Newsletter #142
On What Stupid People Will Likely Say Later This Week
A Thought Experient and Hypothesis, All in One
More likely than not, by the latter part of this week, we will know who our next President will be. I say “more likely than not” because (1) we almost always know the outcome of elections by late on election night or early the next morning; but (2) given the complexity of ballot counting in some precincts, and the likelihood that this election will come down to 75,000-100,000 votes spread across two or three states, it’s possible that it will take longer than we’d like to know the outcome.
Let’s assume we do know by late Tuesday evening or early Wednesday morning.
There will be people who argue the following, depending on the outcome:
1-If Trump wins, it’ll be because he ran a brilliant campaign and Harris ran a horrible campaign.
2-If Trump wins, it’ll be because half the country are racists, bigots, rednecks, and/or a host of other terrible things.
3-If Trump wins, it’ll be because Biden was just a drag on Democratic candidates writ large, and that most Democratic nominees wouldn’t have prevailed anyway.
4-If Trump wins, it’ll be because the country is, on the whole, more conservative than progressive.
1a-If Harris wins, it’ll be because she ran a brilliant campaign and Trump ran a horrible campaign.
1b-If Harris wins, it’ll be because half the country is woke, naïve, baby-killers, and/or a host of other terrible things.
1c-If Harris wins, it’ll be because people simply despised the thought of another Trump presidency, and regardless of how well he campaigned, he was never going to win.
1d-If Harris wins, it’ll be because the country is, on the whole, more progressive than conservative.
You can feel free to add some other interpretations associated with either candidate winning, but I want to keep this somewhat manageable, so let’s stick with these.
Point #1: Some of the same people who will offer Scenario #1 as their theory of the case are the same people who’ve been complaining about how many campaign errors Donald Trump and his team have made.
You can’t have it both ways. Either he will win largely despite his campaign, or largely because of his campaign. That’s not unrelated to Harris’s efforts, but it seems like a logically unavoidable thing to conclude.
Let’s try this with a different scenario.
Imagine Scenario 1b transpires. You cannot be the “reasonable-sounding” pundit who says before the election, “You know, I profoundly disagree with Vice President Harris, but I realize some people will vote for her simply because they think Former President Trump would be so poor,” only to say after the election, “I can’t believe it: we have a nation full of woke, baby-killing idiots.” Well, you just said some people voted for her mainly because they didn’t like Trump, but now you’re claiming her voters are one kind of voter.
One more scenario.
Let’s say Scenario #1d prevails. You cannot say be the guy who says all throughout 2024, “You know, we’re really a more conservative country. I hate it, but it’s true,” but following a Harris victory says, “We’re really a progressive country. After all, Kamala’s win shows that.”
Now before we all get too tangled up with all the scenarios and counterfactuals, let me hasten to my point: People of all kinds—journalists, politicians, activists, celebrities, and ordinary citizens—get things wrong all the time. That’s forgivable. We all make errors, especially when it comes to predicting the future and analyzing the behavior of a constantly changing population and electorate. (By the way, those aren’t the same thing.) What isn’t easy to forgive is when people get things wrong and never say, “I was wrong.” Yet we refuse to say that quite often.
Never Admit Fault
Sinners are constitutionally wired not to admit wrongdoing. While not all errors or offenses are equivalent in their moral character or impact, people generally struggle to admit that what they claimed as true two years earlier, two months earlier, or even two days earlier, turned out to be wrong.
It’s not hard to summon to mind some reasons why we’d be slow to acknowledge error.
First, people will lose confidence in our judgment if we concede error, even if trust isn’t always lost this way. As I suggested in my prior newsletter, we have a bigger trust problem when people sense something is off with our integrity or benevolence than our ability or competence.
But in an economy driven by opinionism more than journalism, idle speculation more than accurate information, and hype over sobriety, there’s too much to lose by owning your errors.
Second, our views on things tend to go much deeper than objective, impersonal guesses. They arise from within a worldview, no doubt. But I think political views increasingly tend to be about identity and meaning—you know—the stuff we used to get from God? This is, of course, not an original insight. Many, many authors have written about identity politics and the religious nature of contemporary politics. I’m grateful that even unbelieving observers are seeing this more and more and understanding some of the problems. But despite the useful analysis available, we’re stuck in a cultural mode right now that means that if my political judgments are tied to my professional well-being and/or my personal identity, then acknowledging error will be just a step or two away from social death.
Nevertheless, Scripture speaks: “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid.” (Proverbs 12:1) The just man strives not only to be a wise man, but to discover how to “get it right” once he discovers that he is not right.
This latter insight is partly derived from the proverb above, but also some common grace wisdom from Colin Cowherd, whose sports radio program I’ve listened to for over a decade.
Each Monday he does a segment called, “Where Colin Was Right, Where Colin Was Wrong.” He reviews the past weekend and week in sports news, identifying ways in which what he had previously said was spot-on or basically correct, and where some of his claims or predictions turned out to be mostly wrong or entirely wrong. He has often called it his most highly rated segment.
