The Trump Indictment and Schrodinger's Wolf
So I don’t think there’s much…substantive discourse to be had on the latest Trump indictment but there’s a little story/metaphor I keep telling myself when talking with liberals about it that I find helpful and I hope you will too.
So we all know the story of the boy who cried wolf, right? But what if we changed that story a little bit? What if the boy cried wolf and everyone came out but some people saw a wolf and others didn’t? Or, more accurately, what if the boy cried wolf and there was some rustling in the bushes and someone said they saw something moving but there’s no obvious wolf running around?
In our new story, when the boy cries wolf the second time, people aren’t coming in with open minds; some people come in thinking there was a wolf on that first day and some people don’t. And so when someone sees something running through the underbrush, some people think it’s a wolf and some people think it’s a squirrel, heavily dependent on what they “think” they saw the previous day. Iterate this a few more times and pretty soon half the town thinks there’s a wolf prowling around and the other half think the boy is a habitual liar.
And so, even if the wolf actually showed up one day, or if someone actually checked the underbrush one day and found no wolf, people would still hold to their priors. After all, if I think a wolf has shown up eight previous days, the fact that the boy called false one time isn’t going to change my opinion too much. Conversely, if a wolf actually does show up on the twelfth day, the other side won’t change their opinion because, well, you’ve got work to do in the town and the field and if the boy is crying wolf all the time, that work won’t get done.
After enough iterations, people are pretty locked into two camps, which we’re used to, but you gotta remember when the other side doesn’t acknowledge obvious points that you’re working with radically different information. Regardless of the facts of the latest Trump indictment, half the country has seen each previous investigation as justified and true where the other half has seen them as witch hunts. I’ve lost count of the number of Trump indictments and impeachments and arrests and investigations and whatnot and no one is changing their mind and this late date because each is viewing it in the context of a radically different history. Trump has either dodged justice for going on 7 years now or he’s been persecuted by the Deep State; at this point everyone has made up their mind one way or another.
But that’s kinda why I avoid discussing this, because I can’t really argue the latest case and…the facts kinda don’t matter, for them or me. The latest thing can never be viewed in isolation, it’s gotta be viewed in terms of the history of Trump investigations over the past 7 years and so any discussion of this inevitably goes back to discussions on previous investigations. I’ve heard plenty of liberals say that the NY indictment is just like catching Capone for tax evasion, which totally makes sense if you think Trump has been dodging criminal charges, up to and including treason, for 7 years. Conversely, if you think the Deep State has been out for Trump and charged with everything they possibly could, including attempted entrapment, then even Trump’s guilt this one time wouldn’t matter. The context, rather than the specific facts of this case, are what matter.
Which, honestly, is why conversations don’t seem to go anywhere. I might be able to convince you or you might be able to convince me of a specific thing but I can’t convince you that everything you’ve seen on this topic for the past 7 years is a lie and, honestly, you won’t convince me of that either.
But that doesn’t make anyone a bad person, it’s just…irreconcilable factual disputes. I mean, usually factual disputes are awesome because those are actually resolvable but if the boy has been crying wolf for a month, and half the people are sure they’ve seen wolves and half the people are sure they haven’t, then the presence of a wolf next month kinda doesn’t matter, people are locked in. And that’s okay, if I had seen what they saw or they saw what I had seen, we’d each switch opinions, we’re all rational and amenable to changing our minds when presented with new facts in isolation, just not in this iterated contextual manner.