Koan: McCain Might be More Honest than People Think By Yonza the Barbarian

Last nights debate. Tom asked (reading from an e-mail by some chick from someplace I don’t know that must have been pretty damn excited (the chick, that is) that her question was actually getting on the air (I would be) but if she had any sense should also have known that the question was just asking (sorry, that’s a confusing use of that metaphor/personification) to be beat around (as in the bush) and obviously did get beat around (still as in the bush) by both Ob and Mc but ignoring the baseline phoniness I think Obama beat around (not as in the bush…. more as in a punching bag) poor old Mc) what the candidates don’t know and how they will learn it. Within McCain’s response was a single sentence that has not received enough attention in the media: “What I don’t know is the unexpected.” Hmmm…a zen-like answer for – as described by Tom Himself – a zen-like question.

How clever. Not only did McCain manage to directly answer the question (at least the first part), but his answer was unequivocally honest. Not knowing the unexpected! Brilliant! In fact, he was being so honest with that sentence that there is a name for sentences that true: tautologies. That means it is true necessarily or true by definition. Some other great tautologies are: “I am here,” and “I choose between options.” Interestingly enough, a tautological sentence is completely uninteresting (the word “uninteresting” here can be interpreted in both the typical sense (e.g. the show on C-SPAN was so uninteresting ) or defined more rigorously as non-ampliative, which basically means not transmitting any new information to the world/anyone) which is great because so is most poli-speak.

Here is why McCain’s statement is a tautology: you cannot know the unexpected; if you say “I know the unexpected” then the unexpected, definitionally speaking, is the expected (since you know it). Saying “I know the unexpected” is what we in The Business call a contradiction. A contradiction is the opposite of a tautology. It is when something is necessarily or definitionally false. Good thing McCain never used a contradiction…

So despite our partisan bickering and polarized contempt; despite our differences, disagreements, and irreconcilable beliefs; despite varying needs and wants and goals and lifestyles; despite fundamental chasms in our philosophies and motivations, there might be a shining ray of hope, something that can bridge partisanship, can overcome our differences, can unify or ideals, it is that we can all agree, republican or democrat black or white young or old, that McCain does not know the unexpected.