding about how a particular media outlet leans, in Korea I was at first more inclined to just read and believe. It took some time before I got the idea that they were the same as Americans with their underlying beliefs and agendas. This understanding was like a key for me – and with that key I could put each piece of information I was receiving into its proper place so that I could see the big picture more clearly in the end. Like a puzzle.
We’ve probably all heard that to ignore the lessons of history means that we will quite likely repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past. But now more than ever we have to ask ourselves, “who’s history?” We need to be able to place varying perspectives beside each other and come up with the common understanding about the truth of the history we learn. And then we need to be able to see the same in the history that is being made even now.
And we need to teach people how to see the subtleties of perspectives. This is the power of critical thinking. To know how to use it is to understand the world more completely. To look at things more broadly – to consider and engage differing perspectives and to be able to explain their faults and merits – completes the puzzle. It might even be helpful for people like Benny.
Or maybe it’s too late. We can only hope.
A few comments on the election:
1. Prior to the election I heard a rather bizarre statement from a Trump supporter. She claimed that the single reason for the decay of our values in this country is because, as a country, we aren’t pro life. Besides the obvious flaw in making a single issue the basis for her logic, the simple reason that she was supporting a man whose actions are devoid of principles such as honesty, decency, integrity, honor and personal responsibility would make her assessment laughable if it weren’t so sad. The argument might even be made that Donald Trump has done as much to harm the pro-life movement as help it because in supporting him, many of the Christians who are pro-life have taken on the appearance of hypocrites whose “values” are rooted in Machiavellian principle, not Christian belief. Right or wrong, the stain on Christianity may take a long time to remove. The sad part of it is those pro-life Christians who didn’t support Trump because he didn’t represent their Christian values now have to work harder to be taken seriously. The stain of guilt by association is tough to remove.
2. The so called huge Trump lead that vanished over time is very easy to explain, and has been explained many times over for those who will hear it. The lead was a mirage in the first place. The states in which this mysterious disappearing act occurred all had Republican Legislatures that refused to allow local election officials to process and count mail-in ballots early. If anything could be said about the process, it is this: Biden is actually the one who had a big early lead because he and his campaign encouraged voters to vote by mail. The lead was there because the ballots were there. They just couldn’t be counted. Because in-person ballots are recorded and counted immediately, it looked like Trump held a big lead on Election Day. But voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were told time and time again that the results would appear that way. They were told prior to Election Day. They were told on Election Day. They were told throughout the week as the counting progressed. They were told by the media. They were told by local election officials. They were told by state election officials. The fact that certain people refused to listen to the multitude of voices who told them this is on them, not on the media or election officials. That Trump used this mirage that he had a big lead to dishonestly promote his ballot dumping/voter fraud conspiracy theory is a testament to how little his supporters were willing to listen. I find if funny that in Arizona, for instance, where a fairly substantial Biden lead has been steadily evaporating, there are no charges of fraud. In fact, just the opposite is happening. And then there are the states that were called for Biden on Election Day like New Jersey and California where the Biden lead only continued to expand when the mail-in ballots were counted. Funny thing about New Jersey is that it isn’t even as far along in its counting as Pennsylvania, yet nobody is talking about any impropriety there because of the length of time it is taking or the expanding Biden lead. Simple fact: a lot more Democrats voted by mail than Republicans. Why? Because the President of the United States ran around the country telling his supporters not to vote by mail. Simple fact 2: Mail-in ballots take a lot longer to process than in-person voting, especially in states where the legislature refuses to pass measures that might allow pre-election processes that might encourage speedier results. (Florida and Texas were able to produce same day results because their laws allowed the processing ballots before Election Day. I find it amazing that Wisconsin was able to produce next day results given the constraints.)
3. What I find especially humorous about the so-called conspiracy to commit voter fraud is that if it were real, the Democrats didn’t go all the way with it. After all, why rig the Presidential election and not rig Senate and House elections. Now if really weird things would have happened, like Doug Jones winning in Alabama, then I could take these unsupported fraud theories seriously.
