Easy does it
It’s really hard to make things simple.
2 + 2 = 4 is simple.
But without that simple truth, there would be no engineering; no machines, no computers.
Without that simple truth, there would be no capitalism.
It’s easy to forget the importance of simple things.
Or, better yet, we tend to take them for granted. Until things break.
Buildings collapse because of simple math mistakes.
Systems collapse because we forsake simple things.
Here’s a simple thing:
It’s bad to lie.
That’s it.
It seems stupid to say such a simple thing.
And yet, the people we entrusted to handle complex tasks, the supposedly smartest and best educated people in our society, took it for granted.
I don’t mean they forgot about it. We all forget.
I mean they actively convinced themselves it did not matter. Because they were clever and clever people are not smart.
23.
That’s how many people in the administration are former Fox News employees. Twenty-three.
Is that a high number?
Here again, it’s important keep things simple.
One bullet in the brain is a very high number.
Twenty-three bankers or 23 candlestick makers is not a high number.
But 23 professional liars is a very high number.
Objection! No court of law has found that Fox News lies.
You are very clever!
You are correct! Fox News has settled cases that would have adjudicated this claim. Moreover, it successfully claimed in a court of law that "any reasonable viewer" would understand that its most popular show consisted of "rhetorical hyperbole" and not “statements of fact.”
Ergo, Fox News does not employ liars.
Again, the defense must be lauded for their cleverness!
68.
That’s the percentage of Fox News programming that consists of opinion. (CNN was found to air opinions 4% of the time. MSNBC 27 percent.)
Is 68 a high number?
It can be hard to understand large numbers, so I made a chart.
Have you ever flipped a coin?
“Heads, I win, tails you lose.”
If you flipped on Fox News, seven out of ten times you would hear an opinion, not a fact.
Let’s play this out:
2 + 2 = 3
2 + 2 = 5
2 + 2 = -4
2 + 2 = pineapple
2 + 2 = 1
2 + 2 = 17
2 + 2 = 2
2 + 2 = 4
2 + 2 = 4
2 + 2 = 4
Objection! The odds that someone wouldn’t encounter the truth on Fox News until the 8th time they turned it on are only 6% You’re lying with statistics!
Bravo!
The clever litigator (Harvard or Yale?) makes an excellent point. It is, in fact, very easy to lie with statistics.
And yet, 2 + 2 remains 4.
Which means that if you were to turn on Fox News 10 times in a row, there’s a 83% chance — four out of five — that you would encounter a lie three times in a row.
Is three in a row a lot? 1
In fact, people believe repeated information more than novel information. That is why Fox News exists, an ad-supported television network.
$1.04 trillion
That’s the size of the global advertising business.2
A trillion is 12 zeroes. 1,000,000,000,000.
Repetition is, in fact, quite significant when it comes to establishing beliefs.
Where’s the beef?
Let it go.
A minor.
Let’s say that I advertise my Cuban sandwich.
But seven out of ten of my sandwiches is in fact, not Cuban at all, but rather Peanut Butter and Jelly.
Am I in the business of selling Cuban Sandwiches?
I hope that by now you’ve come to understand why it is that a business engineered to produce a three-peat™ of lies can be said to employ professional liars.
Which brings us back to the 23 professional liars in the current administration, a feat only possible because our best and brightest convinced themselves that it was in their interest to abide by lies.3
How did we get here?
Like a person waking up on a train, we are at first overwhelmed by all the unfamiliar sights around us.
For example, we now see a profusion of obviously surgically altered faces among the leaders and power brokers of the current regime.
Theirs is a political act: every time they appear before us, they assert that the truth does not matter, only power does, and they will rub that obvious lie in our faces.
It is easy to become lost – nay, to despair – in this uncanny valley of the shadow of death.
But appreciating the lurid details of where we are will not help us escape to safety.
Repeating “2 + 2 = 4” is like yelling out the window.
To stop the train, we must turn off its engine.
That engine is our corrupt business culture.
It is fueled by one very big lie:
Business is about making money.
We have learned not just helplessness, but evil.
Business is about helping other people. Full stop.
Wealth is the byproduct of services rendered; food, shelter, care.
The true measure of any business is not “how much money it makes its owners” but how many people it helped.
To insist that morality has no place in business – that politics are bad for business – is to insist that 2 + 2 = 3.
You may find it good for you, personally, to tell a lie but a market, let alone a society, where lying is good is one that is dying. Perhaps, slowly, at first. But then, quite suddenly.
