Video of Serbian War Crimes

This is a fascinating story. I don't know which of the following facts is more amazing:

(a) Until now, most Serbs have been able to ignore the cornucopia of evidence proving that Serbian forces engaged in war crimes on a massive scale

(b) A video tape that has emerged has been able to change the minds of people so deeply in denial

(c) Some can remain in denial even after having seen the tape

Anyone who denies the power of patriotism and nationalism to distort people's perceptions is invited to reflect on this strange situation.

But this all seems to confirm things about humans that we already knew. People lie on continua with regard to clusters of issues. On one end of a given continuum lie those whose minds are easily changed (too easily, in some cases). As we move farther and farther down the continuum, we find people whose minds are harder and harder to change, until, on the far end of the spectrum, virtually nothing can change them. A large segment of any population lies on the far stubborn end of the spectrum with regard to issues about the virtue of their own country, countrymen, and leaders. They are the my country right or wrong set.

It's important to catalogue our cognitive shortcomings. Forewarned is forearmed. We know that humans tend to generalize hastily. We know that humans give too much weight to confirming evidence and insufficient weight to disconfirming evidence. We know that humans tend to ignore regression to the mean. To this list of illogical inclinations, we should add: we know that humans tend to give too little weight to evidence that indicates wrong-doing by their countrymen and their leaders.

It's also interesting that some people go too far in the other direction--they're the blame America first crowd. It's as if the impulses in play are too powerful to keep in check, as if we were wet-wired to over-react...

But there really aren't very many blame America firsters, so far as I can tell. A few scattered, stoop-shouldered types on colleged campuses, and maybe at The Nation... The overwhelming majority of those who get accused of that error are merely people who dare to criticize our leaders at all. The my country right or wrongers, of course, view anyone who criticizes America at all as a blame America firster.

At any rate, I've met both types, and they are both infuriating. (Me, I'm right in the middle, purely rational about these matters. Needless to say.) But even a passing acquaintance with history and current events reveals that it is being insufficiently critical of one's own country and leaders that is by far the commoner, by far the stronger, and by far the more dangerous inclination. The Serbian tape incident is just the latest bit of evidence for this very obvious conclusion.

On the bright side, I suppose, seeing is believing, and all but the most irrational among us can eventually be convinced by the evidence of his own eyes. We humans are not the most rational lot, but neither are we the most recalcitrantly irrational.

The bad news again is that most governmental misdeeds are not caught on videotape. This leaves the residue of doubt that counts as plausible deniability to someone resolutely committed to denying responsibility, and to those resolutely committed to believing them.