UNKNOWNS: The things we know and the things we don't!

MONDAY, MAY 13, 2024

The world's most basic distinction: As we type, the numbers from the swing states may be going from bad to worse.

In this gloomy, brand-new report, the New York Times / Siena survey has Candidate Trump ahead of Candidate Biden is five of six such states. In four of those states, it doesn't seem to be especially close. 

The new survey has Trump ahead by seven points in Michigan and Arizona. It has Trump ahead by ten in Georgia, ahead by twelve in Nevada.

Such surveys can turn out be "wrong." But as the numbers seem to suggest that one of the two unelectable candidates may be even less electable than the other, Blue America's journalists continue to focus on the ongoing trial in New York.

The reason for that could be obvious. At any rate:

By the end of last week, we were especially struck by the way Blue America's high-end journalists responded to the two days of testimony offered by Stormy Daniels.

Right from the start, it has seemed to us that the New York Times has gone heavily tabloid in its front-page news reporting of the ongoing trial. 

Last Friday, Bromwich and Protess offered a front-page news report after the second day of Daniels' testimony. It seemed to us that they were editorializing—writing a colorful opinion column—right from the start.

Headline included, their news report started as shown:

Stormy Daniels, Echoing Trump’s Style, Pushes Back at Lawyer’s Attacks

Donald J. Trump, the onetime president, and Stormy Daniels, the longtime porn star, despise one another. But when Ms. Daniels returned to the witness stand at Mr. Trump’s criminal trial on Thursday, his lawyers made them sound a lot alike.

He wrote more than a dozen self-aggrandizing books; she wrote a tell-all memoir. He mocked her appearance on social media; she fired back with a scatological insult. He peddled a $59.99 Bible; she hawked a $40 “Stormy, saint of indictments” candle, that carried her image draped in a Christ-like robe.

During Thursday’s grueling cross-examination, Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to discredit Ms. Daniels as a money-grubbing extortionist who used a passing proximity to Mr. Trump to attain fame and riches. But the more the defense assailed her self-promoting merchandise and online screeds, the more Ms. Daniels resembled the man she was testifying against: a master of marketing, a savant of social-media scorn. 

“Not unlike Mr. Trump,” she said on the stand, though unlike him, she did it without the power and platform of the presidency. 

Alleged news reporters, please!

The accuser seemed just like the accused! Bromwich and Protess waste no time inserting their colorful assessment into their front-page report.

As far as their tabloidism went, it seemed to us that they went out of their way, as their report continued, to return to the "porn star" appellation which they had bestowed on the witness. In their second of three returns to the theme—that makes four such designations in all—the reporters offered this:

In lurid detail—so much so that the judge scolded her Tuesday—Ms. Daniels painted the scene. She told jurors about Mr. Trump’s underwear, the sexual position they assumed and his flirtatious chitchat likening her to his daughter: “She is smart and blond and beautiful, and people underestimate her as well.”

But the testimony, while striking, was something of a sideshow to the trial’s main event. There is nothing illegal about a married man having sex with a porn star, nor is it inherently criminal to pay a person for silence.

Interesting! Is there something illegal about a married man (allegedly) having sex with a woman who isn't a porn star? 

If Donald J. Trump had sex with an accountant who wasn't his wife, would that have been illegal? The reader was left to figure that out on his own.

In Friday's report, the boys seemed to love that "porn star" formulation. The Washington Post has perhaps been a bit more dignified in its reporting of this trial. 

In its news reporting, the Post has referred to Daniels as "an adult film star" throughout. It has seemed to us that the New York Times has gone out of its way to stress the tabloid—and the "lurid"—in the somewhat lurid way it has approached the trial.

In fairness, that instant judgment—the judgment that Stormy Daniels is a lot like Trump—tended to favor the accused rather than the accuser. In that sense, the reporters were cutting against Blue American grain in their somewhat undisciplined way they opened their news report.

Elsewhere, we were struck by a different type of journalistic reaction. At issue was the world's most basic journalistic distinction—the distinction between the things a journalist can sensibly say she knows, as opposed to the various things she has merely imagined or heard.

It's the world's most basic distinction! The distinction is so basic that it was even known to the ancients.

Indeed, early in the western world's first great poem of war, the distinction is clearly expressed. In a standard plea for assistance, the poet asks a group of goddesses to help us out because they alone know all things:

Sing to me now, you Muses who hold the halls of Olympus
You are goddesses, you are everywhere, you know all things—
all we hear is the distant ring of glory, we know nothing—
who were the captains of Achaea? Who were the kings?
The mass of troops I could never tally, never name,
not even if I had ten tongues and ten mouths,
a tireless voice and the heart inside me bronze,
never unless you Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus
whose shield is rolling thunder, sing, sing in memory
all who gathered under Troy. 

That's right there, at the start of the poem's Book Two. The gods on Olympus know all things. We mortals just plain don't.

We humans know nothing, the poem says. By way of contrast, the Muses who hold the halls of Olympus—those goddesses know all things.

Even the ancients understood the basic distinction—the distinction between actual knowledge and its many imitators. In its modern journalistic formulation, the distinction might look like this:

The world's most basic distinction: 

Things a journalist can sensibly say she knows.
Things a journalist has only heard someone claim.

Things a journalist can sensibly say she knows.
Claims which certainly could be true, but which could perhaps be false.

We're speaking here of things which are known to be true, as opposed to things which someone has merely claimed, or as opposed to possibilities which have merely popped into our heads. 

You'd think a major modern journalist would be well aware of this extremely basic distinction. The ancients understood the difference. Remarkably, it routinely seems that we moderns basically don't—or at least, that our journalists don't.

Secretary Rumsfeld said it best, back at a simpler time. He's famous for the slightly jumbled way he outlined the state of play.

He divided the world into knows and unknowns, then added a bit of a wrinkle:

RUMSFELD (2/12/02): Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. 

But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.

Keeping it simple, there are various things we can be said to know—and there are quite a few things we don't. In the aftermath of Daniels' testimony, a wide array of Blue America's major thought leaders seemed to be taking a set of unknowns and acting as if they were knowns.

Even in the late Bronze Age, the ancients knew that there were things they didn't and couldn't know. Again and again, then again and again, it routinely seems that our modern thought leaders don't recognize the difference.

How did it ever get this far? It's the world's most basic distinction.

They keep mistaking unknowns for knowns! We'll explore Blue America's high-end performance all through the course of the week.

Tomorrow: Daniels was "telling her truth"