As for Wisconsin, the numbers speak for themselves. Biden beat Trump by 20,000+. There is nothing unusual in that. This state has a tradition of close elections. Evers beat Scott Walker by 50,000 2 years ago. Trump beat Hillary by 20,000+ four years ago. Kerry beat Bush by just 11,000 in 2004. Gore squeaked by Bush by only 5000+ in 2000. Clinton had wider margins, but only because Ross Perot really mucked things up in both 1992 and 1996. In 1988 Dukakis won the state by less than 80,000. In fact, the only 2 people who were able to muster winning margins of over 100,000 without the independent Perot mucking things up by grabbing a large % of the vote were Ronald Reagan and Barrack Obama. So this idea that somehow Wisconsin’s vote this year is suspicious looking and unusual is not only unsupported by evidence, it is unsupported by history. The totals are right in line with Wisconsin’s history.
4. Back in 2000, Al Gore was labeled a poor sport and sore loser. He contested a single state where the initial margin of defeat was 1784 votes. In the end, Gore graciously conceded for the good of the country. So if Al Gore was a sore loser, what does that say about the character of Donald Trump? But beyond that, does anyone believe there is any real possibility that he will do the honorable thing for once in his life and graciously accept defeat?
5. Regarding recounts. In 2000, after the automatic recount, the margin of Bush’s win over Gore was reduced to 900 votes. A net gain of 884 votes for Gore., which is actually an above average gain in a recount. (Maybe some of the hanging chads fell out.) Trump can ask for recounts to his heart’s content, but history has shown time and again that they don’t change results except in cases where the results are so close that a few hundred votes can make a difference. This year, that is not happening in any of the states where Trump is losing.
6. As final proof that Trump’s loss is because he was rejected by the voters, and not just because he was cheated, I present myself and millions of other Americans who voted for a Republican Congressman or Senator, but rejected 4 more years of chaos, dishonesty, discord and corruption. I didn’t tow a party line. I wrote my Congressman before the election about my concerns regarding his silence about Trump’s behavior. I told him I couldn’t vote for someone who remained silent in the face of such naked dishonesty and lack of principle. He (or one of his more savvy staff members) wrote a very nice email in response telling me that he too had concerns, but he was working hard to mend divisions and bring bipartisanship back into politics. After receiving his email, I read his positions and compared them to the positions of his democratic opponent. His were well thought out and while I didn’t agree with them all, I agreed with some of them. I agreed with some of hers too, but too many of them came across like a laundry list of unrealistic talking points, rather than heartfelt positions upon which she was building a feasible plan for bipartisan action. So you see, it is very likely that there are many, many people out there who decided to EVICT the Trumpster from the White House simply because he is a man who doesn’t respect or abide by those good old traditional values we were raised to embrace. (The values he embraces would have kept me on a chair in the kitchen watching the clock for my entire childhood and youth. You know what I mean by that statement. By the way, I believe I hold the record for the longest time-out. 4 hours one Saturday morning after I swept all of the checkers off the checker board when I lost my temper because Dad was beating me.)
Excellent points. Voter fraud itself is a conspiracy that could not hold up on such a large scale. There is no way one party is going to be able to swing an election over 20,000 votes one way or another without leaving some kind of trail. But again, Trump is a master propogandist. It should be a study in itself that people on such a large scale can listen to demonstrably clear and outright lies while nodding their heads in approval. It should also tell us a lot about human nature itself and the ability to delude oneself for whatever reason. It goes back to the underlying point of my post — to think critically is crucial. It’s like finding the key that unlocks the puzzle piece by piece. People need to break out of the matrix I tell you.
Always nice to catch up on your blog. Not much to add other than when you find yourself analyzing Trump’s behavior, pegging him as clearly sociopathic, only to be corrected by your sister who views him(with compelling evidence) as a psychopath, it’s time for a change…