San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Living in cocoon of denial is cozy, but also irrational
The recent performance by President Donald Trump to deny the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election as president should not surprise anyone. As shameful as it is, such denialism fits perfectly with other rejections of fact in recent history.
Denialism is defined by anthropologist Didier Fassin as
“an ideological position whereby one systematically reacts by refusing reality and truth.” In other words, it is about people who can’t or won’t accept verified facts as real.
Contemporary American society gives us many examples.
Holocaust denial, climate change denial, COVID-19 denial, HIV/AIDS denial, and evolution denial are all connected by a profound distrust of science and rationality. Embraced by various groups of hucksters and crackpots, and in the case of Holocaust denial, anti-Semites, these different denialisms are socially corrosive.
They are damaging to our confidence in education and to learning. They reject scientifically-proven facts in favor of half-baked, ill-founded conjecture. They advance wild speculation as a substitute for empirical reality.
Why are some people drawn to these denials? In the case of evolution denial, religious beliefs might not be compatible with what evolution means. In the case of climate change denial, perhaps it allows some people to continue their habit of environmental waste, free of guilt. In the case of COVID-19 denial, it might be a way to reject so-called elites who say to
“wear a mask.”
Then there is the possibility that one might make money by denying reality. For example, a once-respected historian, David Irving, has made a great deal of money for writing, speaking, and promoting Holocaust denial. It was not until scholar Deborah Lipstadt and Irving ended up in a court battle that Irving was formally denounced as a Holocaust denier. However, even today one can buy his books and DVDs or make a donation on his website.
As an educator I find one denial especially vexing — the denial that a college education is “worth it.” Much has been written about the rising costs of college tuition and expenses, the fact that a college education doesn’t completely eliminate social and economic inequality, and that many who begin college never finish.
But college is worth it. For example, as economists Tim Bartik and Brad Hershbein have demonstrated, for college-educated African Americans from low-income backgrounds the percentage boost to lifetime earnings is 173 percent.
A recent study by Georgetown University found that on average, a person with a high school degree earns $1.3 million over a lifetime. An individual with a bachelor’s degree will earn $2.3 million over a lifetime. Factor in the immense value of exposure to great books, expansive ideas, crosscultural knowledge, and increased knowledge of the humanities, arts and social sciences, as well as STEM programs, and a college education increases significantly in value.
So, how can we account for denialism?
First, denialism is learned behavior, and once learned, it’s difficult to overcome. Trump’s insistence that the election was rigged is simply the latest version of many distortions and denials: that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. (he was), that Obama had Trump’s “wires tapped” in Trump Tower (he didn’t) and that Trump’s 2016 inaugural audience was the “biggest ever” (it wasn’t).
In Trump’s case, past behavior was a forecast of future behavior. The denial of Biden as the winner in an honest 2020 election was always to be expected from Trump. Like any denier, he could not or would not acknowledge reality.
Second, denialism can be modeled and made acceptable to a large swath of the population. After all, Trump is president of the United States, and if the president says the election was rigged, the election was rigged. Or so think a lot of people who lack the critical ability to see a lie when told one.
Third, denialism helps us avoid unpleasant tasks. Climate change is going to require many alterations in thinking and acting. How we alter our energy use, travel habits and food consumption is already underway.
Climate change will require us to be more adaptable. We are going to have to do things “differently.” To reject climate change allows the denier to continue the status quo as if the world were impervious to change.
Joe Biden won the election. To deny that fact is to take refuge in a cocoon, to hide from the truth and to live in an irrational universe. Reality may not be easy for some, but we have far more to lose by rejecting it than by accepting it.