Anecdotes
I hate anecdotal evidence. “Statistics” aren’t much better, but I hate anecdotes even worse. When I first got car insurance, the agent sat me down and tried to convince me to get things like a policy that would pay off, no joke, if my eye was poked out in a car accident. When you would try to argue that you didn’t need this sort of insurance, he always had a story. “Well my cousin Mabel’s mother-in-law had her eye poked out last year, and thank god she had this coverage.”
When my father and I would have an ideological disagreement, his way to solve it was always to suggest that we poll five people around us on the street and ask *them* for the answer.
Now Dean Esmay is on the anecdote train, mad about the Washington Post poll that said 70 percent of Americans believe Saddam was personally involved in planning 9/11. He’s mad, of course, because the implication is that the administration’s constant conflation of Saddam and 9/11 caused this wildly erroneous perception.
Dean’s argument is two-fold: first, that no one he knows believes this, so the poll is bunk. Are people so gullible that they believe this because Dick Cheney said it? Well, Dean, hate to break it to you, but endless repetition of marketing messages is what drives this country’s economy (and its politics). It’s worked well for decades, for both war and toothpaste.
What’s even more amazing is Esmay goes on to say, well, it’s probably true anyway! Damn Saddam! (This is a variation on the “When did you stop beating your wife” argument, as in, “If you can’t prove it didn’t happen, it probably happened.” See also MDT on gay marriage: “If you can’t prove it won’t harm the society, it’s dangerous.” Reactionaries must just exhaust themselves sometimes.)
Dean felt his post was a rousing success because no one could give an example of someone they knew who thought Saddam planned 9/11 (although he probably did! Damn him!). Lowered expectations are a conservative’s best friend.