The Political Lie Machine: Self-serving predictions

Contrary to an abundance of evidence, Hillary Clinton isn't running for president, or at least she won't be running.

That's according to some hackish journalist writing for the conservative Washington Times. Let's see what he says: She doesn't have the fire in the belly. She doesn't want to spend her golden years working 16 hours a day and sleeping in unfamiliar beds. He theorizes that there's a "hard blue flame" that drives the winners, and declares Hillary doesn't have it.

Excuse me, but did George Bush (either of them) have a hard blue flame? No, they didn't. They were candidates of convenience. It's a bunch of bullshit to think tremendous, unabridged ambition is required to become president.

Of course the article correctly claims Hillary has a mountain of negatives. This is true, but it's also true of every other candidate for president. Their opponents dearly wish that these negatives would disqualify the hated candidate. But it just doesn't seem to happen.  From reading Bernstein, I know the qualifications you need to win a nomination, but there's no clear list of what 1) disqualifies candidates, or 2) ensures you win the general election.

It used to be that a divorced candidate couldn't win high office, yet Reagan disproved that. It used to be that no woman or black or hispanic could win, but that obviously isn't true anymore. People want to believe that no one with such-and-such a black mark can win the presidency, and then they conveniently fill in the disqualifying event. But it just isn't so. Probably every single president has at some point been declared disqualified, and those predictions were wrong, wrong, wrong. This is just a particularly stupid example of the genre.

Image: washingtontimes.com

My bias regarding police

I tend to be biased toward believing a police officer's account in a controversy. However that doesn't mean my bias is rigid--I absolutely know that there are rotten, lying, prejudiced cops who shouldn't be believed. So I make sure to be alert to inconsistencies in a cop's story.

I got to observe my bias at work with the Ferguson shooting. My guesses about what had happened went back and forth, showing the interplay of my biases and the weight of evidence. Here's the account of how my thinking evolved.

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At first, the witness's story seemed logical and consistent. A cop got pissed off at the two young men, provoked an argument, grabbed one of them, and then shot him dead. It's certainly possible.

However, this witness (Dorian Johnson) was soon discredited. Video showed that he and Michael Brown were at a store where they allegedly stole some cigars and Brown pushed and intimidated a clerk. From the video, you can't tell either the cigars were stolen or not, but the pushing and lunging are clear enough.

Also, in the meantime, the cop's background was reported as being clean--no prior issues with excessive force. A clean record isn't what I'd expect from a cop who had a bad enough temper to shoot an innocent person on purpose. But a record can be misleading. Perhaps the cop had always managed to avoid disciplinary measures while still being aggressive. This 'fact' is not as convincing as the video.

With these two new 'facts' to mull over, I revised my initial opinion. It now seemed likely that Brown was very much at fault. He had just committed a crime. The witness's story that the cop grabbed Brown was dubious, and instead it seemed likely that Brown grabbed the cop.

At this point, my usual bias toward believing the cop was supported by evidence, or it seemed that way to me. I was still gathering information and evaluating the testimony of the witnesses who went public. I was waiting for photos showing any wounds the cop (Darren Wilson) might have received. I was also waiting to hear what the autopsy showed. This evidence took a long time to arrive and is still subject to dispute. The conclusions of the county medical examiner don't completely match the conclusion of the medical examiner hired by Brown's family.

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So did the 'facts' depart from what I expected at all? Yes, and that's where I learned something new. The people of Ferguson had a particular reason to be angry. They were being plagued with punitive fines and enforcement aimed at extracting as much money as possible (more details here).

Of course, the burden of excessive fines doesn't excuse theft or assaulting an officer, but it explains some of the response. Nonetheless, most of the response is due to bigger issues such as the history of police aggression against minorities and cultural clashes between law enforcement and a 'no-snitching' ethos in black communities. I wish there was a giant reset button we could push that would erase the historical animosity and let people start fresh. But there isn't, so we are doomed to reinforce our biases unless we actively work against them.

Image: politic365.com

Update 12/8/14. I recant what I said about the 'giant reset button.' That disrespects the legitimate and deeply-felt grievances minorities have. There is no wiping the slate clean. Instead, there should be amends, trust-building, and reconciliation.