Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday. Last night I dreamt that there were two ligers walking through my backyard, a liger being the offspring of a
male lion and a female tiger. This struck me as pretty unusual and conceivably
impossible so I began to investigate the situation within my dream. I considered for instance that there is often wildlife in my backyard: deer, coyotes,
foxes, one time I saw a beaver. It did seem unlikely that there would be two ligers given their rarity, but I reassured myself that they
were probably brother and sister. Also ligers are not, uh, native to
Indianapolis, so they had probably escaped captivity, and if you were an escaped liger in central Indiana my
backyard is one of the places you might seek out because it is wooded and contains lots of potential food
mostly in the form of four million
chipmunks. All in all it seemed perfectly possible to me that sibling ligers had escaped their cages to dine in my backyard.
The problem, of course, is that my
investigation of the liger situation began with the conclusion: there are ligers in my backyard. And then I worked my way back
to the story of how they came to be there, rather than
pausing to consider that the ligers I thought I saw might have been, for instance, deer, or that I might have been, say,
dreaming. My friend Amy Cross Rosenthal once said correctly that nothing is less interesting than other people's dreams, and I apologize for
Introducing you to my subconscious, but I mention all of this because it seems to me that the liger
delusion is at the heart of a lot of contemporary discourse, especially around politics. You start with what you already know to be
incontrovertibly true: that
Republicans are crooks who only want to line the pockets of their wealthy donors or that Democrats are crooks who want the government to control
every aspect
of human life, and then you look
for the how and why. I mean these days it can be difficult to even know when you believe in a conspiracy theory, in part
because conspiracy theories are sometimes true, and in part because, no matter the subject, the closer you look, the
more you see. Put another way, the more you consider ligers might be roaming Indianapolis, the more
explanations you'll find for why.
Take for instance the following
conspiracy theory, which may of course prove to be true. Republican donor Elliot Broidy paid a woman over a million dollars not to discuss their
alleged affair that's known but the conspiracy theory holds that the actual affair was between that woman and Donald Trump and then Broidy stepped in
to cover up that affair and make
the payment. Now if you look for
explanations of why Broidy might have done this, you will find them. Broidy has profited tremendously from the Trump presidency.
He also has a history of covering up affairs for, his friends and no-
Stop because none of that means he covered up an affair for Trump. Of course the same happens on the right where conspiracy theories from
Benghazi
to pizza gate are presumed true by many but my worry is that many of us are falling into the trap of believing that we,
however we define that we, are the ones alive to the real reality while those who disagree with us are mere sheeple, a term that
literally
dehumanizes others. You see this all the time with people saying "wake up" or "keep
dreaming" as if only those we disagree with can fall prey to the liger
delusion. What I have found while looking for ligers is this: I am far more likely
to believe in allegation to be true or to be important if it confirms my pre-existing
worldview, and if it would challenge my worldview I am likely
to believe it to be false or else
irrelevant. Sometimes on tv news or political radio or
podcasts you'll hear the phrase, "we don't yet know all the facts, but" and then after the 'but' comes some
speculation or a statement of
implication. Like, we don't yet know all the facts but someone saw two ligers in the backyard, we know that. Hank I have to stop
beginning with the conclusion, I have to stop speculating
ahead of the story and instead wait for the facts to come out, and I have to stop saying 'but'
after 'we don't yet know all the facts'
But I don't know how. This is the part of the video where I turn it around and find reasons to be hopeful and make
a call to action
But I don't know how. I do think being aware of our conspiratorial
instincts can be helpful, but I don't know how to escape the liger delusion. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.