Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
You know that feeling when you’re leaning back in a chair, it seems to be almost magically balanced on just two legs—and then there’s the flash of panic when you realize it’s not?
I’ve been feeling that a lot recently—a profound cognitive dissonance, living between two worlds which seem utterly incompatible. The leaders we work with also report being caught in a balancing act between “staying the course” and feeling like there’s nothing usual about business and work today.
Although Washington, DC, has less total crime per capita than places like Detroit, Memphis, and Houston, we need National Guard troops from West Virginia and South Carolina to keep our streets safe? Make no mistake, this is a practice run to demonstrate and normalize President Trump sending guard units from Republican-lead states to intimidate Democratic leaders in other states.
For most folks, watching paint dry is more interesting than reading Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, yet the leader of an agency—trusted and relied upon by leaders across the political spectrum—was fired because July’s monthly employment numbers didn’t follow Trump’s narrative. Killing this messenger bodes ill for those of us in the real world who have grown accustomed to believing that we don’t live in a house made of sand.
World-class research is being stifled at the Environmental Protection Agency, National Institutes of Health, and myriad other agencies; findings from which have girded our lifestyle, culture, and economy—from the food we eat to the medicines we produce, from weather forecasting to maintaining our national parks.
Facts are the enemies of fraudsters. But whether you’re leading a business, running a foundation, or guiding a nonprofit through turbulent times, your mission, your strategy, and your day-to-day decisions are grounded in a fundamental understanding of reality. Like gravity, core facts just are. They’re not political.
Emotions count too—a lot, actually. But without real data, accurate statistics, and honest analysis, we’re awash in meaningless numbers.
And that’s the goal.
When everything is political, when no facts can be trusted, we lose our grip on reality. Can’t happen here? It’s an exaggeration?
Maybe. But maybe not. I was in the Soviet Union when high school history exams were cancelled across the country. Because they didn’t know how to grade them, having smothered historical truths with propaganda and lies.
And today it’s not just about history, but about our common future. Like a king, Trump believes he has the right to override constitutional parameters set for the Census and order a new one. He wants to lay a national curator at the Smithsonian Institution because it’s “OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was.” And he wants the right to rig congressional elections because he won the presidency.
It’s hard but we need to stay balanced on the see-saw between fact and fiction. We need to remember what normal is amidst a massive effort to normalize the outrageous. We need to really support each other—and those who may not be part of our inner circle but are also experiencing profound cognitive dissonance or worse. We need to guard against creeping self-censorship.
We need to speak the truth. A lie is a lie. What is illegal is illegal. Extortion is extortion. We can support the Smithsonian and make clear that if forced to engage in a historic cover-up, they will do so not by removing objects or materials but by covering them up. Literally, with canvas. Or maybe with a tapestry of American flags.
Photo by Andrew Harnik
