When people know that what they have done or said is wrong they have three choices. They can double down and really go for the jugular. They can admit that what they have done or said is wrong and seek to reconcile with whomever they have offended. They can use slight of hand mentally, psychologically, or physically to make it appear that what they did was really not that bad.

We call the third rationalization. It is usually more mental and psychological than anything else. We need to convince ourselves that what we did was somehow justified and not wrong. I won’t say that everyone has done it, but I will say I’ve done it. Sometimes it is because I was just incapable at the time of seeing my own culpability. Sometimes I didn’t want to admit to myself that I had done an awful thing.

The news media reported excerpts from Kristi Noem’s book and the rationalizations started in full force. Granted, some of these that were mentioned to me by friends and family that were sympathetic to her. Some came from her or people in her camp. My friends simply used a different report than I did. Others developed their own rationalizations to explain someone else’s behavior. What if the dog had done this? What if the goat did that?

I will never understand the power that some people have over others. I will never understand the need to rationalize the behavior of someone you have never met and aren’t connected to. I certainly get choosing to believe the best of people. I try to do that too. What I also believe in dealing with teenagers on a daily basis is that the story you get first is usually the most truthful one.

I wasn’t there when Noem shot her dog and goat. I just know that the amended details don’t make a ton of sense to me. She supposedly shot this goat when she was 14. So, how did this same goat terrorize her children at the same time as one of my friends said? So, could she have left out some details in her book that would make the story more palatable? Absolutely. Of course this begs the question of why.

In this story, if she or other family members were attacked wouldn’t that be the lead? Instead, the lead was that she hated the dog because it didn’t perform well while hunting and chased some chickens. The story about the goat came because she didn’t like the goat because it didn’t smell very good.

My instincts tell me that she told this story because she thought it would score points with the MAGA crowd. Cruelty is in you know. However, once she discovered that even they have their limits the story started to change some. Let’s give her every benefit of the doubt. Let’s say the animals should have been put down because they were a danger to her family and anyone they came into contact with. That still means she lied initially to curry favor with a group of people.

My favorite rationalization came from Kimberly Guilfoyle. She wondered if someone inserted that story into her book without her consent. As if someone would completely make that story up out of whole cloth to make her look bad. That is some active imagination. So, there you have it. Notice that Noem never disputed the account in her own book. She never said the media was mischaracterizing the account from her own book. She just wanted to change the story after the fact. Given the circumstances I probably would too.