Warning...

Conclusions beware: people will be jumping to you soon and often, especially those in politics. For the last week or so I’ve been doing my normal reading, listening, and talking where news and politics are concerned, but mostly reading and listening. In doing so I’ve noticed something that I find increasingly annoying. It’s one of those things that has always been there, just under the surface, unnamed but ever pervasive and malignant.



Some call it ‘jumping to conclusions’ others call it the ‘slippery slope’ argument type. I don’t really call it anything, but I have a few choice words to describe it: Ignorant, fruitless, childish, cowardly.



It’s the latest greatest form of American witch hunt, this phenomenon. Just point something out (fact or fiction, it really doesn’t matter) and scream loud enough and you’ll get the desired reaction, at least for a while. John Stossal wrote a nice column about one form of this witch hunt in today’s Townhall. Let’s explore this and other types:



Junk Science: Ah the new American drug of choice…panic. As Stossal points out, it’s easier to get a government grant if you “discover” some evil doomsday plot that will end us all in a matter of months than if you just find out that ground up tube worm guts make paint stick to walls better. Science in this country, especially medical science, has donned it’s fishnet stockings, layered on the lipstick, and made its way to the corner, selling its findings to the highest (or latest) bidder. It’s no longer enough to make a real contribution to the world by actually making breakthroughs (however big or small) that lead to the truth. Now it’s all about the money, getting published, and becoming famous. Scientists and researchers are content to skip several steps in the method to come to a conclusion that suits the hypothesis as long as the data “points that way”. I can hold a golf club correctly and am strong enough to hit a golf ball 250 yards off the tee. Those two bits of information point to me being a decent golfer…but I’m not. I’ve played golf twice in my life, and let’s just say I’m glad I can ride a bike and run.



And let me offer this up as a side bar. I work with many research scientists in the medical field and they are, for the most part, delightful people. That being said, many of them, the majority of them in fact, are also spoiled brats. They stamp their feet and pout like five year olds when the government doesn’t give them as much money as they think they disserve to do their research. Never mind that there are no currently usable applications for their work. Never mind that they have yet to turn out any usable data. They want their money and they don’t care where it comes from, (i.e. our taxes) they just want it. While I understand the dynamics of the whole research thing, I can’t help but curl my lip when I talk about it, no doubt because of my affection for capitalism. It just rubs me the wrong way when people who don’t necessarily create or provide anything for the economy (except of course the next big scare) whine and pout when someone doesn’t want to hand them free money.



Next time you have a few days to kill, take the time and research where the majority of technological and medical advancement comes from. I’m willing to bet Sarge’s right leg you’ll find that it will come from companies who have research labs, and not government funded, academian farms.



Social Schism: This is where the witch hunts get really sad. In my daily ingestion of worldly information I do a lot of listening, mostly to Neil Boortz, Shawn Hannity, and the news from the radio station where they’re played, as it doesn’t lean left, and therefore doesn’t paint the news a lovely shade of communist red. What I hear quite often are people who love to debate their views, feverishly at times, each trying to win the other over to their viewpoint.



Pardon my jading, but I find this debate technique completely fruitless. More often than not I find that each side is so focused on bending the other’s will that they ignore truth and validity, opting for the most effective words, but not the right ones. This is where the slippery slope argument takes hold and brings along its friends, fallacy, and inductive syllogism. The words are nerdish and Spock like, but what they do to an otherwise cogent argument is devastating.



Sadly enough, it isn’t ignorance of topic or lack of debate skills that lead people to use these broken tools to build their argument, it’s ego. To quote a writer who captured this idea in a set of novels (strangely enough they were science fiction, but with several political and philosophical underpinnings, Jefferson and Hamilton would have loved them), "People are stupid. They will believe anything that they want to be true or fear to be true." So long as ANY evidence exists to support this belief. Think about it for a minute. I’ll bet you can come up with at least three examples of this in a few seconds…



Here’s a good example:



I tell you that the world is warming up. I’ll dub it “Global Warming”. Then I’ll look around me and see who I can blame for this that will help my agenda. Hmmm, I bet I could get more votes from the environmental crowd if I really stick it to the ‘evil’ corporations around the world and make it seem like a PURELY NATURAL PHENOMENON is their fault. I’ll just offer some government funding to a few laboratories and point them in the right direction.



If you did such a thing people would call you a lot of names. The one that would fit best is Al Gore.



Sadder still is the fact that in any given argument, the truth will always win. It might not make the most noise, wear the brightest bowtie, or appeal to the most people, but it will win. Truth is eternal. If you keep telling someone the truth it will eventually break down all the scaffolding upon which their illusions rest, leaving them a barren and empty landscape to gaze at. But standing in the middle of landscape, with nothing to draw their eyes away, they will have no choice but to see the truth.



Well, I think I’ve harped enough on the generalities of the idea, but just so my point doesn’t go foundering in the wake of these steaming piles of pseudo-revelation, here it is:



The moment you feel like you should panic because of something on the news, be it a new disease that will wipe us all out, comet heading for earth, or the evil agenda of the obviously shady political party in control of EVERYTHING except of course the even MORE evil corporations, is the moment you should stop, look around, take a deep breath, and exhale the bullshit.



Too many people in this country scurry around, accomplishing nothing, just waiting for the next explosion.





After a while, it just gets annoying.





That’s all.



As you were.





Captain.