What You See Is All There Is

A few notes about narratives in today’s world.

We need to acknowledge that the narrative is not the story or, more accurately, that it often has as much connection to what really happened as Rice Krispies has to rice (or, if you like, that oat milk horchata with double whip has to real coffee). There might be rice and coffee somewhere in the ingredients; the narrative might share a few facts with actual events but is really just a heavily processed item.

You have an event, and the narrative is what is created to lead you to what you think you should think about the event. George Floyd dying on a street while in police custody, Jan. 6 protesters in the Capitol, a President Joe Biden wandering off during an event. Those are facts.

The narrative purports to provide meaning, to help you to “understand” what is going on. Floyd is about systemic racism; Jan. 6 is about insurrection; Joe Biden was just curious about what was happening off-camera, and is still sharp as a tack despite what right-wing conspiracy theorists would have you believe.

Political narratives:

1) Mimic the human inductive process of assigning larger meaning to events, but then seek to exploit through interpretation the gap in human understanding between what one sees and reality.

2) The narrative is manipulative, it is meant to guide you toward a predetermined conclusion.

3) Narratives are designed to operate within a time-bound system. They are not meant to stand the test of time, but rather to move the ball down the field toward a larger outcome.

So, having said that, why should we believe a single word that Jake Tapper writes in his book?

Let’s change our perspective and not look at the Tapper Affair as citizens or politically-interested observers, but rather as detectives. As Ivar Fahsing says in “How to Think Like a Detective”:

As a homicide detective, I began to notice how my more skilled colleagues were different from the others. It wasn’t apparent at first. They never spoke loudly nor did they frown at how obvious things were. They didn’t voice their opinion any more than others; they didn’t jump to conclusions. Rather, they observed, asked questions, and calmly kept on digging. This detached involvement and the ability to keep digging are the main attributes that set expert detectives apart from the rest of the crowd. Hence, not making a decision is the best decision a good investigator can make.

Fahsing also cites Daniel Kahneman’s admonition about the cognitive bias WYSIATI – “What you see is all there is.”

If what Fahsing is describing is how journalists like to market themselves to the public, as heroic modern-day versions of the mythical Woodwards and Bernsteins, wading through layers of cover-ups and prevarications to get at the “truth,” well, I cannot blame you. In reality modern journalists have as much connection to that depiction of journalism as Mark McCluskey did to honest law enforcement.

By his own admission Tapper is a dupe, and I think that’s a best-case scenario. He is almost certainly a liar if only by omission.

John Sexton thinks that Tapper was trapped because the Democrats had closed ranks around Biden, and therefore that there were no sources to base reporting on. Of course Tapper’s show, much like the rest of cable news, is a mix of traditional “reporting” and opinion. If Tapper wanted to platform the story — a story, what amounted to a soft coup by DC insiders, which is one of the biggest scandals in American history — he would have.

So, given all of that, why are we buying Tapper’s (and Thompson’s) conclusion that the truth about Biden was known only within a conspiracy composed of a tight circle of Biden family members and staff?

My disappointment is not so much with traditional media types, but with those in the non-traditional media and conservative sources, who seem either fixated on Tapper’s narrative (that he was a dupe) or who choose to attack that narrative and call him a liar.

Remember, a narrative, now matter how manipulative, always contains some connection to facts. It’s how the narrative is meant to manipulate the inductive process, to give meaning and context to those facts, that is important.

WYSIATI.

We know that Tapper is a player. What is he telling us? What does he want us to believe? Why should we believe him?

In part, he wants us to believe that after being a dupe and a liar he has now found the light — that he’s gone straight.

A good detective would never buy that, and would call everything Tapper says into question: the narrative of 200 sources who are suddenly willing to talk to two establishment journalists, leading to a very convenient conclusion.

I’ve seen better pitches on late-night infomercials.

One final note, back to my third point regarding the time-bound nature of narratives.

My disappointment with Bari Weiss and others who have taken Jake Tapper to task is that they pull their punches in being led by what Tapper says. They seem enthralled, almost disarmed, by Tapper’s “Come to Jesus” moment, in part because he admits error and it confirms their cognitive biases. It’s almost a cliché. WYSIATI

The ugly truth is that the key part to narratives is that they have an internal clock. Once they emerge, if they are not quickly challenged within the then-current news cycle they become the established narrative and competitors have a tough uphill slog. I point back to George Floyd and Jan. 6.

The clock has just about run out on the news cycle regarding Tapper’s book. Its narrative, that Biden’s decrepitude was all part of a small conspiracy of Biden family members and insiders, has just about become engraved in stone. The Biden family will be the heat sink, the scapegoat, for all the sins of the past administration, and purged. How convenient. Almost Stalinist.

What is, or rather was, the real end game is receding into obscurity.