Someone made a comment, and I'd like to address it for everyone.
The comment:
"Addressing outrage surely must be exhausting and you've provided tools and resources to help us. But there's plenty of stuff that flies above the heads of us laypeople that isn't hair-on-fire panic that I turn to you for understanding."
I do not believe the news is "above the heads of laypeople."
I think the laypeople are being confused and made to believe it is over their heads.
I was about to give a link to the Washington Post sunday roundup to demonstrate that anyone can understand it (but I won't because I don't want to get into a debate.)
If you read too much opinion, you'll get confused.
If you follow 10 lawyers who offer their "hot takes" you'll get confused because lawyers in real life don't do hot takes.
They do a lot of research and thinking before they appear before a judge.
Looking closely at a single court filing doesn't help you understand the case.
Here is what why: Suppose you have never seen an elephant and someone shows you an elephant's ear. Then you try to imagine what the entire elephant looks like. You'll get entirely the wrong idea.
They give you parts that they want to talk about.
While I was writing this week's blog post, I scrolled through the social media feeds of a lot of legal pundits (I stuck with the ones who appear on TV or have hundreds of thousands of followers.)
Once in a while I saw facts, but mostly I saw opinion, spin, and predictions.
The facts are not hard to undrestand. These are the cases going on. These are the charges. We are in the stage of pre-trial motions. After all of the pretrial motions are resolved, there will be a trial.
The problem is that the facts cannot fill hours of programming or keep you glued to your screen.
You can read each motion, but that isn't predictive of what a court will do.
@Teri_Kanefield Of course (and don't block me!), but the comment "After all of the pretrial motions are resolved, there will be a trial." I think is what people get upset about, because if TFG gets into office, then the question is "will there still be a trial"? Of course, nobody knows this (uncharted territory and all that). But it does put bees in the bonnet.
Some (not all) of the pundits offer quite a bit of facts and history. It's an important skill, though, to be able to separate that from the opinion, spin, and predictions. Doing so lets me dodge the rage response, though sometimes it still leaves me with worry.
@Teri_Kanefield I am in the process of re-reading your 6 essays & I am going to read the 2 new newer oneson your blog.
I find them calming. I am a left-brained logical person & the MSNBC pundits were driving me nuts but I did not realize what was going on.
@PennyG I haven't linked them yet, so they're not in the table of contents.
I am also planning to include an intro, but I'll be taking the material from the thoughts I've been throwing out here.
I think they have been literally driving all of us nuts.
They never admit when they are wrong, so it's endless.
They make assumptions that have no basis in fact, and soon tens of thousands of people believe it's true: like "a trial before the election will hurt Trump."
@PennyG If you think a trial before the eletion will hurt Trump and cause him to lose the election, and no trial means he will win the election, you will have meltdowns over each "delay" even if it isn't actually a delay, it's the normal course of things.
@Teri_Kanefield in my experience I don’t see people saying they are over their heads. What is true that it’s such a large flood of stuff coming at them from so many places that it’s difficult to digest and parse. In the past the amount of information that reached the average voter was far more limited. People on average are not able to read and parse through so much causing big disconnects and people chrrry picking stuff. There is no easy way to fix that either.
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