As a past young college student rather than an older present college scholar, this writer majored in the study of government at a public state college instead of studying political science at a prestigious private university. Perhaps this educational background could be responsible, in part, for the rationale and reasoning of the probed questions posed in this commentary.
The popularized trials of Donald Trump, as well as those of Hunter Biden, in recent months provide us—all of us—with much needed lessons on confirming and counter-checking what we as human beings assess and assume, what we hear and see, and what we say and do before we act or react to effluvium. In both cases, there remains sentencing, and Trump is currently scheduled to attend additional trials in the future.
In the meantime, our American democracy is steadfastly at stake. The actions taken from a peer-reviewing process by the recent jury adjudication is a process we must do more of in the current climate of escalating human division and diversity.
Human diversity is mentioned here because the recent publicly recognized jury was not identified by race, ethnicity and gender, but rather by vocation, occupation and profession. Should we be guided and anchored by the public breadth of our experiences or by the private depth of our experiences and commitment to pure truth?
The answers to the questions before us now will likely need an algorithmic response with some balance between scientific application of probability analysis of human behavior and the exploration of quasi psychometrics. That is, can peer or jury composition be adjudicated based on quantifiable measures—like numbers or percentages of a human demographic—one way or another?
This could possibly mean, signify and symbolize three things for rationality. For one, while by no means perfect, our democracy appears to be working despite expanding human divisiveness and exploding misinformation. Secondly, the peer-review process appears to be working. And lastly, one could argue that the refereed elements for examining authenticated evidence also appear to be working as part of the peer-review process. Here, the definitions of these areas—peer review and refereed processes—are generally ways to ingeminate, ascertain, substantiate and cross check as well as evaluate factual and accurate information with evidence.
In my line of work in postsecondary and higher education, these processes are amplified, pronounced, and magnified to students and faculty. This feels especially true now in our explosive and exploding era of social media where there are seemingly countless occurrences of not only misinformation, incomplete information, inaccurate information and unauthenticated information, but also invalid, unvetted and unverified messaging in our everyday human conversations, vernacular, lexicon and language.
We need now—in our government, beyond political culture—is to counter-check our inherent individual biases and confirm truth before bringing about personal, partial, political and preferred judgment.
Can this be done to increase both integrity and credibility in our American judicial, criminal justice and jurisprudence system? Let us show the world that we can provide evidence that democracy really works. As we prepare for possible new trials during and after the present and forthcoming election season, let’s continue to practice and apply what this writer learned as a young government major in college: “truly think things through thoroughly throughout.”
This MFP Voices essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
