Objectivity Is Dead; Long-live Transparency and Fairness!

What’s wrong with objectivity? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the desire to be objective … except, strictly speaking, that it’s an impossible ideal for any human being to obtain. While objectivity is a very noble aspiration, its impossibility has at least partially enabled people to exploit a fatal weakness of the objective stance, which goes like this: “Since everybody has a point of view, the choice of facts one may use to bolster an argument is always undermined by potential bias. Facts, actually, don’t carry as much weight as we had thought. Interpretation, therefore, is as important as facts – maybe even more important.”

This recently popular argument has replaced a flawed idea (objectivity is possible) with a fatal one (all opinions merit equal consideration). If we can’t agree on facts and only throw opinions at one another, we can’t solve problems. What has enabled and energized the advocates of “interpretation over facts” is the potential pretentiousness of objectivity. This pretense strikes many people as the worst version of Ivy League snobbery (which goes against Americans’ egalitarian sentiments): “You say I must agree with you because you know more than me about X. But even if you know more about X, what you say still carries a bias. Therefore, you’re not persuasive.”

Providing more fuel for today’s furious debate concerning interpretation vs. facts is the lingering specter of objectivity that has shaped our habits of mind over decades if not centuries. While it is true that few people would venture to say that they’re completely objective, many polemics are constructed as if objectivity were still possible. That goes both for CNN (“facts matter,” objectively speaking) and Donald Trump (CNN’s reporting is “fake news,” which is fake because it violates the standards of objectivity). Simultaneously believing and not believing in objectivity is a truly confusing state of mind.

Trump’s scrambling of the nation’s trust in facts by lofting the accusation of “fake news” at any conclusion he disagrees with seems to be a universe apart from a figure who dominated the news 50 years ago, Walter Cronkite. In fact, Walter Cronkite’s famous “objective” sign-off on CBS News in the 1960s, “That’s the way it is,” seems to be have nothing in common with Trump’s deliberate confusion of reality and make-believe. Reflecting on this huge disparity, you may ask yourself, “How did we ever get to this point?”

Well, it turns out that there is a connection between the two stances because both figures undercut our belief in objectivity … but in different ways, of course. This connection between Trump and Cronkite can be understood by watching a famous February 27, 1968 broadcast on CBS news when Walter Cronkite came out against the Vietnam War. Looking in the historical rear-view mirror, this was a conclusion I heartily agree with, but not because it was objective. In fact, the obvious subjectivity of his public pronouncement was a major change for Cronkite and caused deep personal turmoil for him. Here was a man who had built his national reputation and influence on the bedrock assumption (that he and many viewers shared) that he was and would always remain an impartial observer. When he made his statement against continuing the US battle in Vietnam, it was obvious that this was, in the end, his opinion. (It was a very informed opinion, but an opinion nonetheless.) Afterwards, viewers might have asked themselves, could Cronkite ever be objective again? The truth was, he had never really been completely objective in the first place. Although much of the public reacted with shock, it was mainly due to their belief in the impossibly “objective” journalist. (Just in case you’re wondering, Trump undercuts “objectivity” today by insisting that few people are trustworthy.)

It turns out that no journalist can be truly objective, but that’s ok (i.e., subjectivity doesn’t make something “fake”). Let’s reconcile ourselves to some of the limitations of our humanity. Our experiences create a point-of-view concerning what happens around us which we can’t escape from completely. That doesn’t mean we all are living in our own private fantasy worlds (present president excluded). But because we are social beings and normally value the point of view of others (or at least take that view into account if we want to persuade others), we often try to be “fair,” meaning purposely not avoiding facts and ideas that challenge our point of view. (In contrast, the attempt to persuade others without valuing their point of view is often known as either “manipulation,” “bullying” or “threatening.”)

A way out of the objectivity trap is to make a compromise between the impossible (but laudable) ideal of objectivity and the much more attainable goal of fairness. That compromise is transparency, meaning being completely open and honest about how we come to a conclusion.

So, in the spirit (but not the letter) of objectivity’s quest for truth, I’ll make a pretty wild claim: let’s give up on objectivity and replace it with its cousin, transparency. And when a dispute arises as to when a particular conclusion or interpretation is more reasonable and compelling, let’s agree to have an open debate and a friendly contest over who has amassed the best facts as well as the best interpretation of those facts. (Many would recognize this as “the scientific method,” but we can only return to it confidently in today’s public sphere when people aren’t too surprised by the reality that scientists are also people with individual points of view.)

For complex problems in particular, we often turn to professionals because it takes time and intellectual effort to figure out difficult problems of narrow scope (like a coronavirus vaccine). If somebody like Trump “hears” that another remedy to the present pandemic might do the trick more quickly (like bleach), it’s not enough for him to assert, “Some smart people said…” or “I don’t agree with the point of view of the scientists.” To be taken seriously, he should have to say, “Here are the facts and the reasoning about those facts that brought me to this different conclusion.” Trump usually does the opposite: he starts with a conclusion and then makes up or selectively chooses facts to support it.

