Monday, May 02, 2016

The ignorance of certainty

I remember reading a book years ago called "The Ignorance of Certainty," written by Ashley and Edward Darling Montagu. I was pretty young when I read it -- it's been at least 35 years -- and the book is not readily available anymore, but the notion behind the book was simple -- our certainty about a given topic is inversely proportional to our knowledge.

The more I've watched this campaign season, the more I'm convinced I don't understand a thing about it. I had thought (hoped, really) that the Wisconsin primary was a moment of clarity and that people had finally figured out what I was certain I knew to be true, especially where Donald Trump was concerned. Turns out the moment was an outlier -- ever since that moment of triumph for Ted Cruz, Trump's campaign has gained strength and now seems poised to roll to a decisive victory in Indiana, a state I expected was a good place for Cruz to win.

We have great unhappiness in the land. We have a orange-faced bloviator who bids fair to Make America Great Again, although without concrete suggestions concerning how one would go about the task. And we have a dismal, eat-your-spinach candidate emerging on the Left whose corruption is known but rarely acknowledged in polite society, a distaff Bob Dole wearing oddly metallic caftan pant suits. These are our choices.

How the hell did this happen?

2 comments:

Brian said...

Long, but worth your time:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html

Mr. D said...

Brian,

That looks good. I'll have to pack a lunch and dig into it.