I am always amazed, given how much they earn, that the talking heads on cable news networks are incapable of performing even rudimentary logic.
Take the gentleman who was shot and killed by an Air Marshall today in Miami, Fla. I’m switching back and forth between coverage on Fox and CNN and both are making the same point. There’s a report that the man’s wife attempted tried to tell the Air Marshall that her husband was bipolar and had not been taking his medicine.
The Fox and CNN folks had the same interpretation of this report. The Air Marshall may not have understood the woman and rather than this being someone with a bomb, it may be a tragic misunderstanding. Fox was speculating on how fluent the Air Marshall’s Spanish may have been, suggesting he may not have understood the woman’s explanation of her husband’s behavior.
Neither network pointed out the obvious logical problem here that “My husband is bipolar and is not taking his medications” is not the same thing as “I know with metaphysical certainty that my husband is not carrying a bomb.” After all, the last time I checked it is logically possible for someone to be both a) symptomatically bipolar and b) carrying a bomb.
For example, Ted Kaczynski suffered from schizophrenia and paranoid delusions, and yet “Ted’s not a bomber, he’s just schizophrenic” would have been a false statement. And, of course, Kaczynski hid is bomb-making from his relatives although his brother eventually figured it out. So just because this man’s wife may have said he didn’t have a bomb is hardly a guarantee that he really didn’t.
If you’ve got someone claming to have a bomb near an airplane and acting in an aggressive manner, I’m not sure how a statement like “he’s mentally ill” would change the decision to use deadly force to protect passengers at all.