The Sherlock Holmes Test

The Key Is Prejudice

What's at the root of our downward spiraling politics?  Looking for an answer in reality that you decide on ahead of time.

Sherlock Holmes famously derided the constables at Scotland Yard for trying to fit evidence into a theory of what happened.  Holmes tried to instead let the evidence speak for itself.

An opinion columnist I happened to read recently in the local newspaper referenced the story from several years ago about how the I.R.S. during the Obama administration was caught harassing conservative political movements.  Which got me thinking..., wasn't that a phony story?  And, if so, shouldn't a respectable newspaper refuse to publish, simply because it isn't true?

And then just today I read about that phony story again, this time with a breakdown of what happened.

Republicans first asked the Inspector General to look into IRS audits of conservative organizations.  This turns up a "smoking gun", or so it seems.  ...Until the Democrats ask the Inspector General to look into all IRS audits of political organizations.  This unmasks what had been "other" organizations (those that were not conservative) as being mainly progressive.  The final tally is 115 conservative and 110 progressive, as well as a handful of non-partisan outfits.

The story about how the IRS harassed conservative groups is debunked.  The problem, of course, is that nitwits in the Republican party wanted to fit evidence to their politics, and then looked the other way when all the evidence was set forth.  So, for them, the story is still true.

Since the I.R.S. is bad, so the nitwit narrative went, we'll only ask about conservative groups, which, we hope, will produce the storyline we want.

Healing the country's politics won't happen until everyone, in searching for the truth, takes the Sherlock Holmes approach.