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A GenePoool.com Essay
Sinking Bipartisanship
I was sitting at work this afternoon listening to the radio, as I have done regularly since November 8th in my ongoing effort to be the first to know (in my office, at least) when we actually have a presidentm when some time around Noon came the announcement that the U.S. Supreme Court had "vacated" the Florida Supreme Court decision.
What a fascinating development! I thought. What the hell does that mean? After days of listening to experts give options A, B, or C for a Supreme Court ruling, I'd just been informed that the answer is G, and I didn't think that option was even on the test. So I listened some more. One expert said this was a defeat for the Gore campaign, but then later said it wasn't, because all the state court has to do is rule again, and basically all the U.S. justices said was "huh?" This didn't clear things up.
While I was mulling this over I heard another member of my office relay, somewhat happily, that the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of Bush. "That's not exactly right," I said. "The court said they need more information from the state regarding their justification for the ruling." This seemed to me to be a fair assessment.
"It's the same thing," my coworker said. "The Florida court can't justify their decision because it was the wrong decision. There is no justification for it."
"That's your opinion," I said.
"That's a fact," she countered. "That's what the Supreme Court just said."
This exchange got me to thinking. We both heard essentially the same news report, but at the same time, we didn't hear the same report at all. My immediate reaction to her interpretation was that she couldn't distinguish between an opinion and an unquestioned fact, but the nagging question was, do I have the same problem?
The question echoes with the bells of postmodernism. Postmodernism is at its core a philosophical tenet, a declaration, if you will, that facts are biased by the opinions of the person who collects those facts. This is a marvelous little concept that happens to be applied to all the wrong things in all the wrong ways. Imagine arguing that a scientific discovery might yield different results if performed by a black female instead of a white male.
History probably suffers more than any other academic discipline from postmodernist appeals. Simply put, most of history was written by white males. So of course, those white males only wrote about other white males, blah blah blah, and before long colleges are teaching that a black Egyptian invented algebra and the Greeks stole it, even though there is literally no factual data to support this claim. Doesn't matter. In postmodern reasoning, both claims are equally valid.
The way to counteract postmodern arguments is to focus on the confluence of facts. That is, what does the weight of historical evidence favor? The argument, for example, that the Holocaust never took place uses facts, but only some hand-picked facts. The weight of the evidence tells otherwise. (And won't postmodernists be upset that I equated them with Holocaust Deniers? Well, it's the same reasoning, gang.)
This is what I was thinking of as I pondered whether or not I should consider myself guilty of partisan interpretation. In order to wrest myself from the horns of this dilemma-- how can I tell if my own opinion is biased?-- I called my friend Will. Will happens to be a lawyer; I don't know his politics, which is just as well. (Will didn't even know the Supreme Court had handed down a decision. There's unbiased for ya.) According to Will, when a court vacates a decision, they essentially kick the case back to the lower court and make the lower court decide again. It doesn't mean the higher court has overturned the decision; rather, they have called for a do-over. So the Florida court can come to the same conclusion while addressing the higher court's concerns, and that decision can again be appealed to the U.S. Supreme court should anyone wish to do so.
Which is what I thought vacate meant all along.
This quest for the holy truth got me thinking some more. For a month now the entire country has been listening to the same information and hearing two different things. We all agree that the loser in this election is stubbornly refusing to accept that he lost and is doing everything he can, in one court case after another, to force the Florida electoral votes in his direction, by suing, stalling, fighting for public support, and summarily declaring he won before the process is completed. Unfortunately, we can't all agree on which candidate I just described.
We can't even agree that the courts are unbiased, and it's the judicial branch that we most expect non-partisan behavior from. Yet for some reason, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled against the Bush campaign, every Republican in the country concluded that the ruling was made because all the justices were appointed by a Democratic governor. I've yet to hear a Democrat accuse any Florida judge of partisan political behavior, despite the many Republican judges and the many decisions that have gone against Gore, and this makes me think that, of the two parties, perhaps the Democrats are being a tad more rational about this, but then again, I'm a Democrat myself, so perhaps I'm biased; I can't tell any more.
Which is my point. Look at what we've become. Every claim, no matter how compelling, ends up being refuted with "of course you'd say that; look who you voted for." This is not a valid argument, it's a postmodern one.
So is there one truly compelling factual argument out there? I've heard only one. The mathematician John Allen Paulos recently pointed out what should have been obvious to all of us a long time ago. Statistically speaking, when you deal with very large totals like what we had in the 2000 election, you're dealing with a large error bar as well. The results of this election fall well within that error bar. In other words, this election was a tie. We all want this to be absolutely precise, but it's a statistical impossibility. Both Bush and Gore deserve the presidency, and neither of them do. (Paulos suggested a coin flip. I don't think this will fly with the American people, but it's really not that bad of an idea.) This is a compelling point. What it shows-- and I don't think even the most rabid postmodernist would argue that numbers are biased by the person doing the math-- is that both sides in this seemingly eternal debate are completely correct. No wonder we can't agree.
As for myself, I've decided that as much fun as it might be to become another angry screaming partisan, I just don't think I have it in me. (Although it might be fun. As my very Democratic friend Shawn put it "we are good and they are evil." Who couldn't have fun with that?) If being logical, reasoned, and patient about this whole procedure makes me a Democratic partisan-- and I think it does-- so be it. It's better than being an irrational, holier-than-thou, bitter, hypocritcal Republican.
But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?
© 2000, Gene Doucette
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