As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch, yeah
And I said
Does anybody really know what time it is (I don't)"Does anybody know what time it is," The Chicago Transit Authority, 1969
I remain dumbfounded.
I shake my head in wonderment that a majority of Trump supporters look at video of people crashing into barricades on January 6 and call this "peaceful" and side with the rioters. What part of hiding government documents from the National Archives seems OK to Trump supporters? When Trump openly and proudly defies the law, why wouldn't one expect the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute?
Tony Farrell is a college classmate. He reads this blog and reflected on last week's description of the two views of the famous gold/white -- or is it blue/black? -- dress. We perceive it differently depending on the assumption we make on how the dress was illuminated. Tony had a long career as a marketing and branding expert at The Gap, The Nature Company, and The Sharper Image. That work involves the issues that this blog explores: Why people choose leaders or products. I contend that in politics much of it is unconscious and based on presumptions, mental profiles, and prejudices. Tony Farrell's career involved motivating people to spend money to buy the The Sharper Image gadget or the Trump Steak.
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| Tony Farrell in Copenhagen |
Guest Post by Tony Farrell
Alternative Alternative Facts
Peter’s blog on November 12, “Believing Is Seeing,” opined that “people are not objective” and that everyone makes “unconscious decisions that frame and interpret what we think we are seeing objectively.” That led me to this.
I’ve thought about Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” statement ever since uttered in defense of Spicer’s 2017 press conference. Putting aside that I agree Trump is a treasonous criminal, I believed Conway made a valid point worth consideration. Here’s my alternative take on alternative facts.
Here’s my favorite example: During the Iraq and Afghan wars, I read an article about the surge of wounded soldiers being treated by the VA. The wars’ ratio of wounded-to-killed, the article stated, was “the worst in the history of American warfare.” Really? Field surgery hospitals; rapid evacuation techniques; advances in first aid; improved armor; decades of tactical and strategic enhancements by the dedicated work of thousands for the sole purpose of reducing American battlefield deaths? Should their astounding success (i.e., the higher ratio of wounded-to-killed) be described as the worst in history? Let’s say it was poorly framed.
There is a principle in human perception, the “contrast principle,” that affects the way we perceive what one could argue is objective truth.
For example, if you lift a light object first and then a heavy one, you will estimate the second object to be heavier than if you had lifted it without first lifting the light one. Fact and alternative fact? Certainly a different perception of the object’s weight.
Similarly, you could experiment with three buckets of water—cold, hot and room temperature. Keep one hand in the cold, your other in the hot; then plunge both hands into the room-temperature bucket. Even though both hands are now in the same bucket of water, the cold hand feels it’s now in hot water; while the hot hand feels it’s now in cold water.
The point is that the same truth—room-temperature water—can be made to seem very different, depending on the nature of the event that precedes it. Fact and alternative fact.
Marketers use this “contrast principle” to victimize us all the time: In a retail store setting, it is possible to make the price of the same item seem higher or lower, depending on the price of a previously presented item.
Kellyanne Conway tried to defend her word choice by offering the “glass half-full or half-empty” trope. Both are facts, or each an alternate fact. (Actually, I agree with George Carlin: I see the glass as too big….)
As Peter warned, be careful of unwarranted confidence in one’s ability to know facts, and to dismiss alternative facts. It’s too bad that balanced discussion of this got flattened in the rush to steamroll all things Trump.
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5 comments:
It occurs to me that had those insurrectionist rioters been Black, the blood would been have flowing down Pennsylvania Avenue like the Rogue River in flood stage. And the portion of the population who think the desecration of the Capitol that day was a "peaceful demonstration" would be cheering the bloodshed.
Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” comment was made in defense of Sean Spicer’s angry insistence that Donald Trump drew “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” Spicer’s comment was made in defense of the boldfaced lie President Trump told the CIA about the size of his inauguration crowd on his first full day in office. Lies in defense of lies, and it’s been downhill ever since – not to steamroll all things Trump or anything.
Now we have Republican senators and representatives wanting to “investigate” the Jan. 6 committee, citing footage of Trump supporters walking peacefully past Capitol police officers. Forget what your lying eyes saw on live television and what the courts have ruled, the insurrection was a peaceful demonstration.
Labeling it something innocuous like “contrast principle” doesn’t change the fact that it’s self-deception bordering on insanity. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, “you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.
Whether or not one agrees with Mr. Farrell's statement, they should not ignore the lessen in the last paragraph.
During the Trump townhall with Clinton (the famous "you'd be in jail" one), they were asked to say something nice about each other. Trump spoke of how driven Hillary was to succeed and even said he admired her. Hillary replied flatly, after looking around in hesitation, that she liked his family.
When everything about Trump that someone can speak comes out as an insult, dripping with vitriol, veiled in the harshest of language to describe every slight down to misspelling a word on twitter, then the bias is on the table. Who would take you seriously when you finally do get some factual dirt?
Mr. Farrell is right. Those who've have nothing good to say about Trump are the reason he is still walking free today. You got too greedy handing out impeachment swag. You cried wolf too many times.
"...comes out as an insult, dripping with vitriol, veiled in the harshest of language to describe every slight..."
Hmmm. Sounds like a description of Trump's tweets. His criminality is a matter of public record, resulting in 91 felony counts against him. If relating his behavior sounds like an indictment, whose fault is that?
Exactly how many of those 91 felonies ended in conviction?
Please remember why our constitution is worded the way it is: when politics get ugly, there are always those who beg the state to do the worst possible things to their opponents.
You are proving Mr. Farrell's point.
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