Trump, Democrats, and a Lesson in Confirmation Bias
Wow, do I hate being wrong yet being right? Kind of…
I woke up this morning with a thought in my head, “Hey, I bet that the number of indictments an administration has directly relates to their contribution to the national deficit.”
Wow, I was wrong. I have always been a big believer in questioning my own beliefs. I don’t like being wrong, so sometimes, I will paralyze myself with analysis and get nothing done. I hate that too. Paralysis through analysis is a real thing, and it is something I have always fought against. Sometimes, you have to dive in.
This morning, I was feeling particularly saucy, so I started writing an article explaining in no uncertain terms how increases in the deficit always relate to increases in administration malfeasance and indictments. Sounds like something that could be true, doesn’t it? It isn’t.
I was 3/4 or so through writing the piece and thought, “Hey dummy, maybe you do some research before you look like a moron!”
I enjoy researching a topic, so I figured it couldn’t do any harm. As I dug deeper, I realized another thing I always figured I knew without any actual data to back it up. Politicians love spending money, no matter which party, they live for it. I won’t bore you with all the details, but here’s a pretty picture:
As you can see, Reagan and Trump correlate the most, but that was 2 out of 7, so not much correlation. What I did learn is that Republicans seem to enjoy committing crimes or at least being indicted for them a lot more than Democrats. I also learned that, just based on pure facts, Trump has a problem running a government free of criminal activity.
No wonder he hates investigators and the courts. It seems like they’re all out to get him. I’m sure if he would, I don’t know, maybe stop committing crimes. It might work out better for him, but that’s a long shot. Regardless, he seems to like crime and spending money. I’m not sure those are the qualities we should look for in a president, but here we are. Let’s focus on the blue line.
Except for Carter, these dudes all seemed to love spending money, even the ones who campaigned on cutting spending. I’m sure they all have their reasons. Wars, pandemics, etc., do not account for all this spending. They all seem to love irrational debt.
This is one of the few legitimate issues we can correctly say is a “both sides” problem. Campaign rhetoric aside, republicans love to spend as much, if not more, than Democrats. They also get indicted more.
There you have it. Confirmation bias loses again because I chose to look at data instead of assuming I was correct. There seems to be no objective relation between debt spending and criminal activity in a given administration.
One party does not have a monopoly on aggressive, over-the-top spending. They both do it. One party, however, has an almost ironclad death grip on indictments in their administration.
Is that concerning? I don’t know; we should explore that more and see what the data tells us.