Trump often uses a shorthand (“many people are saying”) to pretend that there are real facts and sound reasons for his opinions – providing a wafer-thin shield against the charge of his being “biased.” That’s hardly a defensible position. Without facts and only opinion, you’re left with nothing in reality to defend! If people have an argument about opinions concerning a group of facts, let’s examine those facts as well as the reasoning used to interpret them. But if there aren’t specific facts forming the basis for reasons to come to a conclusion, simply pointing to “many people” as a substitute for facts doesn’t even allow you (in all fairness) into the debate.

In short, if simply pointing to facts is not enough to persuade others, having reasons while pretending to have facts to support them is far more laughably insufficient. Let’s not let our hangover with objectivity distract us from the woefully inadequate basis for the opinions emanating from the White House today. Instead, let’s demand conclusions based on the scientific method conducted by imperfect but honorable human beings with training and track records demonstrating that they are competent and trustworthy.

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Sources:

Definition of Objectivity: Objectivity is generally understood as the quality of individual’s reason that is “not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing fact.” See “Objective,” Lexico, https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/objective, accessed May 2020.

On Walter Cronkite and the Vietnam War: Joel Achenbach, “Did the news media, led by Walter Cronkite, lose the war in Vietnam?” The Washington Post, May 25, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/did-the-news-media-led-by-walter-cronkite-lose-the-war-in-vietnam/2018/05/25/a5b3e098-495e-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html, accessed May 2020.

Peering Over the Partisan Divide: The Problem of Contempt

People like myself who are (admittedly) virulently anti-Trump often look at Trump supporters and think, “they’re crazy.” My good friends don’t need much more convincing than that to agree with me. But it’s instructive to take the time to talk to the people I’ve sometimes called “Trumpers.” Through these occasional conversations, I’ve learned that they often think I’m crazy, too. (Really? Me?!) After a couple attempts at some polite (albeit heated) political disagreements with two Trump partisans from very different backgrounds, I learned that they both thought I exhibited all the signs of “TDS,” or “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” “If Trump cured cancer you wouldn’t support him,” one of them concluded.

Trump’s hidden talents aside, what struck me with both my interlocutors was how quickly their voices and messages became super-heated. They also trotted out many supporting “facts,” of course … so many at once in one occasion I lost track of what exactly we were arguing about. Nonetheless, I tried my best to “hate the sin and not the sinner” and attempted to steer us towards a reasonable conversation about a few of the specifics that had been brought up. This seemed to lead to what might be called a shallow victory, or a “non-negative” result: we both stood our ground and disagreed, but the conversation didn’t devolve into name-calling or hurt feelings on either side. But the anger or disparagement I felt directed at me in the middle of these exchanges led me to another small discovery: if I’m going to change the minds of these fellow human beings, it’s not going to start with logic. They’re too angry, it seems to me, to be persuaded by the weak tonic of facts or an appeal to a code of (public) conduct. So what to do?

In 2016, the political activist and CNN commentator Van Jones also tried to find some positive way to respond to the anger and contempt felt for Obama and Clinton by part of the electorate. In the aftermath of the election, he called for the creation of a “love army.” That cool description of his goal was an over-reach, I think. It seemed that love was hard to summon on the left for those who seemed to have voted for a guy who supported hateful policies and language. But in a December 2016 article in Rolling Stone magazine, Jones seemed closer to the mark when he said:

We have to build a bridge of respect to the Trump voters who don’t subscribe to every thing he ever said. For us, those crazy things were disqualifying. For a lot of his voters, they were distasteful but not disqualifying. We can overreact to that and say, “If you vote for a bigot, you are a bigot.” That’s just not true. That kind of language – and that kind of approach – is actually helping Trump to build his coalition.

“A bridge of respect” for any human being seems like an easier thing to create and support than “an army of love.” Love demands a lot; basic respect, in contrast, demands acknowledgement of another person’s humanity that is just like mine – flawed AND in need of being taken seriously. Nobody likes or responds well to being looked down upon. Those of us suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome no more or less than anybody else.

So, this is my introduction to dealing with the contempt that people often feel for one another these days – and barriers created by contempt to real conversation and discussion about political and policy differences. There’s little hope for a just society if we give up trying to persuade each other through an appeal to both emotions and logic. In the conversations I mention above, I certainly didn’t feel vindicated. I did feel some relief, however, that I didn’t reinforce the stereotype held about me, that I’m an unreasonable and unthinking, knee-jerk liberal … just like all the others. And, possibly, that I didn’t reinforce any feelings of anger and contempt those two Trump supporters might have felt for me and, especially, others who disagreed with them.

In short, before we can persuade, we need to turn down the emotional heat around politics, which might have more chance for success right now at the individual or micro level rather than the collective or macro level. I’m not sure, but that’s the hunch I’ll be pursuing in the next few posts.