The Antidote for the Anecdote

In the 1950’s and 60’s Dragnet, a television series of two Los Angeles police officers Bill Gannon and Joe Friday, had the eye of the nation. The deadpan delivery of the actors (Harry Morgan, and Jack Webb) seemed odd, yet the standards in the show reflected the heart of the nation’s scruples. Not interested in the emotional rantings of the citizenry, the two detectives were champions of deciphering the truth in their daily investigations by separating the logical from the extraneous noise in the stories they were being told. Their modus operandi was summed up by Friday’s repetitive admonition “Just the facts” request.

First let us be clear; like the strait forward Gannon and Friday of decades past, your personal story of those incidents that you have seen do not constitute proof of anything. The surging insta-poll results-driven society has been constructed over the past three decades. The desire to project small meaning from snapshots of particular occurrences upon the whole of society is not only laughable, but in a sense revealing and ultimately tragic. Evidence requires data presented in a limited specific scope supporting the facts. You can’t just say a table stood with only three legs, you have to produce it to prove it. Stories don’t cut it. As such, statistics while susceptible to interpretation are much more factual than emotion filled rhetoric.

Even more disturbing than such “projectionists of delusion” are politicians and the general public who indulge in linguistic imprecision. They generally have no clue as to how to correctly present an honest opinion and lack the capacity or scruples to back it up with fact. Many develop arguments without factual anchors as part of their normal presentation. Obfuscation and parsing of words to skirt responsibility for their own statements has become the order of the day. Worse than this is that the double-speak is more than just in their speech; it has seeped in their thought processes like a creeping virus.

Listen to the public discourse in many insignificant topics for instance and you will usually hear two distinct opposing points of view. Yet on both sides of an issue you hear sweeping generalities, historical rewrites, half-truths and downright falsehoods. It makes the average person pause to ponder why we no longer are a nation of thinkers. We are a nation of sheep. We have two political parties who have locked out most other voices. This weakens further checks and balances in that the majority party often runs roughshod over the minority party. Nevertheless, these two opposing political brain trusts spew forth their self interested agendas and then venomously attack their opponents as if it were part of the argument. This technique is used often by children and the less than honest as an illusion. Casting doubt on your opponent is slight of hand perpetrated to keep eyes off of the weakness of your actual position on a topic.

Hence, the rise in story telling has become fact as people choose camps and fall in lock step with political non-thought because of historic party loyalty. What does a man gain if he sacrifices truth for his own image when it costs him his soul? Few in the public any longer know how to listen to a person’s argument and dissect it to determine properly what is being said. Therefore misconception, partial stories, and unsubstantiated claims are allowed to stand as fact instead of being exposed for the flaws that riddle them. Weak thinkers use anecdotes as badges to prove their preconceived notions. In the past we’ve called that bigotry and prejudice. Today it is just as ugly as it was then. Society must demand a fine detail oriented discourse of logical, unemotional communication, steeped in pure facts. It is the only way to solve what ails it. Please, just the facts ma’am; just the facts.

First the Sucking Next the Flushing!


In the 1992 Presidential campaign candidate Ross Perot said that if the North American Free Trade (NAFTA) pact was passed into law that the country would “hear a giant sucking sound” of manufacturing and jobs from this country being diverted outside of our borders. That down the drain noise has been loud and clear over the past 15 years and has left us with nary a peep on it. The deafening silence is the result of the “Washington knows better’” crowd that permeates the halls of Congress and the White House. If you think the sucking is over well you ain’t seen nothin’yet!

Mr. Perot’s qualifications as a successful businessman assisted in his rise, and the creation of a viable third political party (the Freedom Party) for a while. Many folks saw, and began to believe that the people actually do have a voice in the political process. Unfortunately for the country, Mr. Perot was really only interested in a voice for himself in the process, and not actually winning the Presidency. Why else would a self made multimillionaire even consider squabbling with the likes of George Bush Sr. and upstart Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in 1992? He was ticked off at the Bush family reportedly because the administration wouldn’t get on the stick to help his cause of tracking and returning remains of Viet Nam veterans from that country. We’ll probably never know the truth on what gave Mr. Perot the desire to undermine President George Herbert Walker Bush’s Presidency; however for the record it was effective in getting Governor Clinton elected to the Presidency.

The same type of folks who did not listen to Mr. Perot in 1992 are not listening now on the country’s demand regarding immigration. The sound you are about to hear is not a giant sucking one, but a giant flushing one. That commode is in Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and any number of other places including the Middle East which is about to flush more unwanted people into this country. How’s that? Of the estimated 12 million illegal aliens already in this country was recently proposed and killed in the Senate would have allowed and encouraged family members of those illigal individuals in to the country in short order. Given the average household of lets say 4 people per family we might expect to see an influx of another 36 million aliens in short order (spouse and children to join illegal in this country already). The bills defeat in no way guarentees it will not raise its ugly specter again. In the mean-time we are at status quo; the same condition of the past two decades that has allowed the illigal population to swell to its present state.

The debate has gotten us this: if you break the law long enough we’ll consider letting you stay in this country. You can have services and some benefits natural born citizens enjoy, and even some they don’t. When was the last time you were allowed to break the law, avoid the judicial system, and pay a minor fine? When was the last time that you broke the law and the police didn’t bother to find you? As a citizen, arrest for our crimes more often than not costs more than a few thousand dollars. Never is there any reward attached to it. However, if you are an illegal alien and you have been under the radar long enough you might win your citizenship. Maybe this is why they say no country on earth is like the United States. Perhaps we should find out Mr. Perot’s views on the subject. He has been correct in the past regarding international trade. So as we trade our dollars in revenue and resources in exchange for another 40 million people we might want to ask what sound he hears coming over the next decade or two. Such an influx flushed onto our shores would like NAFTA change the face of this nation and might create a sucking sound of a cultural nature.