The steaks are high!
My weird dream
Back in 2001 when I was trying to make a scary decision about leaving my marriage, I had a weird dream. [Note: I’m not much of a meat eater.]
I walk into a butcher shop to buy steaks for dinner. I look in the case and see pork chops, lamb chops, sausages, rib roasts, but no steaks. So I ask the butcher if he’s got any. He points to the top of the floor to ceiling shelves behind him, “Ah,” he says. “The steaks are high.”
I relate this to a good friend who is into dreamwork, and she bursts out laughing. “It’s a pun, Joy. Stakes! not ‘steaks.’ It’s a high stakes decision—to leave a cushy life for you don’t know what.”
This election season has me feeling that same kind of high stakes tension. Except I’ve already decided how I’m going to vote; it’s everyone else I worry about. And I worry about tonight’s debate. Not how Harris will do (she’ll go high and play it straight) or how Trump will do (he’ll go low, make shit up and do the “gish gallop”)*.
My worry is how the press will describe it tomorrow, because many people believe the headlines. Thus far, and once again, the major media treat it like it’s a race between two normal candidates: the Democrat stands for X__, and the Republican stands for Y___. However, in this case, the Democrat is sane, and the Republican is fucking bonkers and only stands for himself (desperate to keep his ass out of prison).
Sane-washing is what happens when journalists try to make Trump’s ramblings more coherent than they actually are.
It’s a human trait to take in a stream of information or experience and make a coherent story of it by dropping out parts that don’t fit a rational understanding, while making up others to fill in the gaps. Consider what happens when you immerse yourself in a gripping novel. The author has given you just enough information for you to create their world in your own mind. But then you see the movie, and it’s nothing like what you imagined.
Sane-washing explained. Yesterday morning I was listening to Here and Now, a news program from WBUR in Boston and almost drove off the road with excitement when this piece came on. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic explained sane-washing, and Lisa Mullins, the interviewer played two long excerpts of recent Trump rants. IT IS A MUST LISTEN!
Unequal demands for policy details. The press clamors for Harris to explain how much her child care plan will cost, but whiffs when Trump gives a whacko answer about tariffs. Goldberg gives some examples of what responsible coverage would be when Trump spoke at Moms for Liberty (the book banner ladies) about schools performing sex-change operations. WTF!
*The 𝐆𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐩 is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. (Wikipedia)
During a Gish Gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate.
Each point raised by the Gish Galloper takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place, which is known as 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐢'𝐬 𝐥𝐚𝐰. The technique wastes an opponent's time and even casts doubt on the opponent's debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique.
𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐢'𝐬 𝐥𝐚𝐰, also known as the "bullshit asymmetry principle," is an adage coined in 2013 by Alberto Brandolini that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The law states:
"𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑡𝑒 𝑏𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑒 𝑖𝑡."
So watch for it tonight, and then check out the news headlines tomorrow. If you see coverage that doesn’t match your experience, let the media know. The stakes could not be higher.
PUT YOURSELF IN THE WAY OF BEAUTY
Since I’m into weird right now, how about this crazy plant I saw on my walk yesterday. I looked it up. It’s an Australian Anigozanthos viridis, or Green Kangaroo Paw:
