An Elegy for Reasoning

JD Vance, among an astonishing number of spewings that could keep clown cars fueled for the foreseeable future, said something of incredible value the other day. Or at least of incredible value to Life in the Boomer Lane. With that caveat, she will continue.

When challenged by CNN’s Dana Bash about his repeated declaration of Haitians in Ohio eating neighbors’ pets (and now geese from public ponds), in spite of all hard evidence to the contrary, and in spite of the terrible fallout on the community as a result of his and Trump’s words, he doubled down on the assertion and explained to the journalist that his first priority was to listen to his constiuents. After all, he serves the people. So listen to the people, believe what they say and act accordingly.

Sounds good, right? Especially in this much-lauded beacon of democracy. Freedom of speech and all that. We vote, we march, we express opinions, we can say whatever the hell we want about Haitians. The list of our rights would wallpaper the entire White House. We look at all the slobs around the world who have no rights at all and we thumb our noses at them.

But LBL already knows that asking actual humans their opinion about vrtually anything will result in a loaded answer comprised of personal experience, unconcious bias, what they read on social media, and the personal experience of their gastroenterologist’s receptionist’s neighbor’s daughter’s-in-law. All sources are subject to further review.

Those of us who pride ourselves in being a bit more objective in forming our opinions, fall prey to the same pitfalls. Everyday, LBL’s inbox is filled with hundreds of emails with blaring headlines telling her that whichever Democratic candidate needs money is either AHEAD AHEAD AHEAD in the polls or BEHIND BEHIND BEHIND in the polls and, for that reason, needs LBL’s donation immediately to either stay that way or reverse the evil that is befalling them. Often, it’s the same candidate who is either ahead or behind. There are also assorted headlines involving high profile politicos (usually Liz Cheney or Rachel Maddow) dropping the hammer, but tool mishaps aren’t the subject of this post, so LBL will move on.

We are confronted with a minute-by-minute barrage of information that is so voluminous and so slanted and so never-ever-ending, that it’s mighty tough to have any objective opinion. In the case of Haitians eating pets, I, personally would ask Vance to go to Ohio and get the sworn statement of one human that some Haitian ate his pet. This would be accompanied by photos of said human and said pet before, and, if possible after, the consumption. Said loser of pet would know that a false statement would result in immediate imprisonment.

LBL would also have a requirement that anytime a politician says “I have heard” (that Walz is trans) or “People are saying” (that assault weapons are simply cooler-looking guns) or “Everyone knows” (that women really don’t want abortion to be legal) that it be accompanied by the name of the actual human that is being referred to and where that person got their information. The same would go for social media posts. For example, if someone posts “Pet-Eating Haitians now acknowledge that Trump won by a landslide in 2020,” the writer would have to name the actual source the information came from. No source, no post.

OK, so that won’t ever happen. But a girl can dream, right? One more thing. LBL read “Hillbilly Elegy,” way back when the book first came out and Vance was simply a Regular Guy who had a great idea for a book. At first, she was completly taken with the book, for a number of reasons, one of which being that it totally explained why Ohio is such a strange state, politically. But, by the halfway point, she saw that the book was either, by accident (seeing his own family through the veil of love, rather than objectivity) or design, taking a group of people (those of the hills and hollars) and setting them up as the persecuted, noble icons of this country. Sorry, JD. This book aint no “Grapes of Wrath.” I stopped reading, not because I totally disagreed with it or even disliked it, but because I felt like I was getting the same message over and over and over. It was simply starting to bore me.

Thanks, JD. I needed this reminder that humans, even Yale-educated ones, are subject to the same flawed reasoning as the rest of us. But we aren’t running for national office.