While there’s nothing wrong with indulging in a little fantasy, political prognostication is supposed to be more than mental masturbation, and the same as a sane person wouldn’t consider retirement scenarios that included suddenly being as wealthy as Elon Musk, we shouldn’t consider fantastical outcomes as a basis for rational discussion.
Tony Soprano once claimed that “remember when” was the lowest form of conversation. At the time, he was reacting to Paulie “Walnuts” Gautlieri and other members of his crew reminiscing over dinner, elevating the past into the sort of nostalgic sentimentality we can all find ourselves prone to. Much as we like to believe we live in the present, preparing for the future, remembering the past with what William Shakespeare referred to as “advantages” in Henry V, what we call “rose-colored glasses” today takes up a significant amount of the average person’s time and energy for obvious reasons, I would argue. Contrary to the conventional notion that the past is a fixed entity that cannot be changed compared to the tenuous present and an uncertain future, our minds are prone to rewrite and reorganize our memories in ways that make us feel better about ourselves and our place in the world. Thus, many of us, or at least those who have not suffered some horrible trauma, tend to remember the good times as better than they were while downplaying or downright forgetting the bad, happy to take the opportunity to live a moment all over again rather than face the future. Beyond a sense of comfort reflecting on what you can control in retrospect, there’s an escape from a present which is frequently less than ideal. Whatever we might say about wanting to live in the moment, the moments we find ourselves in – even the good ones – are rarely perfect, either from a failure to match our expectations, some nagging doubt in our minds we simply can’t shake, an unexpected inconvenience, or other issue. The past, however, can be whatever we want when we relive it, safe, comfortable, and entirely under our control. Though Tony rails against it, he certainly isn’t immune and throughout the series spends more than his fair share of time talking about the old times, the “glory days” as Springsteen had it, frequently insisting that the past is somehow better than the present.
In many ways, politics is no different. Years later, we tend to remember the accomplishments of the Presidents we preferred, rather than their failures, leading to the belief that we once lived in world of giants now diminished the same way Tony Soprano idolized mob bosses from an earlier era, but there is also the opposite phenomena, one I would suggest is far worse or at least far more nauseating. That is the positing of some future scenario based on “if something is true” or “if something happens.” You’ve probably seen what passes for arguments of this type either on social media or in the actual news. Someone reports something that might or might not be verified, and though it has barely the whiff of truth, someone else claims, “if this is true, it’s the most awful thing ever,” or someone posits some scenario, however outlandish or unlikely, and then claims “if this happens, we are totally screwed” in some horrible fashion. Both attempt to achieve credibility by building on a logical formulation familiar to anyone who has done even a little computer programming, the “if-then” statement, as in “if this occurs, then do that,” but the similarities bare little resemblance in the real world, much less in the political one where it dreadfully abused. In the case of a line of computer code, the software is checking for a condition that might have actually occurred within the confines of the program, that is an output that is possible if not probable, then executing a function based on that condition. In the case of political prognostication, the “if” part of the statement need not be either possible or probable. It could be – and undoubtedly is in many cases – either completely false or extremely unlikely, meaning that anything which comes after it would be false as well, rendering the entire statement meaningless. Perhaps needless to say in a polarized country, either incarnation of the “if” formation is frequently used as a partisan attack, a way to make the worst possible scenario appear plausible by making it dependent on a false scenario to begin with. It also has the benefit of never technically being wrong – those who use the rhetorical trick, can always insist they were “just asking questions” or they couldn’t possibly have known the dependent fact or supposition would prove to be false, and they were merely “speculating” based on a report or a prediction.
Of course, speculation in general is also a frequent human pastime. Sometimes, we all ponder what life would be like in a wide range of different circumstances. What would we do if we won the lottery? What would it feel like if we were a movie star or a rock star? What if I took that job instead of another? What if we lived there instead of here, or grew up in some other town? While there’s nothing wrong with indulging in a little fantasy, political prognostication is supposed to be more than mental masturbation, and the same as a sane person wouldn’t consider retirement scenarios that included everything from being as suddenly wealthy as Elon Musk to landing in a poor house, we shouldn’t consider fantastical outcomes as a basis for rational discussion. Instead, the reasonable among us would plan around much more reasonable extremes, based on what you have saved right now, what you can conceivably save between now and retirement, and some probable variations upon the rate of return. Similarly, if you are shopping for a new house or a new car, you might select from a range that includes options priced between a little cheaper and a little higher than your optimal price, but if you are in the market for a Toyota Highlander, you aren’t going to be cross shopping it against a Lamborghini Urus. Of course, you are free to approach these and other major life decisions however you like, but I think most of us understand that pondering “ifs” in the real world is only useful when the “ifs” in question are within the realm of reasonable, otherwise it is merely fantasizing.
