331. Smart-heads, Dumb-heads, Fairness to Trump

Smart-heads, Dumb-heads, Fairness to Trump

Dumb-heads select out all the bad things from the mixed pile of actions and words of the human being who is on the side they call bad in politics.  They do the same with the good things in the pile of the human being who is on their side.  This is called (by me, for example, in Post 327) tribal distortion.  It signals tribal allegiance.

Smart-heads don't do that, and trust that the bad and the good will reveal themselves.  This distinguishes them from the dumb heads. When smart heads distort they lose their distinction and let the other side say, "See, you're just like us."

Mixed heads leading busy lives need quick, revelatory tests.  In editorializing about black incarceration rates there is this test:  Is the rate of black crime reported along with that rate?  No? Tribal distortion. In editorializing about Donald Trump's vulgarity there's this test: Are his words about the size of his hands (i.e., penis) reported along with Marco Rubio's words provoking the words?  No?  Tribal distortion.  Smart reporters and columnists writing for mixed-head newspapers will, if they fall into tribal distortion, be corrected by smarter editors.  Did the writer give the context, the provocation, and any qualifications and reservations?  Did Donald Trump invite the nation into his pants out of the blue?

In politics the enemy the smart need to watch out for is not the dumb but the clever.  The clever head that produced "General Betray Us" for the general who, by informed consensus, did the smartest thing in a dumb war, cost the smart heads on MoveOn.org all the credit they might have earned by their smartness.  "A tribe like the others.  Only full of show-off wit." 

Sometimes the only way an obvious dumb-head running for office can win is to gain the sympathy vote on top of his dumb-head vote.  This he can do if dumb and mixed heads see smart-heads being unfair to him, picking on him, making him look dumber than he really is.  So the dumbest thing a smart-head can do is be unfair to a real dumb-head who has a chance of winning an election and the smartest thing he can do is be scrupulously fair, squeaky fair, to that dumb-head. 

And that, we may notice, gives the mixed-head another test of tribalism.  If the response to efforts by a journalist to get the exact degree and direction of Trump's dumbheadedness is a charge of complicity ("What are you, soft on stupidity?") then they've got all the identification of a tribalist they need.  

Tribalists want allegiance.  When any tribe — racial, political, territorial, theological, esthetic — looks to the journalist like the tribe of the good, the tribe he (or she, always here) thinks he ought to belong to, then he is under pretty strong pressure, internal pressure, to signal his allegiance. "I'm with you, fighters for the good."  Add this to the pressure from outside and you can see how much credit the journalist who resists it deserves. It takes a lot of courage to stick to smarts when goodness is tempting.  

Donald Trump.  Was there ever a public figure who offered  a more tempting opportunity to show allegiance to, and superiority within, the tribe of the smart, the clever, and the good?

So all hail the tribe of those who resist that temptation, the tribe of the courageously smart.  And how do we know the membership?  Is there a signal?  Yes, in the way they present the dumb.  Are we getting the exact degree of stupidity exhibited?  If so, our writer is of the tribe of brave smart-heads.