It happens almost every day. We eagerly turn to the newspaper, the TV or radio news story, or the online news service in hopes of catching a headline that will
immediately light up the area of our brain that teems with cultural biases and craves the soothing dope of dopamine that is secreted autonomically whenever we're able to square the world with our world-view, a view that we know is correct because it is ours.
We bring to these news stories a vested interest, just as we bring a vested interest to our favorite sports teams when lineups are introduced and players take the field or the court, seeking to triumph over their (and our) opponents. Just as we want
our favorite teams to win, and can't wait for the next game, so we want stories involving conflicting cultural points of view to support our biases and can't wait for the next one to come along to prove us right once again.
Trayvon Martin is dead and George Zimmerman had a gun? Who cares what really happened? We have no interest in waiting dispassionately for all the facts to be assembled before we assess right
and wrong, praise and blame. We want to select and mold whatever "facts" are immediately available to suit our biases. We have our meme-scheme into which we are sure the facts will fit. If they don't, we will labor to force them to fit until
we reach the point where we must finally admit that doing so is ludicrous--and even then we will contend that our view is right most of the time and that this particular instance is the exception that proves the rule. Our "takeaway" from the story is
always the same. Our "takeaway" is whatever we brought to it.
Zimmerman alive and Martin dead? Oh, boy. A juicy one. We rub our hands,
we're all eyes and ears as we take in the report, so wanting to believe either that Zimmerman was a racist who was just looking for an excuse to pull the trigger and commit a hate crime against an innocent black youth, and isn't that a typical example
of the sad society we live in, or that Martin attacked Zimmerman, beat him, and provoked a shooting that was either accidental or in self-defense, that Zimmerman was simply standing his ground and that those who say otherwise are playing the race card,
and isn't that a typical example of the sad society we live? We are almost incapable of maintaining an open mind, suspending judgment, finding out what happened in what order, and then assessing blame. We are actively rooting for the story to have
happened as we wish it to have happened. We want our team, our cultural bias, to prevail. Seeing is believing? Sometimes. Believing is seeing? Much more frequently.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's forces pulling over cars with dark-skinned occupants because of broken taillights or failure to use turn signals? We love it! It's racial prejudice and racial profiling, it's privileged whites
dominating innocent, powerless victims, and isn't that a typical example of the sad society we live in, or it's completely legal and a good way to catch law-breaking illegals who take jobs from American citizens, use social services without paying their fair
share of taxes, and seek to take our culture from us instead of assimilating into it, and isn't that kind of thing typical of the sad society that we live in?
A
report on a sociological study concluding that women in America earn less than men? Of course! To be expected! Women have always been discriminated against in this patriarchal society, it's harder for women to get jobs than it is for men,
the jobs they get have less responsibility and less opportunity for advancement, and they are even paid less for doing the same work as men when they do manage to get a job that is held by men, and isn't that a typical example of the sad society we live in,
or no, that's not it because women who have the same level of experience, education, and training as men receive the same pay as men for doing the same job, and if a tally of total earnings shows women getting less than men it's because they work less (often
because of child-bearing and child-rearing) and because they tend to choose the types of service jobs (nursing, teaching) that pay less, and isn't such lying with statistics typical of the sad society we live in?
Mass shootings by a lone gunman in a Colorado movie theater? Obviously, someone--parents, acquaintances, teachers, coworkers, employers--should have seen it coming and taken preventative measures, gun laws
are overly permissive, there is too much violence on TV and in video games and movies, and isn't that a typical example of the sad society we live in, or if more people were self-reliant and carried guns these types of shootings would either be deterred
or ended quickly by retaliatory gunfire, and isn't that weakness and lack of responibility typical of the sad society we live in?
Joe Paterno and coverups?
Lance Armstrong and performance-enhancing drugs? Representative Todd Akin speaking of "legitimate" rape? Mitt Romney offhandedly remarking that no one questions that he, at least, is an American citizen? We love stories like these because
they give us a jolt, arouse our emotions, and then always end happily--happily, that is, because we deconstruct them in such a way that our biases are vindicated.