Yesterday’s Benghazi report (well, reports – there’s a Republican version and a Democratic version) coupled with a conversation I had with a neighbor brought to light an interesting paradox about our modern, information-rich society. Despite having unprecedented access to facts and a spectrum of opinions, we seem more likely than ever to casually grab and blindly repeat narratives that support our preconceptions.
I wrote a couple weeks back about subordinating facts to an established narrative, but today’s observation is about a different interpretation of feeding narratives.
The existence of [Confirmation bias], the propensity to seek out facts that support a preferred or pre-established conclusion or opinion, shouldn’t be news to anyone, and feeding narratives can be thought of in terms of confirmation bias. However, feeding narratives can also mean “giving people conclusions you want them to have.”
First, the conversation. Yesterday, my neighbor, who I’ve described before (he’s the one who is interested in rational discourse one-on-one, but tends (subconsciously, I believe) to run with the pack in group settings), asked me a few things about libertarians’ views of guns from a public health policy perspective. We went down a long road, which I won’t recount here. Of relevance to the question of feeding narratives is where that idea and association came from. I’ve seen the notion that classifying firearms as a public health concern in order to regulate them before (it’s easily deconstructed from numerous angles, but as I said, that’s a digression), but I’m a semi-retired political wonk with a long history of debating gun rights, so that’s no surprise. Where, on the other hand, did my neighbor get that narrative?
Next, the report. The New York Times headlined the release of the Benghazi report with “House Benghazi Report Finds No New Evidence of Wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton.” The critical word in that headline is New. It is a long-running narrative on the Left that the mere fact that Republicans have been unable to bring Clinton down indicates that she hasn’t done anything wrong (or wrong enough), but it’s not a logical conclusion. Not all criminals get convicted by the system. Some are simply smart enough, clever enough, careful enough or sufficiently protected. Sometimes, the prosecutors aren’t good enough, or they’re unlucky, or political headwinds stifle them. I’m not offering an opinion on Clinton here, but rather on the narrative that failure to make accusations of skulduggery stick doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
There’s a second narrative fed by the use of the word New, and it is fed in both the cognitive bias fashion and in the “here’s what you should think” fashion. The Clinton strategy, ever since the Clintons have been in the public eye, has seemed to be stall, delay, deflect, and obfuscate, then wait for the story to get stale. By portraying the report as “nothing new to see,” it’s a signal to move on, to dismiss, to say “well, they didn’t find anything else, so there’s nothing to it.” However, that doesn’t wipe away the old evidence, not the least of which is that both Clinton and Obama flat-out lied to the public when they asserted the attack was a spontaneous reaction to anti-Muslim video. Emails and other evidence sho that they knew full well the attack was carried out by al Qaeda or a similar militant group. But, since that’s old news, the Times can truthfully claim “No New Evidence.”
Back to my neighbor. Our conversation covered a fair bit of ground, with two points standing out. First – that the pro-gun position is simply “bad stuff happens, but there’s nothing to be done.” Second – that the Orlando shooter was “crazy.”
These are giant straw men, but unfortunately I’ve heard both before. The first, which also falls into several other logical fallacy categories, is the old gag of conflating a problem with a presumed cause – in this case, a mass shooting and access to guns – and thereby constraining the conclusions and solutions. The second ignores the obvious conclusion that this was a terrorist attack rooted in radical Islam. Combined, they ignore the fact that the shooter was a licensed and vetted security guard, who would have had access to guns even if the rest of us didn’t, and they ignore a long list of policy ideas that don’t take others rights away.
This is the state of too much discourse nowadays. People seem as likely or more likely to accept spoon-fed narratives as to seek out facts and process them through their own logic. People will often run with those narratives even when they’re countered by available information. I asked my neighbor to explain his understanding of what an “assault weapon” is, knowing that most people can’t even define what it is they want banned. As I said, he’s one to be willing to have rational conversations (and opened this conversation knowing I was well versed on the topic). He first called them “automatic” weapons, which is incorrect and on which he was willing to accept correction. He then fumfered around, and finally, jokingly, observed “I know it when I see it.” We went on from there, with me giving him both some history and some definition, but, again, that’s an aside for the purposes of this article. Most people aren’t as willing to hear facts that derail their narratives.
It is important to remember that, yes, there are objective facts and objective truths. Just as having a narrative doesn’t ipso facto validate it, having a narrative doesn’t invalidate it. If you’ve spent 20 years building an opinion on a foundation of facts and logic, your opinion carries more weight than one that rests on a foundation of errors, illogic and tendentiousness.
We are too susceptible to the latter, unfortunately, when the narratives we are fed support our leanings. If we think that guns are bad, any crime that shocks the senses is seen as a gun problem, and we are more likely to embrace narratives that blame guns. If we think that immigrants and imports are killing the economy, we are more likely to embrace narratives that blame free trade agreements and hordes of invaders. If we lean Democratic, we are more likely to embrace narratives that Hillary Clinton’s mountain of scandals is nothing but a giant smear campaign. If we lead Republican, we are more likely to embrace narratives that Donald Trump is the leader the country needs, rather than a life-long-Democrat authoritarian cronyist.
It behooves us to be cautious when the opinion machines start churning after a major event. Before repeating a narrative that makes sense to you on first blush, take a moment to ask yourself: are you being given facts and logic to support the narrative, or are you simply being fed one?
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