A flashbulb memory is a memory so powerful that it is forever burned into your brain. Where were you when JFK was assassinated? When Pearl Harbor was attacked? On 9/11?

Flashbulb memories are caused by flashbulb events. These events commonly affect a society as a whole. There are many side effects of these events- they tend to bring families closer together, inspire people to follow their dreams, and to start families.

They also have a surprising and long term side effect… They shake people’s faith in their own ability to understand the world so deeply that people tend to actively seek authority figures in whom to place near absolute trust and confidence. Because these events affect large societies, they can cause hundreds of millions of people to abandon reason and critical thought for a sense of security. In psychology, it is a phenomenon unlike any other.

When JFK was assassinated, the public assumed that the Federal Government would do the investigating, that it could naturally do a better job than the police. They assumed that the government would naturally have our best interest in mind, and would never abuse the power placed in their hands in a time of emergency. It never crossed anybody’s mind that they might even have been involved in causing it.

The assassination of a president is not a federal crime. This is intentional, to prevent the possibility that the military, or any other branch of the federal government, would assassinate the president and then cover it up.

In times of crisis, people seek opportunities to abandon their judgment to a higher authority. The civilian doctors, who began the autopsy of JFK, did not question the military illegally taking the body and altering their notes. The Dallas police didn’t hesitate when the FBI took over most of the investigation. The media and police remained largely silent when the new president, Lyndon Johnson, had the bullet-riddled limousine completely rebuilt before any forensic analysis could be done on it.

Forty years later, evidence that the government was involved in JFK’s assassination is pretty conclusive. But most people prefer not to investigate or demand answers from the government. They argue that it was 40 years ago, and answers today would be irrelevant. The truth is it is far easier to leave it at “that was then, this is now” than it is to investigate the matter thoroughly, possibly finding both that the assassination wasn’t particularly difficult, and that it could easily be reproduced in modern times.

On September 11, 2001, America suffered another flashbulb event. Immediately after came the assumption that it was both necessary and wise to make drastic changes to our government, that it should be given broad new powers, and would never abuse the power placed in its hands in a time of emergency.

The first thing we lost was perspective.

We were not fighting a new enemy, and they were not suddenly all that powerful. Al-Qaeda has been at war with us for over 20 years. They’ve made dozens of attempts to bring down the World Trade Center. They planned Millennium attacks, to simultaneously blow up 12 passenger planes over the Atlantic, and probably hundreds more attacks the public doesn’t know about.

2001 was not a banner year for them. They didn’t recruit a new evil genius to lead them, they didn’t increase their dedication to our destruction, and they didn’t grow in numbers by any significant amount.

The only difference was that after 20 years, one of their plans finally, unequivocally, worked.

Well, give Ray Charles 200 darts and stick him in front of a dartboard, and even he will eventually hit the bull’s-eye. Doesn’t mean he can see.

They were willing to die to do us some damage. They were bound to succeed eventually. It was a question of time. And as spectacular as their success was, over 35,000 people die every year on our highways, 100,000 people from smoking. After 20 years of passionate hatred of our country, and a total commitment to destroying us, they have had only one major success, taking a total of 2,000 American lives. This suggests to me that they aren’t the threat we think they are.

Yes, there were failures on our end. Yes, the system could be improved. Improving inter-agency communication, reinforcing cockpit doors, and allowing for fuel dumps mid-air would all prevent the same thing from happening again. But an overhaul of a system which by all appearances has been working quite well seems to defy common sense, as did the assumption that we’d have to lose freedoms and weaken our moral positions to protect ourselves.

The Germans honestly believed that they were liberating Poland. Pinochet believed that the best way to protect his country was to silence dissidents who made his job harder, and to attack countries before they could attack him. Just as each murderer in jail believes himself innocent, that his crimes were justified and not as heinous as his cell mate’s, so do nations.

We should understand crime and punishment. Russia, the former record holder for the greatest percentage of its population in prison at 6%, has lost that title. With just over 7% of its population in prison, the US, the “Land of the Free” holds the world record for the percentage of its own people in jail (beating out China).

For the first time in history, we have changed from an enlightened policy of retaliation to the imperial policy of preemptive strikes against countries which might be a threat- acting in self defense by striking first.

We have used White Phosphorus, which we classified as a chemical weapon when used by other countries, in the war in Iraq (and, after using it, re-classified it as a conventional weapon).

We are rounding up suspects in Iraq¹ and Afghanistan²(including known U.S. allies³) who are detained, sometimes for years, tortured⁴ and raped⁵, then released without charges. Human Rights Watch has called Abu Ghraib the “Tip of the Iceberg”⁶, and calls it a fair sampling of treatment which occurs, to this day, in 25 U.S. detention centers⁷ across Iraq. By the Army’s own accounting, a minimum of 28 to 31 detainees⁸ are suspected to have been murdered⁹ by U.S. officials while in custody (only one of them in Abu Ghraib). These murders are routinely listed as deaths by “natural causes”¹⁰. In some cases, prisoners who are released and speak out about what they experienced in U.S. custody have disappeared¹¹.

