Less is More and the Ayers’ Association (Guest Voice)
Campaign 2008 is heating up and getting more negative than ever. In this Guest Voice post, Hunter Hatfield, who often comments on this site under the name Pacatrue, looks at some of the negatives being used in the email and now formal campaign against Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama.
Less is More and the Ayers’ Association
by Hunter Hatfield
Just a few days ago, I was forwarded an email that claimed to have definitive proof that Barack Obama was a socialist. It contained a single quote, in which, supposedly, Obama says government must redistribute income more equitably. The implication was intended to be that Obama’s guiding philosophy is to take our money and give it to others until his notion of equality was satisfied.
As it turns out, Snopes.com has already debunked this email chain. Obama never said it at all, and the fake quote is a WSJ reporter’s summary of Obama arguing for government-funded health care and education. You can decide for yourself whether or not health care and education equals socialism.
The fact that an attacking email chain is untrue is not particularly noteworthy. Indeed, factcheck.org has an article about how such chains are almost always untrue.
More interesting is the root idea of the email, an idea shared by left, right, and those in between.
Namely, the email wished to ignore lots of data that they could use to understand Obama’s beliefs about government and tried to ferret out the hidden truth with less data. Want to know whether Obama is a socialist? Don’t read his issue proposals, listen to his speeches, or look at his voting record. Instead, ignore all of that complicated data with specific ideas and look for some single, special piece of evidence that reveals the Truth.
Using less data instead of more of course makes no sense unless you think all of the other data is unreliable, and, moreover, that you can find the real truth, not by a rigorous search and analysis, but by simply finding something to confirm what you already believe. If you don’t already think Obama is a socialist, there’s not much to be gotten from the false quote.
A similar process occurred just a few weeks ago (though it seems like a political eternity now) in the rumors that Gov. Palin’s daughter was the real mother of Gov. Palin’s youngest.
For that to be the case, one had to take just a small sample of the evidence available, and then completely underestimate what would be required for the entire scenario to be real. If one only looked at the appropriate data, the rumor seemed rather plausible.
However, all the other facts that would have needed to be true as well (medical records falsified, medical staff silenced, gubernatorial staff clueless as well as many participating in the lie, other state governors befuddled and deluded) were extremely unlikely as a whole, and required much more evidence to overrule. Of course, 2 or 3 days later the rumor was dispelled and we all went on to our next biased judgment.
We now have a repeat of this process with the associations between Ayers and Obama. We know there are some associations between the two, such as serving on an educational board together, a fund-raising event, and some conversations, when Obama was still serving in Illinois. Ayers is a past bomber, so is this evidence that Obama secretly harbors Ayers’ beliefs?
To make this work, one again needs to think that less is more.
We need to think that we can learn more about the real Obama by ignoring years of his statements, records, accomplishments, and associations, and imagining what might be, what seems likely to be based upon our prior beliefs, and this small sample of evidence we are now focused upon. Any suggestion that Ayers = Obama depends upon confining our data just to Ayers and Obama.
After all, Obama also served on the same Board with other people, and he surely had fundraisers with even more in his years as a politician. Maybe Obama secretly thinks whatever those other fundraisers think, too. It’s just as reasonable if you select your data sufficiently. You’d end up with a hundred secret Obamas, each of which is in secret sympathy with all of them.
Even if one can make the Ayers connection special, there’s still a problem. You want to think that Obama is going to reveal himself and start doing Ayers-the-terrorist-inspired actions.
But why hasn’t he been doing these things already and why will he only start doing them now? Maybe a great conspiracy that the two have been planning for over a decade? Unlikely, to say the least. Which means that Obama’s probably already been doing the sort of thing he’d like to continue doing. The Ayers-inspired Obama is the same Obama we’ve had around for years.
In short, when making judgments, one cannot just estimate what is likely to be true based upon the evidence sitting in your lap. You have to fit it into a whole story of the world. This complicates our lives. It forces us to see people as typically full of contradictions and associations that do not tell a consistent story.
But that’s closer to who we are.
Hunter Hatfield is currently finishing a doctorate in linguistics and cognitive science after 8 years in the computer industry. He frequently comments on the site under the name of Pacatrue.
9 Responses to “Less is More and the Ayers’ Association (Guest Voice)”
Ayers contributed a total of $200 to Obama when he was running for the state Senate in Illinois. Ayers never made any other donations to Obama
How about McCain's relationship with G. Gordon Liddy a radio host and convicted Watergate burglar?
