Trials and Errors

Jury selection is strictly an emotional process. They're looking for people they can manipulate. Both sides are.
Joseph Wambaugh


George Zimmerman will be convicted. I'm making this prediction based on inferences from one fact and 30 seconds of TV news coverage. Details follow.

The fact: The Zimmerman jury is all female. Women, for better or worse, are more easily persuaded by emotional arguments.  Right now some of you (probably women) are thinking "Not aaallll women, you sexist bastard!" True, not all, but what follows is a statistical argument and the numbers are indifferent to your ideology. Besides, I doubt that there are any female mathematicians, engineers, physicists or other reputedly more systematic thinkers on that jury.

The TV coverage: The prosecutor is relatively young and relatively handsome. He stands erect, and speaks authoritatively while telling the jury the story of gun-toting would-be vigilante George Zimmerman, who set out to hunt poor, young, innocent Trayvon Martin.
Not with murder in his heart, perhaps, but with a vision of himself wielding the Sword of Justice against an imagined evildoer. That vision predisposed Zimmerman to violence.
According to the State's story, why else would Zimmerman have a gun, an object most women regard with emotions ranging from distaste to dread? Why else would Zimmerman have disregarded instructions to stay in his car? It's an easy story for these jurors to believe, because it fits the way most of them already think.

The defense attorney is older. He leans forward to address the jury like an aging uncle with advice to give. He opens with a lame joke, then tells the jury Zimmerman was defending himself against a vicious and unprovoked attack. He feared for his life, says the lawyer, justifying the use of lethal force. This is a technical argument that relies on evidence and legal reasoning, requiring the belief that young Martin was the aggressor. It takes substantial mental effort to process; the juror must want to be logical and unbiased.* The trouble is, most people think they're being logical and unbiased even when their judgement is the most skewed.

How do jurors decide guilt or innocence? The best theory we have tells us that these judgements are based on a "story model." That is, which side tells the most coherent story of the events? That, in turn, depends on both the storyteller and the listener. In this case, both the predispositions of the jurors and the superficial "cues of credibility" (see, e.g., this paper) are on the prosecutor's side. 

But wait----a jury verdict has to be unanimous. Only one juror can hold out and possibly sway the other five! Truth and justice can prevail! Right. How much are you willing to bet?
What research since the 1960's has shown is that group decisions (including jury verdicts) are based on the "weight of opinion" held by group members before any discussion at all. An even split of opinion might result in a hung jury, but if four of the six Zimmerman jurors buy the prosecutor's story, social pressure will do the rest.

You might care what I believe. As is often the case, both sides have it partially right. Zimmerman acted stupidly, looking for trouble when there was no need, his head full of sheepdog fantasies. He's a sad, fat little man who wanted to be a hero, and whose idea of heroics derived from silly action movies. Yes, he was defending himself against a young, aggressive punk who might well have injured or killed him---but he put himself in that position. Was Martin justified in attacking Zimmerman? Absolutely not. On a strictly legal basis, as I understand the law, was Zimmerman justified in shooting Martin? Absolutely yes. Does any of that matter? Sadly, probably not.

George Zimmerman is screwed.



*For a short introduction to these issues, see this.














http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_change

The Southern Poverty Law Center

  

I owe the Southern Poverty Law Center a lot. They influenced the direction of my life. Ironically, it's because of that direction that I've developed some serious reservations about them.

The beginning was around 1998. I'd read about the SPLC and how it tracked various hate groups and attacked them in court. I thought that was a good idea and sent a donation. In exchange they sent their "Intelligence Report," a periodical with information about the activities and people of the Klan, neo-Nazis and other varieties of slime. All was well and good until we got their year-end summary issue. It included a map of the US with little symbols--hoods, swastikas, boots, etc.--denoting the locations of active haters. There were dense concentrations of symbols in many of the places my wife and I liked to ride our motorcycle. Not only in Georgia, mind, but California, Colorado, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona....all places we'd been. It came home to me that Jack the Jewboy and his Quaker wife had been happily, innocently adventure-touring among monsters; monsters who'd enjoy harming us in nasty ways that the SPLC had thoughtfully detailed.

With this new knowledge came a choice: I could pretend I didn't know what I damned well did, riding as innocently as before. I could quit doing something my wife and I enjoyed, essentially surrendering our rights. Or I could be ready to fight back.

I had a flashback to 1971, when I'd gotten a death threat from the KKK (in Champaign, Illinois, nowhere near the SPLC's vision of hate-filled Dixie.) Then another, to the antisemitic bullying I'd taken in Chicago and Skokie. Then the last, to my first year at the University of Illinois. A speech by the then-leader of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell, was cancelled because Jewish fraternities had bought the entire local stock of baseball bats.