The Red Cross estimates that 60-90% of the people currently detained by the U.S. are held by mistake.

According to our own military personnel, children as young as 10 are being captured, raped and tortured by the United States¹². Labeled as “Internees”, they are held indefinitely, without notification of their families, and are denied access to the International Red Cross. It has become common practice for the U.S. Military to detain the families of suspects so that they may be used as leverage. In one case, the ACLU believes a tape exists of a 14-year-old boy being raped in front of his father to elicit a confession. Though ordered by a U.S. Court, the government refuses to turn over the tape on the grounds that to do so would humiliate the boy, and thus violate the Geneva Convention¹³.

The United States refuses to cooperate with UNICEF in regard to its child prisoners, and routinely denies medical access to prisoners from the International Red Cross. Amnesty International¹⁴ has called Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our time”¹⁵.

It should be noted that Iraq does not present a security risk to the United States, nor was it involved in the 9/11 attacks. It should also be noted that the evidence that torture doesn’t work is overwhelming. People being tortured (both guilty and innocent) simply lie- make up stuff, to get the torture to stop.

Vice President Dick Cheney has said that, in the finest American tradition¹⁶, prisoners are being treated better than they would be by “virtually any other government on the face of the earth”¹⁷. He is also currently lobbying congress to legalize human rights abuses¹⁸ by the United States.

We have more classified documents, unreviewed by civilian authorities, than at any other time in history, including the Cold War and the McCarthy Era.

The Patriot Act appears to be being actively being used against U.S. citizens who are not thought to be, or even associated with, terrorists. Of the over 400 convictions brought about by the Patriot Act, only 39 of the people convicted were convicted of terrorism¹⁹, and of those the average sentence was 11 months. The Patriot Act requires judges to grant FBI warrants, with no oversight, if the FBI simply clams that it is part of a foreign intelligence investigation²⁰. It also empowers the government to declare any US citizen a “Material Witness”, a status which allows indefinite detainment, and denies the detainee the right to counsel and a preliminary hearing²¹. It makes no requirement to notify friends, family, or any civilian organization of a person’s detainment.

In at least one case, a newspaper reporting these facts appears to have had it story misrepresented by, and the target of, the Department of Justice²².

We have gone from being a country so bored with our everyday lives that we impeached our own President for possibly lying under oath in a civil suit (a misdemeanor, by the way) based on the testimony of a single person…

… to a country that watches phenomenal amounts of evidence pile up that multiple members of this administration (including the President²³) have lied before congress (a felony, by the way), deliberately violated the Geneva Convention and international law, endorsed and authorized war crimes²⁴, and ruled over a period in which, for the first time in history, America has been denounced by every major human rights organization in the world ²⁵.

All of this is printed every day in newspapers, and that I can tell, few people have noticed.

The difference between the two (investigating a president for possibly lying about sex, and forgiving a president who may be guilty of multiple felonies) is simple. It is a single flashbulb event.

1. Tanner, A. (2005, January 12). Iraqi Victim Says U.S. Torture Worse Than Saddam. Reuters [↩]
2. Sheed, J. (2005, March 21). Guantanamo Abuse ‘Videotaped’. The Australian [↩]
3. Bahrain royal family member tortured at Guantanamo prison camp. (2005, August 10). Associated Press [↩]
4. White, J. (2005, August 3). Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs. Washington Post, p.A01. [↩]
5. Buncombe, A. & Morris, N. (2004, August 4). Shocking prisoner abuses are revealed. The Independent [↩]
6. Simpson, I. (2005, April 17). Rights Group: Abu Ghraib Abuses ‘Tip of Iceberg’. Reuters [↩]
7. Croke, L. A (2004, September 24). Torture and Rape Rampant in Iraq Prisons. The New Standard [↩]
8. Jehi, D. (2005, March 26). Pentagon Will Not Try 17 GI’s Implicated in Prisoners’ Deaths. The New York Times [↩]
9. Jehi, D. & Schmitt, E. (2005, March 16). U.S. Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide. The New York Times [↩]
10. U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq. (2005, October 24). ACLU [↩]
11. Harding, L. (2004, May 12). Focus shifts to jail abuse of women. The Guardian [↩]
12. http://www.sundayherald.com/43796 [↩]
13. ACLU Blames Gov’t for Abu Ghraib Delay. (2005, July 22). Associated Press [↩]
14. Rights group leader says U.S. has secret jails. (2005, June 6). CNN [↩]
15. Cohn, M. (2005, June 16). Bush Plays Politics with Guantánamo “Gulag”. Truthout [↩]
16. Patterns of Abuse. (2005, May 23). The New York Times Editorial [↩]
17. Lewis, A. (2005, June 21). Guantánamo’s Long Shadow. The New York Times [↩]
18. Vice President for Torture. (2005, October 26). The Washington Post [↩]
19. Myths and Realities About the Patriot Act. ACLU, [↩]
20. See Above [↩]
21. See Above [↩]
22. The Editor, (2005, December 5). Washington Post’s Response to DOJ Patriot Act Letter. The Washington Post [↩]
23. FBI E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques. ACLU [↩]
24. The Pinochet Principle: Bush Defends Torture in the Name of National Security. (2004, June 9). Democracy Now [↩]
25. Lobe, J. (2005, May 26). Give Rumsfeld the Pinochet Treatment, Says US Amnesty Chief. International Press Service [↩]

Two of the most common cognitive mistakes, Confirmation Bias and Attribution Error, have far reaching consequences in everything from politics to auto repair.

Attribution Error is where, given an absence of contradictory information, people will assign positive motives to themselves (or people like them), and negative motives to others (or dissimilar people) for any given act.

The most common example is driving. When we cut someone off, we say we did it accidentally, because we were in a rush, or, in some cases, because they deserved it.

However, when someone cuts us off, we say they did it because they’re a jerk or a bad person. This is opposed to equally probable explanations such as they did it accidentally, because they were in a rush, or because, in some cases, we deserved it.

This is why there are no guilty people in prison. Convicts usually claim that while other prisoners may deserve to be punished, their own crimes (even murder) were justified.

Any “immoral” act (stealing, accepting bribes, lying under oath) by a political figure will be seen by his party in the most sympathetic light possible, as an aberration, mistake, or lapse of judgment. The opposing party will see the same offense as a sign of failed moral character, and a symptom of rampant corruption. That is until a member of that party commits the same act.

Confirmation Bias is the human tendency to only try to prove theory, not disprove it. This is differs from the tendency to try to avoid being proven wrong, as confirmation bias applies even in the genuine search for new knowledge, not just to the testing of established beliefs.

Imagine 4 cards, each with a number on one side, and a letter on the other side:

E 7 4 F

If someone (lets call her “Susan”) says that “Every card which has a vowel on one side has an even number on the other,” which cards would you have to flip over to see if Susan is right?

Think about it before moving on…

The way to determine if Susan is right is to see if every card with a vowel on one side has an even number on the other. If even one vowel has an odd number, then Susan is wrong.

“E” is the most common first card flipped, and indeed is correct. If the number on the other side of “E” is odd, then Susan is wrong. If it is even, that doesn’t mean Susan is right- just that she’s right so far.

“4” is the second most common card flipped. This is wrong, and is our first encounter with confirmation bias. What is on the other side of “4” is irrelevant. If it’s a consonant, that doesn’t make Susan wrong (She didn’t say ONLY vowels had an even number on the other side). If it’s a vowel, that’s consistent with Susan’s statement, but doesn’t prove it, or give us any information we don’t already have.

“F” is, by the same token, irrelevant.

The “7” card is not flipped by most people. This is another mistake. If the other side has a consonant, it means nothing. But if it’s a vowel, then Susan is decidedly wrong. This card must be flipped to determine if Susan is right, but people ignore it because of confirmation bias.

When al-Qa’ida successfully destroyed the world trade center, they saw it as evidence that God was on their side. When they failed to simultaneously blow up 6 airliners over the Atlantic, they didn’t consider it proof that He wasn’t. That is confirmation bias.

Rev. Jerry Falwell claimed that God allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur because of gays and abortion rights. Florida was later hit with the worst series of hurricanes in its history, with Miami-Dade getting disproportionately high damage. Despite this coming on the heels of serious irregularities in Florida’s 2000 election, mostly centered on Miami-Dade, he did not claim that God allowed it as a result of voter fraud. That is attribution error.

One political example where attribution error and confirmation bias combine and confound is in claims of political bias in the media.

Each side of the political spectrum believes that the media is biased against them. The Pew Charitable Trusts Project for Independence in Journalism found that in the 2004 election John Kerry got a higher volume favorable press than George Bush. Most right wing media organizations have cried loud and oft that this is proof of liberal bias in the media.

To assume that favorable press is an indication of bias is an attribution error. Favorable press could just as easily come from a candidate’s charm, his ability to cover up indiscretion, genuine moral superiority, or time in the public eye (4 years in office gave greater opportunity to dig up dirt on Bush), or any number of things. The right simply assumes it must be because the media is biased.

Assuming for a moment that favorability did indicate bias, there is yet another problem with using the 2004 Pew study to show liberal bias. That problem is the 2000 Pew study, which found that in the 2000 election the media gave Bush nearly 50% more favorable coverage than it gave Gore. Pew called the studies mirror images of each other.

The 2004 study references the 2000 study, and they are on the same website. Yet The Washington Times, Fox News, and other right wing news sources are continually claiming that the 2004 study proves a liberal bias. Given the 2000 study, the claim borders on ludicrous.

Are you liberal? Are you reading this right now? Enjoying it? The right wing sucks, don’t they? Knowingly lying about what the 2004 study means… Of course, to say that is to suffer attribution error, when it is far more likely that the right’s oversight is simply confirmation bias.