The "Smoking Gun" and "Red Flags": Notes on Epistemology

Today's posting isn't going to exhaust the topic my title alludes to; it will just be a rough sketch.

Most people in my experience have the bad habit of talking (and apparently thinking) as though the truth of a matter is Black or White, Absolute or Non-Existent.  Either an interpretation of an event, incident or person is true, or there's no evidence for it.  Behind this bad habit seems to be the assumption that any evidence that's not perfect and not an incontrovertible slam-dunk is simply not evidence at all.  Of course, they don't put it this way: They will say "there's no evidence" when what they mean to say is, "the evidence you've put on the table isn't good enough".  One can see right away one likely reason why they do this.  If they were to acknowledge the existence of evidence -- which they would dismiss because supposedly it's low quality -- they would have to explain why it's low quality.  And for most people that's too much work.  So they just say "there's no evidence".  A well-known case is Election 2020 and the claim of fraud, where the Leftist refrain is exactly that: "there's no evidence" -- which is palpably, massively untrue.  There is evidence, a veritable mountain. It may not be good evidence, but it's just plain silly to say it doesn't exist.  And yet by and large, the Leftists and the Mainstream they dominate did exactly that -- and still do it. And get away with it.  

Probably most important events or incidents or personal biographies, if they contain any degree of complexity, cannot be adjudicated by the highest standard of evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt -- the "smoking gun".  Most will be unavoidably mired in the broader spectrum of greys where red flags may not "prove" the crucial claim, but should -- to any fair and reasonable person -- arouse curiosity, possibly suspicion, and a healthy sense of obligation to investigate if the red flags significantly challenge or call into question the official narrative. On important sociopolitical issues, Leftists tend to shy away from this approach -- and sometimes positively suppress it. Indeed, the behavior of the Mainstream (which Leftists have come to dominate) in the wake of Election 2020 was to effectively pretend that red flags didn't exist.  And that behavior itself constituted another red flag -- indeed, perhaps the biggest red flag of all.  One could understand this or that individual Leftist behaving that way, out of an immature or lazy or egotistical attempt to avoid the responsibility of defending the truth of his narrative.  But when the entire Mainstream behaves this way -- not just news media, but Congress and the Judiciary as well -- one reasonably surmises that something fishy is afoot.

Non-Leftists are not blameless in this either: the peccadillo they sometimes indulge is to pretend -- or sincerely believe (in which case they're letting their emotions get the best of them) -- that the red flags are more probative than they really are.  This in turn only feeds the uncharitable shenanigans of the Left, because they can and will seize on the relative weakness of red flags in order to distract from the relatively provocative effect and purport they may have; and through this distraction can prolong their game of pretending that "there is no evidence".