The Performative Fallacy
Beware the ‘loudest voice in the room.’
September 21
What feels dramatic is not always conclusive, but we want it so. This is the ‘performative fallacy,’. what appears dramatic, or emphatic, is not the same as what is true.
Beware the ‘loudest voice in the room.’
The inverse of this fallacy is compelling: there is truth in less dramatic events. We just don’t see them, hear them, feel them, attend to them. It’s a choice.
Here’s a personal account of this fallacy at work.
Once upon a time I sat down with a climate change denier and attempted to share the conclusions of a UN report on the environment. Spoiler alert: I had before us a copy of the report’s overview and data summary. The conversation went like this:
Oh, so you have a copy of the report’s summary. Good for you.
Have you seen it?
No, but I know it exists. I read the papers.
And what do you think it says?
It’s a hoax.
What? How can you say that it is a hoax?
It’s just a scheme to make us believe that the climate is going to hell. Well, I don’t see the climate going to hell. What’s happening — the floods, droughts and all — are just random.
But that’s not the point of the report.
I don’t care. It’s a hoax. And you're saying it isn’t doesn’t make it true.
But you say you saw the report.
Of course, I did. But I don’t have to read it. I know it exists. You can say whatever you want about it. So, can I. The report doesn’t make a difference. It can’t change my mind. I don’t need to read it.
In other words, the “solution,” the “remedy” to a challenge, regardless of scale, exists independent of our position, our ‘present day ‘reality and facts.’
To begin to define, to focus on a problem, one acknowledges this independence.
Which brings us to yesterday’s announcement that the Office of the AG of the State of New York has filed a civil suit against Trump, his family and his organization for willfully falsifying financial disclosures to the state, lenders and insurance companies. Clear and concise were her words, thorough were her findings, 220 pages long. A fifteen-member investigative team she thanked.
During the ‘q and a’ following the announcement, the AG, Letitia James was asked, ‘what took your office so long to begin this investigation… some of what you found occurred over ten years ago… why wasn’t this investigated sooner?’
Well, as you know this investigation started after Michael Cohen testified under oath to Congress that Trump had deflated the value of his assets in order to pay a lower premium.
James’ answer convinces one that there was no political maneuver to her opening an investigation which the questioner hinted at, but that a member of Trump’s organization had stated he knew of fraudulent activity…then and now.
Irregardless of whether Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg based on the evidence accumulated will proceed to prosecute criminal charges against the Trump consortia and there are opinions that he won’t (1), James’ suit will not go away, neither will her motivation to investigate wrongdoing.
Today, the people of the State of New York were served, all of them.
Today was not ‘a bad day for Donald Trump’: today was a good day for justice.
September 22
Notes
(1) Tali Weinstein, MSNBC, Sept. 21
