A month ago, President Trump tweeted “Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.” And, in doing so, prompted yet another firestorm in the media, with seemingly endless coverage by CNN and MSNBC. When Trump didn’t immediately offer corroborating evidence, questions arose: Was he putting forth a Big Lie? Was he non compos mentis ranting in response to some episode of paranoia? Does he know something that he’s not sharing? Is there any proof at all for this?
People were, as is their wont, quick to draw conclusions, usually in line with their ideological leanings and existing attitudes towards Trump. And, when the demands from the Left and the Press that Trump put up his proof weren’t satisfied immediately, people (the skeptics, especially) hardened those conclusions.
While life today offers a greater ability for immediate gratification than ever, it doesn’t guarantee it. So it has turned out with the “wiretapping” story. These past few weeks have seen evidence emerge that Trump didn’t simply make shit up. I won’t go into it in depth here, but you can find recaps, information, and commentary here, here, here, and here.
The takeaway from this story, the life-lesson, is that sometimes the truth takes a long time to emerge. Even now, a month in, we’re only getting pieces of the story. Congress is investigating, news organizations are investigating, bloggers and commentators are building and reshaping their opinions, and so on. Anyone who’s locked in an opinion at this stage of the game is doing himself a disservice. Not all the facts are in, and the investigations are on-going.
If you concluded that Trump lied when you first heard the story, your conclusion was unsupported by facts in evidence at the time. If you concluded that his accusation was true, your conclusion was unsupported by facts in evidence at the time. If you demanded immediate proof, and didn’t get it, and decided that he must be lying, you applied your own arbitrary and unjustified time constraints to the story.
It doesn’t matter if whatever conclusion you’ve already drawn turns out to be the correct one – if you drew it before the story finished unfolding (and it hasn’t yet), you didn’t draw the conclusion when in possession of all the facts.
Take this as a lesson. You are not obligated to form an immediate opinion on every controversy that emerges. Next time one breaks, relax. Take a breath. Let the story unfold, let information come out, let it be vetted and dissected by the bottomless well of newspeople and bloggers. Take your time, process it all, and when it seems that the story has fully unfolded, THEN, you can declare your conclusions with confidence. It’s not a foot race, there’s no prize for guessing right or being the first to declare what turns out to be the correct answer, and bragging that you “knew it all along” makes you little more than an insufferable twit.
Most importantly, if facts emerge that contradict your jumped-to conclusion, have the intellectual honesty to accept them and change your opinion instead of digging in and defending what just became indefensible, out of some childish fear that you’ll be mocked for being wrong.
When events change, I change my mind. What do you do? — John Maynard Keynes (perhaps)
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