Why do we believe (and propagate) stories that aren't true? Friend, meet the Rider and the Elephant. (And enjoy my delicious scones recipe.)

Hi, friend.

This isn’t particularly relevant or interesting, but the celery soup I referred to in my last letter was not good. You will likely be no more surprised by this than anyone else was, but I confess I was disappointed. I wanted to beat the odds and disprove the doubters. Alas, it was not to be. Maybe if I'd had better celery? On the other hand, my scones were five-star spectacular, if I do say so myself. (More on these later.)

In addition to experimenting in the kitchen last week, I went to a public reading of the screenplay – written by retired judge W. Neal Thomas and performed at the Chattanooga County Courthouse – about Ed Johnson, a young black man who, in 1906, was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for allegedly raping a white woman named Nevada Taylor. Johnson was convicted despite painfully obvious evidence that he was innocent. The case was egregious enough that the Supreme Court agreed to review it, but when Justice John Marshall Harlan issued a stay of execution (for the first time in the Supreme Court’s history), a violent mob, angered by the delay, broke into the jail where Johnson was held, drug him outside, hanged him from the Walnut Street Bridge, and shot him over 50 times. (Two Sheriff's deputies were included in the mob.) All this despite alibi testimony from a dozen witnesses who had seen Johnson working at the Last Chance Saloon the night of the attack. For the record, the alibi witnesses are only one example of Johnson’s innocence. Not only was Johnson's case the first time in history the Supreme Court gave a stay of execution, but it was also the first (and only) time the Supreme Court held a criminal trial, culminating in Hamilton County Sheriff Joseph F. Shipp being held in contempt of court.

The Ed Johnson story is a horror story. It is the story of an innocent man and wrongful conviction on the one hand and vile, hate-filled, fear-based human behavior on the other. If you ever doubt the degree to which humans can lose the ability to think critically and behave like wild, blood-lusty animals, look no further than this story.

Seeing the dramatized story unfold in a courtroom was a powerful experience. From our vantage point, years later, it seems unbelievable that such a thing could happen. How could so many people have been so utterly incapable of seeing the truth, which now seems obvious? What the hell happened?

To understand, we must come to understand the RIDER and the ELEPHANT.

Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt (whom I’ve cited in previous letters) describes two kinds of cognition: a controlled process (the RIDER), which includes the “reasoning why,” and an automatic process (the ELEPHANT), which includes emotion and intuition. The interesting question is, who leads the way? Who calls the shots? The elephant or the rider? Turns out the elephant does, relying solely on intuition and emotion, while the rider swoops in after the fact to serve as spokesperson and to handle public relations. The elephant intuitively feels that something is or isn’t true, and the Rider is then exceptionally skilled at creating post hoc (after the fact) explanations for the elephant's actions and inventing reasons for what it wants to do next. In other words, we make quick judgments, and, as Haidt puts it, “We are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial judgments.” This automatic process has run the human mind for millions of years. Of course, we all like to think we are the exception, and so humility is critical here. (Show me the friend or family member who sneers at emotion – the one who claims to make decisions and come to conclusions based on reason alone – and I’ll show you the friend or family member with whom you cannot have a healthy, reasoned argument.)

In any case, Ed Johnson was the victim of the elephants and their riders, in that order. Racial tension was high in Chattanooga in 1906. White folks had been whipped into a fearful frenzy in which emotions were running hot, and reasoning consisted of nothing more than a post hoc argument that justified a wrongful conviction and grotesque murder.

Of course, Ed Johnson was not the victim of elephants – he was the victim of people like you and me. People who, because they were afraid, adopted a feeling narrative that reflected their fear (black people are scary/bad/violent) and laid everything, including the truth, at the altar of that feeling narrative.

This is what scares me the most about these post-truth times. If we are not very, very careful, evidence ceases to matter. Evidence takes a back seat, inasmuch as it is called upon at all, to the prevailing narrative.

This must be how some people have come to believe, without a shred of evidence, that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Illinois. This is what happens when what passes as evidence is something someone's neighbor's daughter's friend said on Facebook. (This is literally how the story launched.) We believe such stories not because we know them to be true, but because they fit neatly into a narrative that already holds us. We believe them, or something like them, because unless we are very, very careful, the rider serves the elephant.

