― From the Movie: The Sand Pebbles, 1967
Two hundred Chinese were killed, and one hundred and fifty British. The Bolsheviks are now saying that two thousand innocent Chinese were slaughtered. We’re up against a new strategy of lies.
I want you all to understand about moral courage. I know it is not easy. We are trained to fight men, not lies. We are trained to face death and wounds, not public scorn. But to win this fight against lies, we must find the moral courage to endure public scorn and even personal indignities without flinching or retaliating. That is the sacrifice the service of our nation demands of us now. I know we all have the moral courage to make it.
Apparently, we are being blamed for everything—the foreign devils. It’s an old trick to unify people by getting them to hate something or someone. Well, we’re it. They all want to get rid of us. Chiang Kai Shek, peacefully. The Communists in the movement, by force. But we’re supposed to grin and bear it. Because if we fire back, we give them new propaganda against us—and we apparently play into the hands of the Communist element who want us to start a real war so that Russia will have to come to China’s rescue and in that way take her over.
(he looks at Bordelles, troubled)
― From the Movie: The Sand Pebbles, 1967
A Year Out, Ignore General Election Polls
They have little relationship to the final outcome.
If you look at polls that tested the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees in the last two months of the year before the election, the average absolute error of the polling average is 10.6 percentage points.
If you trusted the polls in late 1991, you might have thought Bill Clinton was finished in the 1992 presidential election. George H.W. Bush was ahead of Clinton by 21 percentage points at the time; Bush was basking in sky-high approval ratings after the first Gulf War. But as the Gulf War triumph faded and the economy became the focus of the campaign, Clinton would gain in the polls and eventually overtake Bush.
…public’s attitudes are often quite unstable and subject to dramatic shifts due to the news of the day or even random events. Herd mentality often rules–many base their opinion on what they believe to be the prevailing public view, creating a bandwagon effect. This helps explain why interest group spokespersons are always so anxious to publicize opinion polls that indicate support for their position. These polls, while often misleading, may create more support, among both the citizenry and their leaders; thus, such polls act as self-fulfilling prophesies.
In a Times-Mirror Center for the People and The Press poll taken in late March 1992, Bush led Clinton 50% to 43%. When (at the same time) the Center polled a different sample that first asked them about Bush’s handling of the economy, the fact that Saddam Hussein remained in Iraq, and Bush’s breaking of his no-new- taxes pledge, the margin was reduced to 48% to 45%. A third group was polled after asking them about Clinton’s alleged affairs, conflicts of interest, and Vietnam draft status, resulting in a Bush lead of 54% to 39%.
Here's A Thing... 