When Facts Don't Matter

Mark Danner has an essay in the upcoming New York Review of Books, (available widely online already, as such things seem to be these days) about "How Bush Really Won":        

"Despite all the talk about 'moral values,'" says Danner, "the 2004 election turned on a fulcrum of fear." The Bush campaign was "disciplined, organized, relentless." Its vision was "clear and absolutely simple to understand." That it was not based on fact was of no importance, because "the facts did not matter -- not necessarily because [Bush supporters] were ignorant of them, though some certainly were, but because the President was offering in their place a worldview that was whole, complete, comprehensible, and thus impermeable to statements of fact that clearly contradicted it. [Bush supporters] faced a stark choice: either discard the facts, or give up the clear and comforting worldview that they contradicted. They chose to disregard the facts."

What happens to nations in which the facts no longer matter? What happens when giving people the facts, when telling the truth, makes no difference? What should truth-tellers do when the truth sets no one free?


I've been reading about optimists and pessimists lately. Optimists and pessimists have different ways of explaining events. Optimists see good things as permanent and pervasive, and tend to give themselves credit for them. They see bad things as temporary, limited in scope, and not their fault. Pessimists see things the opposite way. They blame themselves for bad events and credit luck for good ones; they believe the bad is more permanent than the good; and they think bad things are more pervasive than good things.

Optimists live longer and are happier people. Pessimists are depressed and anxious. But studies have also shown that pessimists have a much better grasp on reality than optimists do. Sure, sometimes they go overboard: blaming themselves for things for which they are not responsible, forgetting that most things, both good and bad, are temporary, and sometimes failing to keep bad things in perspective. But overall, pessimists are in greater touch with the facts.

Depressives are depressed in part because they are pessimists. We share this with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, who rarely had anything good to say about the world they lived in. The research shows that we would be happier and healthier if we were not quite so aware of the facts, if we could discard the facts for a "clear and comforting worldview." And yet doing so is, for me, a rare temptation. The truth-telling that comes from depressive realism allows me to wrest some meaning from my illness, and it has become part of my identity. But if I did not so insistently, so feelingly see the facts, I would likely not be so depressed.


Why do I talk about my depression so much here? Because I think it has everything to do with politics today. The facts are frightening; the facts are horrifying; the facts are bad for your health.

The Bushists won because the facts, for many people, are too difficult to bear. And it is not just Bush supporters who are ignoring the facts now. Since November, I have seen an increasing number of Democrats retreat into the safety of illusions. They believe that the right to an abortion is not really in danger. They are sure that a backlash against Bush is coming, and that the moderates in the Republican party will revolt and save us from further destruction. They are hopeful that Bush is leaning toward a more inclusive foreign policy, that the next four years will be better than the last. Before the election, they believed that if Bush won, things would get very bad indeed. Now that he has, they have retreated. Things will be okay, they say. It's just another four years. They wouldn't really do that. The people won't let them. They don't have the mandate. Things will only get really bad if we have a financial crisis, or another major attack. And that probably won't happen. It's not so bad now.

This is unwarranted optimism, my friends. Today, right now, our nation tortures as a matter of policy. Today, people making the minimum wage cannot afford to live. Today the gap between rich and poor is growing, and the environmental regulations are weakening, and our soldiers are dying. Some 48% of those who voted did so for Kerry, but most of them also live in a world where most of the facts do not matter. Most of these people are not mobilized to fight creeping fascism; they have turned their eyes away from it.

If we are to overcome the Bushites, we must make reality more bearable for these people. If they cannot see it, they will not mobilize to change it. I don't know how to do this, since I can sometimes hardly bear reality myself. But I feel there are answers here somewhere -- some hopeful alternative to blind optimism, some spoonful of sugar that can make the medicine of reality go down, so that we may change it, and not, to steal Mr. Bush's words, "drift toward tragedy."