Donald Rumsfeld’s Unknow Knowns Metrics
Instead of hiding in the elevator, fridge, or the bushes. Language can manipulate people’s minds and make them forget ‘what they want to ask in the beginning.’
For some people, there are still several months left to accomplish a goal, weight loss, muscle building, saving money to travel abroad, etc. But for presidential candidates, the time is ticking day and night in their heads.
Left or right for me is just direction, and blue or green for me is just color. I only support a government that is aware they are the servants of the citizens, not representing the privileged authority in the social class.
Lawyers can defend a criminal and reduce the sentence from 65 years to 3 years. Presidential candidates are either suck-ups to potential voters or philosophy-style speakers dropping a tail to catch people’s attention and admiration of a magic stunt and when they figure out it is just a useless thing, they have forgotten what they want to ask.
Recently, one of the presidential candidates in Taiwan was asked by a group of young journalists whose faces were smooth like a new textbook’s hardcover, whose eyes were sparkling in the light of a bright future, and whose voice was energetic exuding confidence in challenging anything.
They asked this ex-mayor of Taipei ‘Is Taiwan part of China?’ This is a sensitive question that most politicians would use a thesaurus to construct sonnets. This ex-mayor responded, ‘There are three forms of China: politics, economy, and culture. It depends on which category you are asking so that I can answer the relationship between Taiwan and China.’ After receiving a response, the journalists continued to ask about the critics of another politician.
I was stunned that no one deepened the answer and asked for a more concise follow-up. ‘Governments, economy, and culture are all the essential components of forming a country. How do you separate them to decide the status of Taiwan compared to China?’ This was the first question that popped into my mind after watching the clip from YouTube.
It reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld’s words in the Pentagon news briefing, ‘…because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know…’ And a reporter raised his hands, ‘So is it unknown unknowns?’
To translate it into human words. Mr. Rumsfeld said, ‘We know murdering people is wrong- known knowns; We know it’s hard for us to figure out how a plane flies- known unknowns; Not being a mind reader, an 80-year-old millionaire believes this 20-year-old model’s love confession, but the young one might hide a secret- unknown unknowns.’
If you can express ‘I need to go to the toilet’ into ‘Every moment is critical to decide your future. We have the responsibility of assisting our bodies to function normally and efficiently. I’m no pilgrim but there is a sacred place for me to take up the journey.’
Well, you might fairly endorse Vivek Ramaswamy.
