It’s not a word you hear much anymore, but it’s as relevant now as ever: soothsayer – “a person who predicts the future by magical, intuitive, or more rational means.” It first came to my attention as a kid in reading William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in probably junior high. Since the 17th century, as you might image, the term has faded as a part of common language, replaced by terms like “witch,” then eventually psychic. Since the collapse of the Psychic Friends Network, all those people able to see the future have migrated to the world of politics.
There are few industries where being completely wrong in every aspect of your profession holds no consequences whatsoever. Political punditry tops whatever else is on that list. Just look at Dick Morris or everyone on cable television who said the words “red wave” last year.
The pubic has the attention span of a gnat, or they simply don’t mind being lied to. I’m not sure which it is, but neither is a good characteristic for a society hoping to improve itself in any way.
Still, these soothsayers with a history of being wrong about the future never stop. Cable news and those who consume it don’t mind being wrong, as long as they were wrong in a way the audience wanted to be true. It’s become more important to tell people what they want to be true, what they hope is true, rather than what is actually true: that no one knows what is going to happen in the future. Tomorrow or next year, it does not matter – the more confidently someone tells you what will happen next, the less they have any idea.
You see it everywhere, but nowhere more pronounced than in punditry over elections. “The DeSantis campaign is finished because the polling data shows Trump is ahead…6 full months before anyone actually votes on anything.”
The microwave and the Internet have bred out of us any sense of patience – we want what we want and we want it now. We’re the binge-watching generation, people who get angry when we have to wait a week for the next episode of anything. Waiting six months is just not who we are anymore.
The only certain things about polls is the farther away from the event they are conducted, the less likely they are to offer any reflection of the ultimate outcome. Remember when Howard Dean was the runaway favorite in the 2004 Democratic nomination race? He was so far ahead in the polls at one point that he’d started running a presidential campaign in states that weren’t ever going to matter in the primary. It was “50 state strategy,” getting ahead of himself to the point that he only won a single race in his home state of Vermont.
If it were possible, we’ve become less patient as a society since then. Dean crowned himself the winner and the media went along with it. Now the media declares winners and losers almost faster than the candidates can.
That opens up a lot of space for people to simply make things up. Why not, really? When there are no consequences for being wrong, why not go crazy and declare things simply to be? After a day or two of “Wow, we don’t know why that ‘red wave’ didn’t happen” coverage on cable news, the entire concept and any mention of the predictions disappeared. Occasionally you’ll see one of the losing candidates on TV talking about some podcast they’re hosting or offering up more predictions about events they’re completely disconnected from, but they’re rarely referred to as having anything to do with the entire reason the audience has any idea who they are. Most just disappear. What happened to Hershel Walker or Dr. Oz?
All of them were, to one degree or another, declared to be future winners and it just didn’t pan out. Wouldn’t it be nice if the professional prognostication class didn’t exist? Since that won’t happen anytime soon, wouldn’t it be almost as good if they learned something – maybe a little humility – from all the being wrong? Then again, if they were capable of learning something like that they likely wouldn’t make the mistake in the first place.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.