Predictive Power

There was a discussion among some entry-level and mid-level political officers at lunch the other day about what makes a good political officer. There was some disagreement on minor issues, but there was across the board agreement on one major feature that separates the average political officer from the excellent one: reporting that carries accurate predictive power.



Anyone of moderate intelligence can report the news and answer the mail, two activities that are a political officer's main daily task. We use our contacts, networks, and skills to respond to queries from Washington that fall within our portfolio (the mail) and we use those same things to keep Washington informed well before conventional journalism on what is going on (the news).

Predictive power takes these things and lifts them up to the next level. With regard to the mail, the response not only answers the question but accurately and correctly anticipates follow-up questions and likely results on the ground. With the news, the reporting officer can flesh the bare facts out with accurrate predictions as to likely outcome and how best to be ready for responses, counter-moves, counter-proposals, unlikely eventualities, well in advance.

When an officer loses his predictive power, something is wrong. Either his network is too set in stone and is telling him what he wants to hear or, more likely, his own personal opinions and politics are getting in the way of dispassionate analysis.
It's a sign that something is seriously wrong, that someone with more experience needs to counsel the officer, needs to nudge or push him in the right direction.

Which is why the latest racial news story in the U.S. has me so concerned, not just about the mainstream conservative movement as seen in such publications as National Review or in the right of the Republican Party, but for the real American right as well. From all quarters of this right, reaction to the Martin story and its fallout has revealed a deep lack of predictive power. Some examples:

National Review Online, The Corner, Rich Lowry, Editor (March 23, 2012):

On the Martin case, I’m with VerBruggen. At the very least, Zimmerman precipitated the tragedy with his foolhardy acts, and there should be a trial to determine if he’s guilty of a crime. So give Sharpton and Co. this: They have highlighted what appears to be a mistake and injustice in the handling of the case. On the other hand, I’m uncomfortable with the ideological baggage that has been piled on the tragedy and the “trial by media” we are seeing right now.

American Conservative, Rod Dreher Blog (March 27, 2012):

Yet where are the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton rallies to confront the causes of black-on-black homicide in America? If they could succeed at that, even a little bit, they would save far more black lives than with what they’re doing in Florida. But of course there are few self-aggrandizement possibilities in such a cause. There are no potential financial rewards for these two shakedown artists in taking on that cause. And there is less potential for racial outrage. It looks for all the world like to these guys, the shooting death of a young black man only really matters if the shooter was white.

George Zimmerman may be guilty of a crime. If the new investigation finds sufficient reason to charge him with homicide in this case, then I hope and expect that he will be charged, and have his day in court. Whatever happens on that front, though — that is, whether he is guilty or innocent of a crime in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin — he is inescapably and permanently a scapegoat.

View From the Right, "A Prediciton," Lawrence Auster (March 26, 2012):

I don't normally make predictions, but I think it's reasonable to expect that, as a result of the continued steady emergence of the facts, within two or three or four days, a week at most, the entire Martin-Zimmerman affair will have disappeared without a trace from the mainstream media. The white liberals, the blacks (except for the hardcore ones like the New Black Panther Party), and the hoodie-wearing celebrants of all races will simply turn away and forget Trayvon Martin when they realize that their fact-free sacred narrative of murderous white racism and victimized black innocence has collapsed. Of course they won't admit they were wrong, and they won't admit to the terrible harm they have done (to George Zimmerman, to the additional whites who will now be assaulted or killed by blacks, and to race relations in general); they will simply turn their attention to the next convenient white racist hate object that comes along. Even "Rich" Lowry, editor of America's flagship conservative magazine, won't admit he was wrong. Where is the profit in drawing attention to his own fatuousness?

Here we see the mainstream, the alternative and the leading writer of the traditionalist Right all get the story wildly wrong, each making fundamental errors in predictive ability.

Lowry sees a tragedy, probably caused by Zimmerman, but is "uncomfortable" with the trail by media, when it is beyond obvious that whatever the facts may be, Zimmerman is guilty and will be made to pay by the liberal establishment come hell or high water.

Dreher decries two powerful American political leaders, obviously not understanding why they are powerful leaders, and can only bring himself to decry "black-on-black" violence. He does not appear to know that those two are powerful for very good reasons, and, more critically, that black-on-black violence is politically insignificant because it does not advance the quasi-genocidal anti-white ideology of his enemies.

Auster, probably from wishful thinking and an over-reliance on the power of reason, gets it the most wrong. He predicts as the facts leak out, the affair will be quietly dropped, when all experience to date suggests that the facts will be re-interpreted, as NBC did when it doctored Zimmerman's 911 call for public consumption.

None of these "political officers" are able to predict the likely course of events because they are proceeding upon a mistaken assumption. Namely, that they are engaged in a political dispute with fellow Americans who disagree with them.

Were they to adopt a more realistic framework, and understand that they are engaged in a war for political mastery and civilizational survival with fundamentally foreign and alien human beings who seek their destruction and disappearance, then their predictions of events would re-align.

After all, this has been going on for decades now. You don't need the alternative press to know that scores of whites were massacred by blacks during the Martin frenzy, including a WWII veteran and his wife who just celebrated their 65th wedding anniversay, a 22-year old man who has just successfully transfered to Mississippi State from a community college, and the list goes on.

It worries me greatly that as war is waged, what passes for conservative spokemen spend time amazed--amazed!!--that NBC makes things up, that the New York Times is biased, that conservatives don't like "Mitt."

A war in being waged, and one side is not only all but completely intellectually disarmed, it gives for all the world an appearance of not even knowing that there is one on.

Of course Martin is being turned into a secular saint.

Of course Zimmerman is being painted as a racist murderer.

Of course no one in power or in the media will pay the slightest attention to black violence against white people, even up to an including cases that involve international dimensions, as with the recent execution of two white Britons in Florida.

Of course the media is making things up to make the "white" look bad, up to and including this obvious latino is "white." (Or, as the NY Times hilariously calls him, a "white Hispanic," leading one mainstream media critic to wonder if Zimmerman had discovered the cure for cancer if the NY Times would still call him a "white Hispanic.")

Of course the President and the highest level of the USG are siding with Martin.

All of this is obvious. The real question is: what planet are these conservative commentators living on that such things are unexpected or even worthy of notice as something out of the ordinary?

Things do not look good.