Notes From My Knapsack 4-1-21

Notes From My Knapsack 4-1-21

Jeff Gill

Won't Get Fooled Again
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Whether this column runs, in print or online, April the First, we all know that there's a trust issue around any announcement or information that comes out around that date.

I've served on panels and committees that have contorted work schedules and release dates just to make sure that a press release or resolution doesn't have the dreaded "April 1" at the top of it, and run the risk of people thinking it's all a joke.

What's been so worrisome in public discourse over the last few months, certainly well before the events on the Capitol grounds in Washington at the start of January, is how many people are thinking it's April Fools Day 365 days of the year.

Not trusting government isn't new. Pete Townsend wrote "Won't Get Fooled Again" in 1971, and "The Who" released it just in time to be echoed by the New York Times with the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Mistrust of the federal government was a thing even before Watergate got rolling the next summer.

And now we have different branches of state government arguing about trust, with the legislature overruling a veto by the governor of a restriction on his ability to declare public health emergencies. Were businesses hurt more by Mike DeWine's policy decisions, or the reality of an infectious agent rumbling around our communities? Did the citizens of Ohio listen more to an inaccurate state leader, or to the evidence of their own eyes and experiences?

I have been baffled by the actions of Statehouse Republicans to make it a mark of party loyalty to not wear masks on the floor of the two chambers while in session; I have Republican friends and associates who have tried hard to convince me that their data about mask wearing is more reliable than the information the state health department is using, and that Dr. Fauci's initial statement a year ago is more reliable than what he said later as the pandemic developed.

To say the least, I am not convinced. But there's the whole problem in a nutshell: I have information sources and data analysis I trust, and they have different ones. My suspicion is that they are picking the inputs that get them the outcome they want — not having to wear masks and telling people to go on about their lives — and they suggest I am preferring studies which . . . and this is where it falls apart, I think, because I honestly don't see how anything about this past year suits me or has helped me or mine. If you know me personally, you can fill in about a thousand words of confirmation of that understanding.

When it comes to public policy, we've beaten to death the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan's apothegm: "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts." The challenge for us all is that, in fact, people do pick their own preferred facts. The opportunity we have in public policy is in figuring out what irreducible facts are relevant to our common life.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been fooled before, and wouldn't say he never will again. Tell him how you ascertain facts you live by at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.