Instahumor
or
Operation: No Gloating

I think it's bad to gloat about our Fitzmas presents, but it's kind of hard not to. A corrupt administration is finally being called on one of its many crimes, and it's always gratifying to see justice done. But if we really want to work towards reuniting the country, we'll try to avoid outright in-your-face gloating. Nevertheless, it's going to be kind of hard in the face of posts like this one from Insty.

Note that he didn't write the hilarious quote in question, but he does obviously endorse it. Among the many desperate tactics the more benighted elements of the right are using to suppress the pangs of cognitive dissonance is, apparently, the deployment of this surreal theory about the way Starr and Fitzgerald are regarded. Starr, the dishonest partisan hack, was thought by many to be a dishonest partisan hack, in part because he used leaks as a weapon against the man he was so obviously out to get. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, has run a tight ship and given us every reason to believe he's an honest inquirer. The emerging "narrative" on the right is that this difference in the way the respective men and their investigations are regarded is purely a function of the virtue of the administration they investigated: Starr was regarded as a partisan hack not because he was a partisan hack, but because--of course--the Clinton administration was evil and smeared him. Fitzgerald is regarded as honest and competent solely because the Bush administration is too noble and virtuous to smear him. (Um, I guess our pals on the right missed the Republican talking points from last week...)

You might find all this funny, but I don't. It's gut-wrenching to see the lengths to which people will go to cling to the beliefs they prefer and are comfortable with.

Now, there's little we can do for folks like Insty and Austin Bay et. al. The time to become more epistemically virtuous is NOT at a moment of crisis when one of your cherished beliefs is on the line. The time to work on one's epistemic character is early on in such an inquiry, when little is on the line. If, say, legitimate questions arise about the character of a favored belief or person, fight that little tug in your chest that urges you to insist that it just can't be so. Recognize that it MIGHT be so--that you might be wrong. And for God's sake don't go on record in public insisting that the evidence is bogus. It's hard to eat your words, especially when they are impassioned and public. (That's why I worry that blogging will decrease the general level of intellectual honesty in public debate.) Intellectual dishonesty is like violence--the time to stop it is in the early stages. Once it establishes a firm beachhead in your passions, it's almost impossible to stop.

We can do a little for our friends--our brothers, really--on the right by not gloating. We can do far more for ourselves by silently observing the ugly spectacle of their dishonest intellectual gyrations and resolving to never allow ourselves to perform such gyrations. You might object that I'm being part of the problem by harping on the intellectual dishonesty currently exhibited on the right, and you might be right. But I'm not saying that we must ignore it completely. Some truths are important enough to be spoken about, even if the speaking of them contributes to the problem in question. I'm not saying we should ignore what's going on, nor that we should verbally mince around it. Just that we shouldn't gloat about it.