BY MARTIN KICH
This is the lead item in a news item from the Far-Right media site World Net Daily:
If you cannot read the line right before “Read More,” it says: “Finally someone with all-American blood has the guts to stand up against government orders.”
Decades ago, when I spent more time on barstools, I would have felt compelled to point out that someone who is enough of a dumbass to report on and to celebrate a dumbass posting such a dumbass sign has no room to accuse anyone else of being a dumbass.
But as I have gotten much older, I have developed a little more restraint.
What is shocking about this item is that although it does not express a commonplace sentiment, it is still more common than it ever ought to be.
For some people denying science and any expertise is now not enough.
It has become a cultural litmus test to defy science and expertise.
Within the next several days, 100,000 Americans will have died from this pandemic. And that’s just the official count. In that context, this kind of news item and this kind of demonstration of supposed independent thinking is not just ignorant in an intellectual sense but ignorant in a social and cultural sense.
And emphasizing that point out does not make me or anyone else an elitist.
It makes me someone who has the basic decency—the very minimal decency–to have some respect for the suffering and loss of so many of my fellow Americans.
Being a dumbass has now somehow become conflated with being patriotic.
Ask any veteran what being a dumbass gets you on a battlefield: it gets you and some of your fellow soldiers killed.
And the chances of getting killed on a battlefield and in this pandemic don’t need to be increased by people who, as my grandfather was very fond of saying, “don’t have the brains that they were born with.”
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Isn’t it all-too-common in our fractured times to use one anecdotal example as somehow representative of the times. Both left and right do this but I would’ve hoped that on an academic website that people would provide more data (esp. those who supposedly believe in science) instead of making gross generalizations from one provocative sign.
BTW, I’ve been following the “science” on the virus and its recommendations have been all over the lot on masks and other supposed safeguards.
Yes, it is an anecdotal example, but unfortunately it’s not an isolated example. We seem to have gone from “re-opening” hastily to pretending that the whole thing has never happened. It’s very hard to get people in largely unaffected areas to recognize that what they are doing today may affect them and others three to five weeks down the road.
I am planning to do a post on a number of the issues with statistics that have muddied–and been muddied by–the responses to the pandemic and the politics of those responses.
Here is a funny video highlighting the bewildering mix of recommendations:
https://youtu.be/wVs5AyjzwRM
Good! I look forward to the stats and how they’ve been “spun” by (I hope) all sides of the debate.
This is “one anecdotal example” but we’ve had many such like “anecdotal” examples from a number of different parts of the country. We had a case in a bar in Columbus (Ohio) last weekend where it was close to packed and many of the customers in there were wearing face masks all right — on top of their heads! They might as well have worn them on their middle fingers.
And there’s a concerted effort in the Ohio House of Representatives to undermine the very competent efforts of Ohio’s, Republican by the way, Governor and the Director of Public Health, apparently because they handled the pandemic relatively early and very competently. Fortunately wiser heads have prevailed in the State Senate.
Yes, anecdote is not by itself the singular of data. But an accumulation of anecdotes can become data.
OK, so now we have TWO anecdotes and an UNSUCCESSFUL legislative attempt to undermine medical recommendations.
Maybe it’s true that “an accumulation of anecdotes can become data.” But HOW MANY such incidents (sample size) are needed to be called “data” and WHO does the accumulating? Certainly not a blogger or two on the Internet.
BTW, let me make it plain that I am NOT in favor of going maskless in these Plague months. My original critique was a meta- one: that too often even academics resort to using anecdotal examples as “evidence” to make a partisan case. Believers in science and data should appreciate the importance of valid proof for claims, no?
Any reference to ‘statistics’ or ‘stats’ as some are wont to say, catches my eye, perhaps because I taught research methods courses for more than 30 years in the U.S. and Canada. I continue to marvel at how many people , including Donald Trump, use the term ‘statistics’ and have at best only the vaguest clue about their structural and functional properties, that is, what they are and what they do. Moreover, it appears fair to say that many of the many do not care one way or the other; it is just a word signifying whatever the user wants it to signify. Yep, reports on the dumbing down of America (the U.S.), that began to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s predicted that things would get a lot worse brain-wise for generations to come, and they sure got that right. Who woulda thunk it, widespread national pride in being dumbasses.
Yes, there’s the old line — usually attributed to either Mark Twain or Ben Disraeli — “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The misuse of “stats” can certainly have profound consequences but the NON-use of authentic data, in the interests of an all-encompassing skepticism, can be even more devastating.
Incidentally, I agree with Barry Wellar about the dumbing-down phenomenon. I’ve even written and lectured about it (with evidence). I’d just like to add that dumbing down, like the pandemic, affects everyone, left, right, center, and those off that continuum entirely.