The tendency of our novelty-obsessed, 24 hours-a-day society to over-interpret – and therefore over-react to – news events.
In the wake of The Queen’s allegedly mishandled reaction to the death of Diana, the pundits declared that the monarchy would soon die. A few years later - when a million people filled The Mall to celebrate the Golden Jubilee - Britain’s monarchy was deemed to be safe for another fifty years.
When John Major won the 1992 General Election – defeating Labour despite the previous parliament’s deep recession and poll tax riots – the dawn of endless Tory rule was foreseen by some. In the aftermath of the 1997 defeat, the Tories were declared finished forever.
When America re-elected more Democrats in the mid-term elections that followed disclosure of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, religious commentators thought that America had become irredeemably decadent. In November 2004, when moral issues topped voters’ list of concerns the same commentators discovered the existence of a powerful born-again majority that would keep Democrats out of the White House for a generation.
The 24 hour-a-day news cycle and our novelty-obsessed, excessively-politicised culture drives this over-interpretation. Our times are obsessed with news and neglect the permanent things that are really worthy of contemplation.
Christians and over-interpretation
Over-interpretation is certainly not something unique to newsroom pundits. Paul Gigot of The Wall Street Journal found that certain churchgoers seemed particularly likely to over-read events:
"There is in fundamentalist-evangelical Christianity, as among some Catholic traditionalists, an apocalyptic temper conducive to hyperbolic renderings of both successes and defeats. It is a very unconservative conservatism.... Conservatives, used to understand that all political change is slow, that in fact it ought to be slow, and that the task of political persuasion is never done. Russell Kirk.... liked to say that 'There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes.'"
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