You probably know the story by now. In late August, Anna Kilgore of Springfield, Ohio, filed a police report accusing Haitian migrants of stealing Miss Sassy, her cat. Having made the rounds on Facebook, the story was picked up by Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, who then propagated the story, even though the city manager assured his staff it wasn’t true when they called to fact-check it. A reporter eventually went to Springfield to interview Anna Kilgore, who, as it turned out, had found Miss Sassy hiding in her basement. She’d apologized to her Haitian neighbors using a translation app, and admitted that it was a “mistake that got out of hand.” But that admission didn’t stop Donald Trump from parroting the story during his first (and perhaps only?) debate with Kamala Harris, and it certainly didn’t stop the hate-filled, fear-based frenzy that was unleashed on the city of Springfield. Since the debate, Springfield has received dozens of bomb threats, according to Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. Schools were closed for a time. Now that they’re open again, State troopers, bomb detection dogs, and camera towers have been deployed at Springfield schools. (None of this makes an admittedly difficult situation in Springfield any easier. More on that HERE.)

Friend, forgive me for this next part, because I have many friends and acquaintances who have posited one of the following theories, and you may be one of them. But here's the thing: The world in which the elephant is the unquestioned master is the world in which some folks on the left claim, without a shred of evidence, that the Republicans staged the attempt on President Trump’s life. The world in which the elephant is the unquestioned master is the world in which some folks on the right say, about this same attempt and without a shred of evidence, that “They tried to kill Donald Trump.” (The “they” changes depending on who you’re talking to: democrats, the Secret Service, President Biden, etc.) This is how frenzied we are, how untrusting. We vilify the other side immediately and unquestioningly. No evidence required. (I’m bracing myself for the responses to this letter, in which people will cite “evidence” supporting at least one of these claims. Perfectly fine. But if you bring it, be sure your evidence is rock solid.)

So! Once we have come to terms with the fact that we are both/all subject to the elephant/rider conundrum, the next thing we must ask ourselves is how to be discerning when it comes to evidence, knowing we are all partial to the story that supports what we already believe to be true.

Let's start here: When we hear a story on the news, let's agree not to believe it unquestioningly just because it reinforces our team's narrative. Let's agree to check ourselves, ideally with help from our friends across the divide who can help us challenge our assumptions and gently point out when our intuition is no longer shaped by reasoning.

To that end, I’m going to try, in the coming weeks, to write a dispassionate letter about immigrant crime and voting irregularity with another dear friend of mine who (like you!) is as right-leaning as I am left-leaning. About politics, she and I have strong feelings that rarely align. But together, and in the spirit of this Letters Project, we will vet and sift through the evidence, checking each other as we go. Our primary goal will not be to agree on the final interpretation of our findings (maybe we will, maybe we won't) but on what constitutes reliable evidence and what doesn’t.

Finally, I sometimes hear stories about politics in a less fractured time, when politicians sparred in the congressional halls all day and then went for a beer together at night. You and I can’t have a beer together, but I sure can include my scones recipe below. Unlike the celery soup, the scones are SO. FLIPPING. GOOD. Nothing like the UK scones (sorry Alice!) that “suck the spit out of your mouth,” in the immortal words of Ted Lasso. These scones, with their candied ginger and currents, are guaranteed to wow your family and friends on BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE. (Thank me later.)

Write back. Let me know what you do and don't agree with here, and include photos of the scones if you make them.

Love,

Sara

Erin French’s Fig and Ginger Scones with Salted Honey Butter (Note: I used currants instead of figs)

2¼ cups (about 9½ oz.) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. grated lemon zest (from 1 lemon)

1 tsp. kosher salt

⅔ cup granulated sugar, divided

¾ cup cold unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon-size pieces, plus ½ cup room-temperature unsalted butter, divided

¾ cup plus 2 Tbsp. heavy cream, divided

⅓ cup candied ginger, finely chopped

⅓ cup chopped dried figs

2 Tbsp. honey, divided

¼ tsp. flaky sea salt

1. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and set aside. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse together flour, baking powder, lemon zest, kosher salt and ⅓ cup of the sugar to combine. Add cold butter; pulse until uniformly distributed and mixture resembles wet sand, about 10 pulses.

2. Transfer mixture to a large bowl; stir in ¾ cup of the cream, candied ginger and figs to combine. Using your hands, work mixture into a shaggy dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and gently shape into a log (12 inches long and 2 inches in diameter). Slice log into 8 (1½ inch-thick) rounds. Place rounds on baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes or up to 3 days.

3. Beat softened butter in bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on high speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes. Drizzle in 1 tablespoon of the honey, and beat to combine. Transfer whipped butter to a serving bowl; drizzle with remaining 1 tablespoon honey, and sprinkle with flaky sea salt. Set aside.

4. When ready to bake the scones, preheat oven to 375°. Place remaining 2 tablespoons cream in a small bowl and remaining ⅓ cup sugar in another small bowl. Dunk the top of each scone in the cream, followed by the sugar, and return to baking sheet spacing 2 to 3 inches apart. Bake in preheated oven until golden and cooked through, 15 to 18 minutes. Remove from oven, and let cool until just warm to the touch; serve with honey butter.

Serves: 8

Active time: 20 minutes

Total time: 1 hour