Liddy has acknowledged preparing to kill someone during the Ellsberg break-in “if necessary”; plotting to murder journalist Jack Anderson; plotting with a “gangland figure” to murder Howard Hunt to stop him from cooperating with investigators; plotting to firebomb the Brookings Institution; and plotting to kidnap “leftist guerillas” at the 1972 Republican National Convention — a plan he outlined to the Nixon administration using terminology borrowed from the Nazis. (The murder, firebombing, and kidnapping plots were never carried out; the break-ins were.) During the 1990s, Liddy reportedly instructed his radio audience on multiple occasions on how to shoot Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents and also reportedly said he had named his shooting targets after Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Liddy has donated $5,000 to McCain's campaigns since 1998, including $1,000 in February 2008.
McCain has appeared on Liddy's radio show during the presidential campaign, including as recently as May.
Listen to McCain on Liddy's show on 11/10/07 http://tinyurl.com/4k8f28
Check out Liddy's many radio programs that strongly support McCain
http://www.radioamerica.org/POD_ggl.htm
in November McCain praised Liddy for his adherence “to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great,” Chapman reports.
http://tinyurl.com/3nyx6o
This is just a fantastic post — excellent description of how this sort of thinking works. And it's a nice touch to show how it functions on both sides. I hope this piece gets circulated widely.
Thanks!
About the Ayers, I thought that it was a simple case of the logical fallacy called “poisoning the well”.
Obama simply needs to disavor Ayers the way he rushed to disavow Wright.
How difficult is that?
If he won't do it, why not? _Really_?
“why not?_Really_?”
Maybe for the same reason many of your own comments aren't addressed, which is to say, not everything deserves to be dignified by a response.
DLS,
A lot of it has to do with who Ayers is now. I lived in Chicago and remember a controversy swirling around his wife, Bernadette Dohrn. Ayers and Dohrn were known in Chicago circles as education activists and professors. They were certainly more left than right, but few people had any idea that they were involved in the Weathermen. Then a group of conservative Northwestern alumni protested Dohrn's appointment to the NU School of Law. It was more of a curiosity than anything else since neither Dohrn nor Ayers had ever attacked any person during the 1960s and the Weathermen are not exactly the most potent organization in America today.
Even Richard Daley, not exactly a friend of 1960s radicals (his father beat the crap out of them in 1968) has said that Ayers is a fairly legit figure in Chicago educational circles.
In other words, what matters more than the mere association of Obama with Ayers is the nature and purpose of that association. If Obama had developed his political philosophy based on Ayers' Weathermen days, or was advised on political matters by Ayers (and not in the context of uncontroversial educational stuff but on 60s radicalism) then we'd have a problem.
Right now it's all several degrees of separation. Screaming his name isn't likely to sway anybody.
Clearly Elrod is more patient than I am.
Elrod is a _lot_ more patient and grown up, etc., than you routinely are, Spence. It is I who am quite patient with you, and extremely generous and forgiving… [sigh]
I believe Obama should just address the issue clearly and _soundly_ once and for all and it's then wiped from the board in this “end game” that already has begun before the debates have ended.
Also, Elrod, review that material to which I posted links elsewhere, from this week's Economist. McCain can beat Obama on some issues, but Obama beats McCain soundly on others, above and beyond the leftish bias among those consulted in the case of economists. (The favoring of Obama among them cannot possibly be all due to such bias. Impossible. Look at the graphs.) Never mind Biden vs. Palin (even a rural US resident and presumably conservative quoted by the Economist called Palin an idiot from Alaska); Obama's team is “deep” whereas who knows who McCain will bring aboard with him? I suspect that in November the Economist will endorse Obama rather than McCain. Obama's clearly leading as of now.
http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_Pres08…
[Continued divergence!]
http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_Pres08…
Why would you contrast two people not engaged in this election? Wouldn't you agree that the contrast should be about the candidates that are running? I think folks are missing the point here. If it is character of the candidates you're evaluating than it should be McCain vs Obama. Let me remind you that it was McCain and not Obama that has to explain the Keating 5 criminal case and his illegal and ethnically inappropriate influence he consistently offered Keating and his savings and loan that reminds me of current events. If not for the “Washington” influence of the “White House” during that trial McCain probably wouldn't have the opportunity to run for the “highest” and most “powerful” office in America, but instead could have shared a prison cell with his longtime friend, supporter, advisor Mr. Keating. I'm still amazed how after there was sufficient proof of a crime the court allowed McCain a “get out of jail” card. It just reminds me that there isn't “justice for all” if you have money and influence. I suggest you go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDofbll86dY and get the real facts.