In November, if memory serves.

I bought my first handgun a short time later. That was the start of a lifetime odyssey, and maybe the subject of a future essay. For now let's just say that I was grateful to the SPLC and continued to donate for several years. I felt then, and in a way still feel, that their work is helpful and necessary.

But.

Over the years, perhaps because my friendships extended beyond the university, I started noticing some inconsistencies. For one thing, all the nasties seemed to come from the "Far Right." Antisemites, racial bigots, gay-haters, anti-government zealots, militias, all (bar a few "black separatists") were right-wingers. The left, it seemed, was a flower-child dreamworld in which all you needed was love. But while the progressives were busy imagining no posessions odd things were happening. Antisemitism was coming to universities, coddled and nurtured in "Mideast Studies" programs and elsewhere. Black "leaders" like Al Sharpton were actively attacking white people and promoting violence. Antisemitism is part and parcel of the "Occupy" movement, too. Remember the TV interview with he Occupier who said that "Zionist bankers don't belong in our country?" *If any of this was ever in the "Intelligence Report" I don't recall it. If I'm wrong, I welcome correction.

Then there's the SPLC's intolerance of academics who stray from liberal orthodoxy. I recall one historian taken to task for writing that the War Between the States wasn't primarily about slavery. "Revisionist history," they called it, and (again in my recollection, again welcoming correction) for that reason all but labelled the author a bigot.** This bothered me because they never opposed his arguments with historical scholarship. This tactic is called "ad hominem" argument, the logical fallacy of claiming an argument is wrong because you don't like its author. I wrote and told them so, because I'm an academic and care deeply about honest scholarship. Their response was a runaround.

Understand this: I don't claim the author in question was right. I don't know and not being an historian I don't have the tools or time to do original-source research on the topic. But somebody does, and they're the ones to take on his argument. The SPLC needs to present the arguments about these issues fairly so people can judge for themselves. They don't.

The SPLC is intellectually dishonest, too, in a sadly common way. Their "Teaching Tolerance" program, like other diversity initiatives, is well-intended and they seem to believe

it does good. The problem is, they don't know. The evaluations they present as evidence of effectiveness are worthless. Any graduate student in my field could design a study telling them how much, if any, improvement in intergroup relations resulted from their program. They, like many promoting social interventions, don't want real data. They want public relations.***

Finally, there's the SPLC's corporate dislike of anything that smacks of self-defense. They don't like guns and don't want anyone but police and their bodyguards to have them. They label Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership a "hard-right" group, which seems to be code for "We'd call them a hate group but can't." One wonders what they'd have to say about the Deacons for Defense and the Pink Pistols. Their stereotype seems to be that every shooting match is a militia waiting to happen and every self-defense school is a Nazi training camp.

Sociologically, this is understandable. Suppose the gay, black, Latino, Asian, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, et al. victims of real hate groups simply shot, stabbed, clubbed or otherwise dealt with their attackers. Problem solved. What scary pictures would the SPLC run on its magazine cover? Who would they sue? How would they get on TV? The SPLC's existence 

depends on telling people who believe themselves helpless that  "We'll protect you!"  If those people suddenly got up and said "Thanks, but we've got this,"  their entire reason for being would be gone. 

Imagine being offered a choice. Option 1: Attacked by vicious people, you or a loved one take a crippling beating, followed by a years-long lawsuit and a settlement that, no matter how large, does nothing to help you speak, see, walk or otherwise function as you did. 

Option 2: Attacked by the same people, you shoot the bastards down. Which would you choose, remembering that Option 1 only applies if the scumbags have anything worth suing for?

Of course, it's not that simple. Self-defense requires commitment and training. It's way easier to write a check and hope, meanwhile congratulating yourself on how moral and upstanding you are. As for me, I'll continue training, practicing and teaching those who want to start their own odyssey. The money I used to send to SPLC will go to JPFO. 

* Don't believe me? Start here:http://www.usccr.gov/campusanti-semitism.html

Then spend some time here: http://spme.net/
You might say, well, that's just a few instances. It's like cockroaches. For every one you see there are 100 in the walls.

** In case you think any revision of conventional thought is open to attack, consider the case of Michael Bellesiles, the Emory historian whose revisionist history of gun ownership was greeted with applause and prizes, at least until it was discovered that he'd made up his data.

See http://www.emory.edu/news/Releases/Final_Report.pdf

This doesn't reflect directly on the SPLC, but does show that anti-revisionist indignation among liberals is highly selective.

