Tag Archives: statistics

Shoot The Messenger

A quick status report: I am improving each day, but my guess is that this site will continue to experience glitches, probably attributable to my medicated status. Yesterday, the emails failed to send at the scheduled time–fortunately, my techie son intervened and was able to fix the issue. Every day, it seems, there’s something. (The day after my brief hospital stay, an uninsured driver t-boned our daughter’s car; fortunately, she and our granddaugher were just bruised, but the car was totalled. The next day, my husband pulled out a kitchen drawer and it–and he– collapsed. Again, fortunately, he’s fine, but I’m getting a bit leery.)

I really appreciate all the kind words, and your willingness to hang in there with me! This too will pass–and if we’re lucky, MAGA will pass too…

___________

Today’s will be a “quickie,” because I’m focusing on something you all already know (and I still can’t sit at the computer for long periods of time.)

This week’s job report was weak–shockingly weak. That wasn’t a surprise to anyone who passed Econ 101 (or to pretty much anyone who can read); we are just beginning to see the effects of Trump’s idiotic tariffs. But of course, the Mad King responded to the unfavorable data as is his wont: with anger and denial. How dare reality deviate from his imagined brilliance? So he fired the person in charge of analyzing and publishing the data.

As the folks at Lincoln Square noted,

One basic character of the politicization necessary to create an authoritarian regime is that public employees are reluctant to share information that displeases their political bosses. When those bosses can fire them, the incentives to suppress uncongenial information, or provide false information, become overwhelming.

Over time, life in these countries become bifurcated. Statistics become propaganda. There is an official reality, which many proclaim but few believe, and actual reality. And at some point actual reality catches up with the fantasy.

Reality, of course, is a place Trump has yet to visit.

Ever since Trump assumed office, civil servants have been reluctant to contradict the various moronic eruptions emanating from the Oval Office and from the assortment of clowns comprising what passes for a cabinet. So Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-science beliefs about vaccines are rapidly degrading public health, and the fossil fuel tools at the EPA are pretending that there’s no such thing as climate change. Etc.

People who are unwilling to “go along to get along” are fired.

Those who survive will keep telling us that the Emperor’s new clothes are magnificent, and what’s left of America’s credibility will continue to tank.

Comments

“Facts Don’t Win Elections”

Over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton recently reflected upon the disconnect between crime statistics and popular beliefs about violent crime.

The disconnect between actual rates of violent crime and the public perception of the rates of violent crime is astonishing. In 2014, 63% of Americans believed that violent crime was going up when, in reality, it’s been dropping steadily for 25 years and has dropped 20% in the last 8 years. In fact, a majority of Americans have believed that every year since 2003.

There are several explanations that can be offered for that disconnect, but undoubtedly, the media bears considerable responsibility. Not only do news sources–particularly television news–focus on crime (“if it bleeds, it leads”), but the number of movies and popular television shows that feature crime fighters of one sort or another (everything from the multiple versions of Law and Order and NCIS to lawyer shows to cops and robbers) sometimes seem to dwarf other kinds of subject matter.

It isn’t just that the media report so prominently on local crime incidents. In the age of globalization, we see reports from all around the world. Did a bomb go off in a London subway? It makes the evening news. Was someone murdered in Paris? It makes the evening news. The impression is that danger lurks everywhere.

It isn’t all that innocent, however, as Brayton points out.

But I think there’s one more element to this that is important. One of our two major political parties has a huge interest in convincing people that violent crime is getting worse instead of better. And one of the most influential interest groups for that party, the NRA, has become little more than the marketing wing of the gun industry. And surveys also show that support for gun rights goes up as fear of crime goes up. So there is a huge incentive to lie to people and convince them that crime is going up. And since, as noted above, most people have no experience with actual violent crime, the media images and political messages that focus on violent crime are more likely to be effective.

Thus you get what happened at the RNC, where they were selling not only the idea of a dystopic future but a dystopic present. They presented America as a hellscape of violence that simply does not exist, despite some high-profile situations that got enormous media saturation. It has never been safer to be an American. It’s never been safer to be a cop in America. Those are the facts. But facts don’t win elections.

Facts. Evidence. Reality. Next to a good story, I guess they don’t stand much of a chance.

Comments