Why? It turns out that good people deeply appreciate it when other people own their mistakes. They feel as though truth still matters to people. It enables them to learn from others’ mistakes. It even lowers the personal stakes. We no longer feel that admitting where we might have been wrong won’t result in being ridiculed or cast aside.
“Stupid is as Stupid Does”
Our stubbornness and stupidity aren’t limited to political judgments. I merely used the political scenarios above since they’re entirely predictable and current to our moment. If we would be people worthy of other people’s trust, and more importantly, the character of Christ, then we must embrace the truth of things. Otherwise, we will show people stupidity in our unwillingness to identify, acknowledge, and turn from error.
Sometimes the truth is undesirable, embarrassing, frustrating, or even threatening. (Here I’m thinking more about the truth of social affairs, not God’s revealed truth.) Sometimes knowing you’re outnumbered by political opposites in your workplace is a hard truth to own, but if the shoe fits, well, accept it, and discern how to respond faithfully.
If we develop spiritual sensitivity to God’s Word, it will make us people who readily accept God’s truth, no matter how challenging or convicting. But I also think this will have another outcome: we will learn to be more honest about other social facts, even if they frustrate us.
You may be deeply angered by what the polling tells you about people’s views on abortion in your state, but you need to study the issue enough to know whether that is, in fact, what you’re up against as you try to be an effective Christian citizen. You can’t put your head in the sand. The unborn won’t be helped by that.
You may have a more permissive view of immigration, but you have to look comprehensively at the state of affairs we’re currently experiencing. What’s happening? How did we get here? Who are the affected parties? Where are the American people on this? What guidance can Scripture give in view of those factors?
You may have a gubernatorial candidate in your state who is kind of a goober—a technical term, didn’t you know? Her views largely align with yours, and you plan to vote for her. However, whenever she puts her foot in her mouth every other week once in office, don’t act surprised. Why did you speak of her like she was Abraham Lincoln during the campaign? You knew better.
Trying to save face is a constant temptation. Resist it. Value honesty. And don’t set yourself up for stupidity by lying to yourself or doubling down on errors.
If you still struggle with such counsel, then here’s a proverb for you:
“Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.” (Proverbs 17:27-28)
Follow Up:
On the heel of last week’s newsletter on the subject of trust, Sam Rainer has gone all in on the topic. The title of his article says it all: “Churches Are Still Relevant But Not Trustworthy.”
His most fascinating finding in recent research? This dichotomy:
· Churched people: I trust the church but believe it’s irrelevant today.
· Unchurched people: The church is still relevant but not trustworthy.
Quotes of the Week:
To call a person “articulate” is to say something rather complex. One element of articulateness is the quick and easy summoning of words — but if the words summoned are not appropriate, we don’t call the person articulate but rather a chatterer, a windbag, a babbler. We call what comes out of their mouth “word salad.” Appropriate words are precise and also information-rich. The articulate person is able to speak fluently but also to the point.
I say all this by way of noting something curious: The current Presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, are surely the least articulate Presidential candidates in American history — the least able to speak in reliably coherent complete sentences, the least likely to summon relevant information in discussing a topic, and most prone to extended and expansive servings of word salad…
The question is: How did we get here? How did we get to the point at which our Presidential candidates are actually less articulate than the average person? How did we manage to create a Presidential campaign season which resembles nothing so much as a pack of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights?
Alan Jacobs, “Articulation.”
An unbelieved truth is often more dangerous than a lie. The lie in this case is the idea that I want things entirely on my own, uninfluenced by others, that I’m the sovereign king of deciding what is wantable and what is not. The truth is that my desires are derivative, mediated by others, and that I’m part of an ecology of desire that is bigger than I can fully understand.
Luke Burgis, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life.
Guess what? These same four companies—Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google—have a new dream technology built on fakery.
It’s called artificial intelligence.
What an amazing coincidence! Do these four CEOs coordinate their moves in secret? Or are they just obsessed with imitating each other in some kind of warped Girardian way?
But their AI plans aren’t much different than the virtual reality debacle.
· In VR, we go into a fake world to interact with real people.
· In AI, we remain in the real world but interact with fake people.
That’s not much of an improvement. By my measure, it’s actually a step backward.
Reality is not something to trifle with. It always gets the last laugh.
Ted Gioia, “How Virtual Reality Died.”
Books I’m Reading Now/Still/Again:
Joshua Chatraw and Mark Allen, Apologetics at the Cross: An Introduction for Christian Witness.
Paul Gould, Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World.
Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: Finding God in the Modern World.
Ronald Nash, Faith and Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith.
Luke Burgis, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life.
Parting Shot:
In keeping with the recent themes of trust and partnership, both of which I have written on at length, I am grateful for how Eddie Moody, the Executive Director of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, has represented my church body well across different ecclesial communities and parachurch organizations. This bears out in his recent appearance on the Church Answers Podcast, with Thom and Art Rainer. Check it out: “The Quiet Denomination: Why You Need to Know More about Free Will Baptists.”