*** If you want to know how to do evaluations, start here: 

http://accultura.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/campbell-1969-reforms-as-experiments.pdf

The Sheepdog Fallacy

I'm an armed citizen and take self-defense seriously. I know the conventional wisdom: We're on our own, when seconds count the police are only minutes away, all of that. I train with a variety of weapons, in a variety of ways, with a variety of people all more adept and expert than I. My goal is to be safe, responsible, effective, and when possible to help others be the same. You'd be hard pressed to find a stronger supporter of the Bill of Rights--all 10 amendments--anywhere.

That said, there's an idea common in the self-defense community that I think is not only incorrect but dangerously so. It was put forward most recently in a pro-gun column in the August 3rd. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and goes like this:

People can be divided into three groups, sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Sheep are the stupid majority, helpless in the face of danger, cowardly, conforming, hiding from threats (real or imagined) in the midst of the herd. Wolves prey on these, snatching sheep and lambs as they can, leaving only bloody scraps behind.* Sheepdogs are the guardians of the flock, bravely standing between the sheep (for whom they have a vague contempt) and the wolves, their sworn enemies. This makes the self-identified sheepdogs very proud. 

Let's consider this for a minute. "Sheepdog" doesn't describe me and probably shouldn't apply to you, either. First, who do sheepdogs serve? Not the sheep. They serve the shepherd, who owns both the herd and the sheepdogs. What's the shepherd doing with the sheep? Making a living, first by regularly shearing, or "fleecing" them, second by eating them, and third by selling them to someone else for either purpose. Sure, the shepherd wants the sheep alive and healthy. His living depends on them. They're not pets, they're products. The sheepdogs aren't pets, either. They're regarded as employees at best, as tools at worst. They exist to do a job.

Second, what is the sheepdog's job? It's not to protect the individual sheep, which they couldn't do in any case. There are simply too many sheep and too few sheepdogs. Having enough sheepdogs to guarantee each sheep's safety is not possible. The goal is to keep sheep losses to an acceptable level. Acceptable to the shepherd, that is. Sheepdogs  protect the herd, not each sheep, and to make this collective protection (and fleecing, and roast lamb) feasible the herd must be controlled, which is the sheepdog's primary job.  Domestic sheep are unable to survive in the wild; without the shepherd's control they couldn't live.

Third, how do sheepdogs control the herd? Through fear. Many years ago in New Zealand I watched sheepdog trials. In response to the shepherd's whistles and hand signals his beautifully trained dogs circled the herd, crouching and staring at the sheep, who nervously moved away in the direction the shepherd wanted. If the sheep weren't fearful they couldn't be herded.

Think about it. Police officers are formally tasked with protecting "society," i.e. the herd, not the individual. (See, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia) In our society, governments from the Federal to the local increasingly act like shepherds.  Police, the great majority of whom are fine and honorable people, are in the role of sheepdogs, like it or not.

Armed citizens are a problem for the shepherds. Not being sheep, they're not afraid of the sheepdogs and are prepared to take on the wolves, hyenas or whoever. They mean no harm to anyone, have no desire to control others, but are much harder to control and therefore to exploit. Worse, their example might spread. They're not  wolves, but not  sheepdogs either. The shepherds, expecting obedience from everything but wolves, have no clue how to deal with them. Their common response is to try to get rid of armed citizens one way or another, typically by removing the arms. Acting like a sheepdog when you're not gives the shepherds that opportunity.

 From the sheepdog's viewpoint the armed citizen is just in the way, becoming one more source of disorder. They hate disorder. From the herd's viewpoint, they're either scary or a provocation. Sheep have dominance hierarchies, too. Consider George Zimmerman, whose sheepdog fantasies led him to confront Trayvon Martin. Martin might have grown up to be anything from a serial killer to a respected statesman, but at that moment he was just a smartass kid who wasn't going to let himself be pushed around. So he did what sheep do, butted heads with what he thought was another sheep, and now he's dead. Zimmerman, who might have become a respected leader in his community had he learned better judgment, may never get his life back. The shepherds, meanwhile, use this sad incident as yet another excuse to remove the "menace" of the armed citizen from their herds.

Given all that, if you must have an inspirational totem animal, what fits? Well, two of the most dangerous animals on the planet are the rhino and the Cape Buffalo. They're grass-eaters,  grazing happily if unmolested and seriously aggressive when threatened. Neither seems obligated to protect the zebras, wildebeest and so forth from the predators. Rhinos are pretty much solitary, buffalo live in groups that cooperate in their defense.  I wouldn't try to herd either one. Take your pick.

* I like wolves, who generally get a bad rap. Modern urban predators are more like hyenas or jackals, but that's another rant.