Sadly, political prognostication appears to be more fantasy than reality at this point, as influencers and commentators spin wilder and wilder scenarios. What if oil hits $200 per gallon, they asked when it was about half that price and the idea that it could double was predicated on the oil infrastructure across the entire Middle East, a region only slightly smaller than the entire United States including Alaska, suddenly being inoperable for several years. They assumed this despite there being no known mechanism to do so short of thousands of regular missiles or hundreds of nuclear ones, and in my opinion at least, purely because the outcome – which would be unimaginably awful for the record – would reflect negatively on President Donald Trump, given that he initiated the war in Iran and is therefore responsible for the recent spike in oil prices. If you doubt that the purpose was to sow chaos predicated on a near impossible outcome, consider why these same prognosticators didn’t examine real world scenarios when oil prices were even higher than they are now in recent memory. If you want to use the past to consider the future, oil prices were as high or higher than they are now in both 2008 and 2022, meaning we have actual data on the impact on prices and the overall economy, but rather than consider potential outcomes based on the historical record, they considered potential outcomes based on something that had never happened and wasn’t even clear could ever happen. The reality of the underlying supposition wasn’t the point. It didn’t matter if no one believed it would happen, all that mattered was that it produced a scary headline which could be used to malign the President. Further, there was the benefit of the statement being completely unfalsifiable. If you pointed out the obvious reality that there was essentially a zero chance of a cataclysm on the scale required to double oil prices happening in the real world, those making the claim can hide behind the fact that they aren’t saying oil prices will hit $200 per gallon, they are just wondering what would happen if they did.
At times, this sort of prognostication doesn’t even include the “if” construction. Instead, it’s implied. Consider this post from Gabe Fleischer, author of WakeUp2Politics, an online publication with almost 60,000 subscribers. In the lead up to the high stakes negotiations between the United States and Iran on Saturday, those which failed to produce a deal at this point, he responded to a social media post from the Iranian Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who claimed “Two of the measures mutually agreed upon between the parties have yet to be implemented: a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets prior to the commencement of negotiations. These two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin.” From this, Mr. Fleischer opined, “This could just be bluster but notable that (at least rhetorically) Iran is willing to hold up negotiations over what it sees as violations of the ceasefire, but US isn’t willing to do the same (over Hormuz still being largely closed). Potential hint of who wants talks more.” Incredibly, he admitted that the statement he was responding to could simply be posturing and should therefore not be taken seriously, then claimed it’s “notable” even as he adds another qualifier that the notability is as rhetoric, not reality only to conclude that it’s a “potential” hint of something that is rather self evident to begin with, assuming it is relevant at all. Despite the recent rewriting of history, President Trump has been maintaining for more than two weeks that his preferred option is diplomacy to open the Strait of Hormuz and ultimately end the conflict, rather than escalation. He has not been shy about his position on a ceasefire, meaning he certainly wants to talk and perhaps he wants to do so more than the Iranians, but what’s the point of a qualified statement the author themselves doesn’t seem to believe, further predicated on a potentially rhetorical reality, that leads to a conclusion that was well known in advance? It seems to me the point is simply to suggest the Trump Administration is weak, even if the author himself doesn’t believe the underlying reason. By positing this based on actual statement, Mr. Fleischer believes the point is somehow more credible, but is it really when he qualifies and doubts it himself?
Long before The Sopranos, there was an old expression that anything after “but” is bullshit. It should be updated today to anything following “if” in politics is both bullshit and partisan hackery. If the actual truth was on their side, they wouldn’t need to posit a potentially false or even completely imaginary scenario.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 