The Cover-Up

 

I was just listening to a conversation between Ezra Klein and Jake Tapper concerning the so-called "cover-up" of Joe Biden's cognitive abilities.

The implication of the conversation is that it was not a cover-up. A "cover-up" is a conspiracy and a conspiracy requires a number of people who understand that they are doing something underhanded and they intend to keep their participation secret.

What Tapper was talking about was "group think."

So, it was not that members of Biden's inner circle came together with the intention of deceiving the public, but that they came to believe what they were telling one another in the face of obvious truths to the contrary.

There was nothing nefarious about it and it was not due to personal stupidity. The truth is -- and I see this increasingly as the years go by -- that people believe what they want to believe. And generally what they want to believe is not just what is good for them personally, but what their families and friends believe.

It is a social imperative.

I think it is reasonable to say that what most people believe around politics has less to do with a thoughtful consideration of the issues over time, then it has to do with the tendency toward social conformity and deference to authority.

When it came to Biden's cognitive abilities they, most of them, probably believed that, yeah, he wasn't the Biden of ten years ago, but he's OK.

Everybody else around them thought he was OK and, for the most part, he was OK. Of course, then there were the times when it wasn't... but basically he was.

Or so they thought.

It wasn't so much that they were lying to us as they were lying to themselves.

Just like the rest of us do about any number of issues every damn day.