Read my lips... or don't bother

I read a column by David Brooks in the New York Times today that prompted me to, once again, think that there is little new under the sun, so to speak.

His thesis was prompted by a single paragraph from a theologian, and that graf boiled down to something like "we should judge people's beliefs by how they live their lives rather than by their professed allegiance to a particular faith (or lack of faith).

So, wait. "We are what we do more than what we say?" Shocking.

That Brooks gets paid to share this is a surprise to me, just as I was a bit surprised that HE seemed to think he had discovered something. His greater point, by the way,  was that this generosity of spirit could convince large numbers of people to move beyond Christian Nationalism. 

Sure.

Not coincidentally, I read somewhere that many Americans polled about their views on Trump on his policies might aim at simply "owning" or provoking the pollsters. The pundit who mentioned this imagined that Trump might enjoy much less support than polls indicate. 

I would argue that, for related reasons (including "this is what I SHOULD say), he might enjoy much more support. 

Bottom line: polls depend upon respondents being willing to share opinions and to be relatively truthful in their responses. Yes, I know sophisticated polls are designed to overcome people lying or shading the truth or being deliberately inconsistent. But polls, in the end, are dependent upon what people say.

Elections, on the other hand, are easily measured and rule-based. In fact, we call places people voting "polling places." Ballots are marked in secret... just the voter and a series of stark choices. 

Recently, there were gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey whose results were far different from what the polls indicated. Those polls claimed that the races were close. They were not.

Of course, the polls might be flawed, but when so many polls prove to be inaccurate so many times, we should simply suspect that what people say and what they do are not the same. I am not suggesting that people are secretly good, necessarily, or secretly bad, or secretly selfish or racist or misogynist or whatever. 

I will also note that most news media that publish poll results are interested in more readership and no one wants to read about runaway elections that are not competitive. Our media have long abandoned any serious examination of policies and local observation on a wide scale. The country is too big and too diverse and too difficult to even comprehend.

Let's just focus our attention on the latest Twitter/X controversy and ignore the fact that most of the nation never reads a tweet. We just read what pundits have to say about tweets.

So, thanks, Mr. Brooks. Today's little essay reinforces my inclination to skip over all news stories that involve poll results... until there are actual elections and clear results.

Everything else is just navel gazing.