Partisanship can amount to a divorce from reality; An early warning about DJT

A NYT opinion by David French discusses the usually unpleasant epiphany that some blind partisans feel when they take off the loyalty blindfold and see the divorce from reality it caused:

I Was a Republican Partisan. 

It Altered the Way I Saw the World.

[Intro: Discussion of polls being wrong, but caution about dismissing all of them when they are consistent for a significant period of time]

The purpose of this newsletter isn’t to adjudicate the polling dispute but to show an example of how the partisan mind works and how partisans process negative information. I could use any number of other examples. In a column last week, my colleague Ross Douthat rightly observed that “we are constantly urged to ‘stand with Israel’ when it’s unclear if Israel knows what it’s doing.” [Israel knows exactly what it is doing, French and Douthat are shockingly naive on this point]

I remember when supporters of Operation Iraqi Freedom constantly hyped good news from the battlefield and minimized bad news — right until the bad news became so overwhelming that the need for a radical strategy change was clear to everyone, from the soldier walking the streets of Baghdad to President George W. Bush and his team of national security advisers.

In 2020, when I was doing research for my book about the growing danger of partisan division, I began to learn more about what extreme partisanship does not only to our hearts but also to our minds. It can deeply and profoundly distort the way we view the world. We become so emotionally and spiritually invested in the outcome of a political contest that we can inadvertently become disconnected from reality.

To put it another way: Our heart connects with our mind in such a way that the heart demands that the mind conform to its deepest desires. When a partisan encounters negative information, it can often trigger the emotional equivalent of a fight-or-flight response. This applies not just to negative arguments but also to negative facts. To deal with the emotional response, we seek different arguments and alternative facts.

If you are a true partisan, you essentially become an unpaid lawyer for your side. Every “good” fact that bolsters your argument is magnified. Every “bad” fact is minimized or rationalized. When partisanship reaches its worst point, every positive claim about your side is automatically believed, and every negative allegation is automatically disbelieved. In fact, allegations of wrongdoing directed at your side are treated as acts of aggression — proof that “they” are trying to destroy “us.”

You see this reality most plainly in the daily Republican theatrics surrounding Trump’s criminal indictments. Rather than wrestle seriously with the profoundly troubling claims against him, they treat the criminal cases as proof of Democratic perfidy. They believe every claim against Hunter and Joe Biden and not a single claim against Trump.

The result is a kind of divorce from reality.

I have some rules to help temper my worst partisan impulses. Among them: Expose yourself to the best of the other side’s point of view — including the best essays, podcasts and books. Also, when you encounter a new idea, learn about it from its proponents before you read its opponents.

And when you encounter bad news about a cause that you hold dear — whether it’s a presidential campaign, an international conflict or even a claim against a person you admire, take a close and careful look at the evidence. Your opponent may be right, your friend may be wrong, and your emotions will often lead you astray.

By golly, I do believe that Mr. French has gone woke about human cognitive biology and social behavior. Bravo, Mr. French! 👏👍

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This is an article Washington Monthly published Jan. 31, 2017, 11 days after Trump was sworn into office:

The 12 Early Warning Signs of Fascism

Guess how many Trump has already checked off

If you go to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, you can see a sign hanging there that tells you what to look for if you’re worried that your country may be slipping into fascism. Let’s take a look at their twelve [14 actually] early warning signs of fascism.

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
2. Disdain for human rights
3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
4. Rampant sexism
5. Controlled mass media
6. Obsession with national security
7. Religion and government intertwined
8. Corporate power protected
9. Labor power suppressed
10. Disdain for intellectual and the arts
11. Obsession with crime and punishment
12. Rampant cronyism and corruption

You can follow the links above, but it shouldn’t be necessary if you’ve been paying any attention. Trump’s message is based on putting America “first,” making America “great again,” and is clearly a powerful form of nationalism that we’re also seeing arise in other countries in Europe and Asia.

Trump’s disdain for human rights is legend, but examples include his desire to kill the relatives of terrorists (something he accomplished this week), his insistence that he’ll do “worse than waterboarding” and his statement in the White House that “torture absolutely works.”

Trump has used Mexican “rapists” and Islamic terrorists as unifying enemies. This tactic is actually perhaps the core of his political strategy.

Trump’s sexism is one of the most transparent and well-established things we know about him.

Just this week, Trump advocated that someone friendly to him buy the New York Times. His chief adviser Steve Bannon comes from the Breitbart media dynamo and has told the media to shut their mouth. So far, Trumpists do not own much of the media, so they seek to marginalize and intimidate them. In any case, Fox News does a pretty good job on their own, and the right owns talk radio.

As for entwining religion and government, that can be seen in Mike Pence’s entire political career, but it’s also evident in the way that Trump has nakedly tried to make his immigration ban apply more fully to Muslims than to Christians. The Republican Party has had fascist tendencies in this regard that long predate Trump, but Trump has really run with (white) Christian nationalism as a fundamental part of his appeal. He cast himself as the defender of this group.

Trump has appointed the richest cabinet in history and proposes corporate friendly policies to match.

His nominee for Labor Secretary is a strong opponent of organized labor and Trump has had a poor relationship with labor in his business career. Most recently, this has been in the news in relation to the labor force at his Las Vegas hotel. Overall, Trump will go after unions across the board, especially public service unions and government employees.

So, there you have it. Twelve early signs of fascism, and Trump and his movement have already checked 11 of the boxes and are assured of checking the twelfth.