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Signal and Noise

As our political discourse has degraded in my lifetime I have struggled with the overwhelming of signal (facts that are not open to dispute) by noise (loud opinion unmoored by any verification). I am accountable in my profession at all times to offer signal, and I would be justly denigrated if I did otherwise. I feel the need to carry that over, imperfect though I am, to my personal life.

This often requires that I (and others) withhold comment on issues before facts are known, and I painfully feel the rush of propaganda to fill the vacuum of legitimate commentary. Yesterday Donald Trump was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney. Until the charges were unsealed there was nothing factual to discuss beyond the truth that Trump was being indicted that day.  Somehow the media by and large seemed to spend innumerable collective hours on that vacuum of information, offering well-dressed and well-paid seers prognosticating about the future and those thought-draining video recordings of Trump traveling to the courtroom. Political events of great significance were underway in Tennessee and Wisconsin and were underreported.

Now we have some signal to discuss. The charge is that for three years on a monthly basis Trump falsified documents (claimed that payments to Michael Cohen were a legal retainer when they were compensation for Cohen's payments to an actress to not publicly claim that she had had an affair with Trump while he campaigned for the presidency). We have Cohen's testimony that this occurred, and we apparently also have forthcoming other eyewitness testimony as well as the checks for three years (thus 34 separate charges for the same category of violation).

I am not a lawyer but from what I read what elevates these charges from misdemeanors to felonies is that they were in support of another crime, election fraud.

It seems as if these are already known facts but they have to be entered into a judicial proceeding (witnesses under oath, documents verified, etc.). As the law has not been used this way (with respect to election fraud) there will be some subjective input from the judge as this proceeds. Time will tell.

Everything else, everything else is noise.

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