Absurdity Incorporated

The mainstream media and Democrats as a whole have so normalized the promotion of logical absurdities in their highly emotional war against Trump that one could reasonably come to the conclusion that peddling absurdity is their primary function. In fact if we consider that the vast majority of political expression by the left is absurd, we are left with only three possible root causes to explain the phenomenon, which aren't necessarily mutually exclusive: absurdity is the de facto charter of the leftist media, the liberals are literally going insane, or there is some context in which their absurdity is consistent.

The ostensible charter of the media is to promote knowledge. We will refer to this belief as the standard context. (Although mainstream delusion or mass hypnosis would all work interchangeably.) If that was the media's driving agenda, they sure seem to fail a lot. The failed to predict the election. They failed to see the ridiculous PissGate as a scam. They failed to see the tax return fiasco as a scam. (Can you believe Maddow actually went on air with that?) They failed to see the Russian conspiracy theory for what it is. And on and on. So either the mainstream media is very bad at its primary function, or it's primary motive is something different, and overrides the motive to propagate the truth, or even not to propagate obvious absurdities.

Let's not ignore the possibility that liberals generally seem to be losing their minds. I've seen Trump haters on my facebook feed post 16 anti-Trump articles in their first hour awake. These people are absolutely obsessed with the man. It's crazy. Keith Olbermann is clearly insane. I don't think all liberals are insane, but I suspect the vast majority are brainwashed. I don't really now any that are consistently calling out media absurdities, and those that did end up becoming Trump supporters themselves.

The thing about determining absurdity is that it is something like calculating probabilities: it depends on the context of the observer. The usage of probabilities themselves indicates a lack of knowledge of the situation, and is a way of rounding out the uncertainties. If you flip a coin, the probability of heads is 50%. But if you had a way very precisely measure the forces exerted on the coin and the environment of the flip, you would be able to assign a probability of any given flip that was different than 50%. Because we normally don't have enough information to distinguish one coin flip from another, all we can say is that there is a 50% chance. (We could not remove probability altogether. Modern physics suggests that we can't possibly have perfect knowledge of even the simplest physical systems.)

Absurdity shares an analog; it changes with new information. A man running into a burning building seems absurd. Given new information -- there are children inside the building -- would cause us to reassess the appearance of absurdity. Proving that a single act is absurd is equivalent to proving a negative: the burden is to enumerate all possible contexts and show that the act is illogical in all of them. We are faced with the same situation as with probabilities: we typically don't have perfect knowledge of the environment in which the act occurs. The best we can really do is the same as with assigning probability: observe a number of acts and determine the odds that the acts are absurd. So really this is all analogous to assigning probability because that's exactly what we're doing. What is the probability $P$ that action $A$ is absurd given the context $C$? The assessment of absurdity is a conditional probability, and really all probabilities are conditional probabilities.

With all that said, let's look at the incident which motivated all these thoughts on absurdity, which has since been buried by two or three new fake news scandals.

We've Never Been at War with Director Comey

The liberals were railing against Comey right up until the point he was fired. They were demanding he step down or be fired, yet cried foul when Trump fired him. Remember it doesn't matter what Trump does. If he fires the FBI Director they hate they call it a conspiracy. If he nominates the judge they previously had no problem with, they filibuster. What we saw before our very eyes was an Orwellian moment where the narrative transitioned to: we've never been at war with Director Comey.

Comey Didn't Throw the Election

Democrats outraged by Comey's firing seem to be making a big implicit statement: that Comey wasn't actually responsible for Hillary's loss. If they want him to stay, that's an endorsement of his tenure. That would contradict the claims, most notably made recently by Clinton herself, that she would have won the election if it weren't for Comey's actions. By largely condemning Trump's actions to fire Clinton specifically because he botched his handling of the investigation -- including his late October announcement -- they are saying that Clinton is wrong and that Comey did not skew the election outcome. Can the even still claim the leaked emails (muh Russia conspiracy) is even valid if the announced re-opening of the investigation did not impact the election?

Trump Nix(on)ed an Ongoing Investigation

We were told that this was "Nixonian" because Nixon was the last President to fire an FBI Director was (brace your sense of irony) Bill Clinton. Then were were told that Nixon was the last one to fire an FBI Director while under active investigation. That claim was triple wrong.

1. Nixon didn't fire an FBI Director. He fired a special prosecutor after a year and a half of a publicly acknowledged investigation. Perhaps he was shady, but it's hardly equivalent to Trump's situation because:
2. Trump is not acknowledged to be the target of any known investigation.
3. Clinton actually was under investigation for the TravelGate scandal.

You have to wonder if they're actually trying to be as wrong as possible.

The Election was Rigged

And the real clincher of all this: the election actually was rigged. I believe the world has just been unable to grasp the irony of the situation where all the rage is Muh Russia scandal, when they are accused (without evidence) of being responsible for leaking proof that the DNC, Clinton camp, and media establishment all colluded to rig the election. Most notably when DNC Chairman / CNN contributor Donna Brazil leaked questions from the CNN-hosted debate to Clinton, which she then used without alerting anyone, but there were plenty other actions. That's a lot of words, so let's review just what it is they are accusing Trump of, in meme form.

That's really it. What else could there be? I've still not heard a single hypothesis from the left. Only accusations of the abstract and shrill variety.

All the major claims regarding the Comey firing made by the left are absurd in the standard context. This is a scientific outcome, and can only be explained by the hypothesis that the media's political motivation outweighs its motivation not to promote obvious absurdities. The problem is that their viewpoint is so removed from reality that absurdity becomes their natural state. As mentioned before on this blog, The Left Can No Longer Be Satirized.