Mistakes Were Made because A+B ≠C

Thoughts about the tragedy in Tucson have monopolized my mind since it happened. There has been a wave of inspired writing here on Open Salon, the likes of which I hadn't seen in my 11-month involvement here. It tells me I am not alone as I cast about for an inkling of an explanation.


We still don't have any idea what fueled that massacre. We assume Jared Lee Loughner is mad -- wouldn't he have to be to do something like that -- but we really don't know that conclusively.


But the national dust-up between liberals and conservatives in the aftermath of the carnage has taken on a life of its own. When I'm not caught up in the emotion of it all, I find it intriguing.

I studied logic in college. I am no expert, to say the least, but I truly enjoyed the only course in the Philosophy department I ever took. In logic there is a form of deductive reasoning that consists of 1) a major premise; 2) a minor premise; and, 3) a conclusion. This form is called a syllogism.


Example of a valid syllogism


Major premise: All men are mortal.

Minor premise: Robert is a man.

Conclusion: Robert is mortal.


In a valid syllogism, the subject in the major premise (e.g., men) must be part of the predicate in the minor premise (e.g., is a man).

Example of an invalid syllogism:

Major premise: All men are mortal.

Minor premise: Robert is sick.

Conclusion: Robert is mortal.



This example is a fallacy. The premises do not support the conclusion.



I tried to apply logic to some of the conclusions people reached after the shooting.

For instance:


Major premise: Jared Lee Loughner shot Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other people.

Minor premise: Sarah Palin used gun-sighting crosshairs on a campaign map.

Conclusion: Sarah Palin shares the blame for Loughner's act.

Does this pass the test for a valid argument (syllogism)? No, it does not.


Let's try another:


Major premise: Jared Lee Loughner shot Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other people.

Minor premise: Glenn Beck, when asked what he would do for $50M, said this: "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out. Is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus -- band -- Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore,' and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, 'Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death.' And you know, well, I'm not sure." –responding to the question "What would people do for $50 million?", "The Glenn Beck Program," May 17, 2005 (Source)

Conclusion: Glenn Beck's rhetoric could have encouraged Jared Lee Loughner's behavior.

As reprehensible as Beck's statements were, and as much as we think such statements are incendiary, this syllogism is a fallacy. It doesn't pass the test of validity.

A series of mistakes, both in actions and in logic, have been made in this case. These are the ones I think were the most costly.

1. Jared Lee Loughner didn't get effective treatment. We don't know if Loughner received ANY treatment, but we can say with impunity that if there was treatment, it didn't prevent the disastrous outcome of his illness. The Pima County Community College did everything they could to protect the school from liability and its students from whatever danger Loughner posed, but did they do enough? Did his parents do enough or were they thwarted by lack of money, lack of access to resources or some combination of the two? Was Jared simply not willing to seek help?

2. The Congresswoman’s target status caused people to make connections that were not valid. If the target of the shooting had not been a member of Congress, there would have been no compelling way to make the leap to blaming Palin, Limbaugh and Beck. It would have sparked the gun control debate and mental health treatment discussions because of their obvious relevance to the case. It appears that Loughner's beef with Representative Giffords could be a personal affront that his bizarre mind conjured up. Might that not be enough to lead him to his assassination attempt?

3. The collective public outrage created a desperate need to understand. The horror of the incident is more than individual Americans can take in. Our minds race to exonerate ourselves first, then our family, then our affiliates, including political. We don’t want to be responsible for such a travesty. In the same manner that children shout “I didn’t do it, she did,” in an attempt to deflect the blame for an infraction to another target, some liberals pointed to conservatives. Being adults and intelligent, some may have seen a “Gotcha,” a chance to flagellate those who appear to condone, indeed promote, the use of violence to win, with the probable consequences of those tactics. The accusations flew. Prematurely.

4. Right-wing pundits refused to acknowledge any possibility of connection, citing “no evidence.” Maybe out of fear that there in fact was a connection, given the record of contact between the shooter and the Congresswoman, Limbaugh and Beck started screaming, loudly, about “they” meaning all liberals, accusing them of trying to make political hay out of a tragedy. They railed against liberals looking for a way for the shooter NOT to pay for his crimes.

Because we didn’t wait to get all the facts before we started trying to assign blame, we have lost the point of the argument surrounding vitriolic rhetoric. The assumption of a political connection distorted all other discussions. Even if there was never to be any connection, the fact that it was a violent massacre using a semi-automatic weapon was and is indisputable. We made the mistake of rushing to judgment and politicizing it, thus rendering dead in the water all opportunities for using the incident as a catalyst to reassess political discourse.

Our world of instant everything – news, coffee, rice, mashed potatoes, bank statements, oatmeal, photographs and pregnancy tests – have encouraged one of our least evolved human tendencies; i.e., to jump to conclusions based on available information, even if the available information is not complete enough to insure validity. Can we learn from our mistakes this time?