Anecdotal evidence

I’ve often said anecdotes are how you lie, while statistics are how you tell the truth. I should clarify: Anecdotes are true, but irrelevant.

A few months ago, as I wrote about in this column, I was involved in the arrest of a young man who was hit by a car while riding a bicycle. I stopped to help, and noticed he had a backpack with a pair of bolt cutters in it. A woman drove up and told us the guy had been trying to burglarize her house. I offered to drive him to the hospital, and instead drove him to the Porterville Police station on D Street. The Sheriff’s department sent someone to take him into custody, because the incident had happened outside of the city limits. When they arrived and handcuffed him, they found a 12-inch Bowie knife in his backpack. This guy had been sitting in my car behind my wife all the way into town.

A month later, I saw someone on a bicycle near the Highway 190 roundabout who looked a lot like the alleged perp, so I walked into the Sheriff’s office on Third Street and asked if the guy had been released yet, because I thought he might come after me. The answer, about as rude as anything I’ve ever been told, was something like “none of your business.” The woman who said this made no attempt to elaborate, or to allay my concerns. For a moment, I wanted her fired. That’s how lots of people react when they hear about rude or incompetent government employees.

The women who worked at the offices of city government in Houston were a little like that. They were bilingual because half of Houston consists of Spanish-speaking immigrants. They were young and pretty because their boss was a lecher. They wore what looked like party dresses, because that was their way of telling you you were socially beneath them. And whenever someone walked up to their window, they would start filing their nails, making eye contact with you only when you started to smolder. That was what they were waiting for: Watching people get angry and knowing there was NOTHING they could do about it WAS THE POINT. Watching your slow burn was the main “perk” of the job. And every citizen who had been at the receiving end of this abuse wanted to de-fund city government.

Recently, five Black police officers were fired and charged with murder for their abuse of a young Black man they were taking into custody. People often assume olice murders of young unarmed Black men happen because they’re racists. It’s not, particularly when the cops are also Black. It’s because they’re JERKS. NOT ALL OF THEM — just some. We can’t fire them all, because we need the good ones. But it would trim the budget, wouldn’t it?

In his State of the Union message, President Biden called out the proposals of several Republican Senators (Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin) to give a Republican dominance in Washington the power to reduce or even eliminate Social Security and Medicare. Why? Because those two programs constitute half of the federal budget, and if we got rid of them, takes could go down by half. Half of our population doesn’t pay income tax, so they don’t want this: It’s the one percent, the benefactors who contribute the bulk of Republican campaign funds. But if we elect a Republican President and a Republican majority in both the House and the Senate, that’s what they’ll do. And then they’ll restructure our democracy so they can’t ever be voted out of power. Biden pointed out that only a few senators held this extreme position, but for Democrats, it’s ALL OF THEM.

So what does this have to do with rude employees and brutal police officers? Every time a story surfaces about a woman who had 12 illegitimate children in order to get a bigger welfare check, more people vote Republican. Are there such women? I’m sure there are. But the implication of that anecdote is THEY’RE ALL LIKE THAT, which they manifestly are not. Most police officers are just like the rest of us, and remember what they heard in church on Sunday for the rest of the week. But some don’t. Anecdotes are as powerful as they are unfair. But the temptation to use them to convince voters to reduce the size of government is appealing in some circles.

Everyone who’s been treated abusively by a government employee constructs a story that sounds a lot like “they were unfair to me, so they’ll be unfair to you.” They won’t. Our FBI is the cream of the crop. But when they collect evidence — hard, real evidence — of criminal behavior on the part of Donald Trump, his supporters will want to de-fund the FBI. And that sits just fine with the Republican Party — fewer government employees means a smaller payroll. No payroll at all would be great — and, people like Trump would never be prosecuted, because the guys who collect the evidence would be gone. Trash the reputation of every government agency, and voters will allow Congress to cut their budgets. Those pesky regulations that protect us from corporate greed will wither and die for lack of funding, and as a fringe benefit, taxes can go down even more. Shrink government until it can fit inside a teacup, and you can cut taxes to nothing. And the one percent won’t miss a meal.

Beware of anecdotal evidence that convinces you to generalize from individual cases that aren’t statistically reflective of reality. Lying is the cheapest way to win in politics. For the Republican Party, eliminating the need to pay for government is the ultimate win. And until lying is punished with draconian efficiency, Newsmax, and Fox News, and the Republican Party will continue to lie, because if they can convince us to help them shut down government, their benefactors will reward them, and the rest of us will pay.

Les Pinter is a contributing columnist and a Springville resident. His column appears weekly in The Recorder. Pinter’sbook, HTTPV: How a Grocery Shopping Website Can Save America, is available in both Kindle and hardcopy formats on Amazon.com. Contact him at lespinter@earthlink.net