Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Mr. Magoo was a famous old cartoon character whose entire shtick was that he had such poor vision that he misidentified everything he saw. Mr. Magoo wasn't very funny but it triggered in the audience a deep-seated recognition of their own life experience; they too knew someone who mischaracterized everything in their own imagined reality. However, Mr. Magoo's life is an accurate metaphor for anybody's life: everyone is the Center-of-the-Universe, and what they think is all that matters; their interpretation of the facts is always the correct one. Confirmation bias is the technical term; interpreting facts fit a specific narrative, often without noticing. It's eerie when two people have the same information, yet draw completely opposite deductions.

Politics is rife with the Mr. Magoos: so near-sighted that everything they encounter, they interpret in a biased way; the names they call other people are appropriate because it's their universe and if someone is a racist in their eyes, then they're a racist. There's no penalty for operating this way: Mr. Magoo seems happy and satisfied; in fact, he always comes out better than he started. Yeah, his houseboy, Charlie, had to continually cover for him but Mr. Magoo didn't know that. Actually, Mr. Magoo had it pretty good; it was Charlie, who could see clearly, who always took the fall.