Occam's Razor

I went to bed January 20th having largely succeeded in tuning out Donald Trump’s inauguration. Mission accomplished, at least in preserving my sanity that day. Instead I read brief snippets of online news summaries and went to my comfort zone. My comfort zone is to watch Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings on DVD, but I felt increasingly uneasy every time I saw Sauron’s eye of fire.

“Who knows what you have spoken to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all your life seems to shrink, the walls of your bower closing in about you, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?” spake Grima Wormtongue (Brad Dourif) to the lovely Lady Eowyn in The Two Towers which I watched that night. Around 4 a.m. I awoke to distant rumbling sounds that I could not place. In my fevered imagination it was the sound of nuclear weapons exploding and heading my way. Fortunately not even President Trump could act so rashly so quickly. My fears slowly faded, but I staggered through most of Saturday wondering if I was just unusually prescient. Time will tell.

Our newest president had bigger fish to fry on Saturday, mainly solving his huge case of cognitive dissonance. He had the biggest inauguration ever, the best! It was hugely huge but as usual the media were brazenly lying about it. Those must have been doctored photos of the Mall showing underwhelming crowds. Those many empty bleachers along Pennsylvania Avenue, must have been taken some time long before or after the parade:

Trump’s memories were completely different. After all he saw thousands of Muslims cheering as the Twin Towers went down on 9/11. On Saturday when up to a million protestors swarmed the Mall to protest Trump’s agenda, Trump sent out his newly minted press secretary Sean Spicer into the pressroom to tell the media they were lying about the crowd size at the inauguration. Sunday saw Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway telling NBC’s Chuck Todd that Spicer was presenting “alternative facts”, an opening oxymoron from an administration sure to be full of them. Monday found our new president fuming that he won the popular vote somehow because of three to 5 million votes that illegals cast for Hillary got counted, for which of course there is zero evidence.

Thankfully, at least at that moment, the press wasn’t having any of it. The media was rife with reports that this new administration was spewing lies. This of course only got Trump’s dander up more, which may explain why he wants to limit press briefings only to media friendly to him, as well as move the pressroom to the Old Executive Office Building. It’s much easier to believe in alternative facts when the press can’t confront you so easily.

This sure is plenty embarrassing, and it is likely to stay this way for the next four years, not to mention childish in the extreme. This is what happens when you put the crazies in charge, and when you populate your administration with “reporters” from Brietbart.com, that’s what you get. No fact that doesn’t agree with their prejudices needs to be considered. You simply change the facts instead or invent new “facts” that are in fact not even facts. Problem solved!

Except of course this is totally crazy. Imagine going to the dentist to complain about a tooth pain and they decide to amputate a toe instead. That’s his “fact”. It won’t do anything to solve your tooth pain except maybe put you in such agony that you forget about it for a while. But, hey, it fits the narrative! That’s what counts.

I doubt our enemies will be so anti-fact based. Instead they will take action based on observed reality. When the administration takes action based on false information, the results are unlikely to be effective. But perhaps to Trump is doesn’t matter. No failure no matter how objectively provable matters. You just invent some alternative facts. Your supporters will follow like sheep … until possibly they hit that point where actual reality intercedes with these alternative facts and it causes them huge personal pain, such as when they lose their Obamacare for Trump’s new non-existent health plan. Then maybe they will wake the hell up.

Women were certainly awake on Saturday, protesting in the millions nationwide and across the world. As they plot a political comeback, don’t expect them to follow our foolish president. Expect them to use facts and a provable strategy to wrest political power from our anti-fact-based oligarchy and back to the people.