Trump voters think he's more honest than their own relatives
Truth and tribalism don't mix. Not for Trump. And not for Biden.
This from CBS News is simply astounding:
It’s just crazy:
Trump is a documented swindler and liar of the highest order. What can we do with this information.
There’s a temptation to believe one of two things:
* Trump supporters — or, at least a significant number of them — are idiots who don’t know they’re being swindled and lied to.
* Trump supporters are also liars and, like the man himself, delight in driving their fellow Americans crazy by asserting that up is down and the sun rises in the west.
I dunno. A little bit of column A and a little bit of column B?
In my more charitable moments, I try to remember I’m probably just as prone as anybody — yes, even the Trump acolytes who annoy me so — to cognitive biases like motivated reasoning and tribalistic thinking.
I go back to Jonathan Rauch’s book “The Constitution of Knowledge” and particularly his observations about how we think and evaluate truth socially:
The effect of groups on the cognition of individuals has been thoroughly documented. In the mid-1930s, the psychologist Muzafer Sherif showed experimental participants what he said was a moving dot of light in a dark room. In a series of trials, he asked them to estimate how far the dot had moved. In reality, it had not moved at all; Sherif was exploiting a cognitive quirk called the autokinetic illusion. Whatever movement the participants perceived was entirely a function of what they thought they perceived. In some sessions, participants made their estimates alone, without others present; in others, they made their estimates in small groups. His finding: groups and individuals perceived differently. Alone, participants’ estimates were all over the map. In groups, by contrast, participants’ estimates were scattered at first but then, after several trials, the estimates quickly converged on a consensus. The consensus estimate was not negotiated, nor was it an average of individuals’ estimates. It was a different view, a group view: its own thing, a product of unconscious interpersonal influence.
In other words, what people perceived, or believed they perceived, depended on whether they were observing as individuals or in groups.
I do this. You probably do this. I know very few original or truly independent thinkers. Much as I’d like to claim to be one of those folks … I’m probably not.
Still. I know that Donald Trump is a craven liar. And an awful lot of people who enable him know that. They have simply decided that whatever they want — power, or laws against abortion, or fewer Mexicans living in their town — is far, far more important. And those people the catalysts for all those Trump voters who trust Trump more than their own family.
So what do we do?
I don’t have a good answer. One thing I feel deeply, though. We can’t start treating leaders on our side — however you define that — as beyond critique.
Here’s a Washington Post story about President Biden’s response to the horrific Maui wildfire:
More than 120 hours passed between when President Biden first spoke publicly about the devastating Maui fires on Aug. 10 and his next substantive remarks about the tragedy the following week.
Behind the scenes, aides say, Biden was leading a robust, by-the-book federal response — speaking daily with state officials in Hawaii, ordering federal responders to provide all assistance necessary and receiving detailed briefings as the crisis unfolded. But as the death toll was escalating toward the triple digits, his muted public approach stood in sharp contrast to his long-standing image of an empathetic leader and offered critics a fresh angle to attack him politically.
“No comment,” Biden responded Aug. 13 when asked, while he vacationed in Rehoboth Beach, Del., if there was anything he wished to say about the rising death toll in the destroyed town of Lahaina. More than 100 people have now been confirmed dead in the fires and hundreds more remain missing.
Later on, the story quotes Trump criticizing Biden’s public response. Which led to online responses like this:
(Sigh.)
Listen: I can’t remember a 21st century president who hasn’t been defined and judged, to some extent, but his response to disaster. We remember W frozen in an school classroom after being given news of the attacks. And “heckuva job, Brownie.'“ We remember Trump throwing paper towels at Puerto Rican hurricane victims. And Sharpiegate. I even remember writing a piece criticizing Obama’s handling of a major pipeline oil spill. We expect presidents to be competent. And we expect them to also show some sympathy. Is that a tall order? Maybe. But it’s the job.
I don’t have much interest in hearing Trump’s critique of Biden, either. But the Trump quote was more than halfway through a longish piece on the topic that had already given an overview of both the federal government’s response to the disaster — as well as some of its shortcomings.
Biden, I don’t think, is ever going to be the moral disaster that Donald Trump is. This is not a both-sides situation.
But I’m pretty sure one way we get down the road toward a situation in which non-Trump voters treat a non-Trump figure like he’s the source and arbiter of truth — even when he clearly isn’t — is to throw a tantrum whenever a non-Trump leader gets critiqued because the other guy was and is an asshole. Insisting on deference to your team’s preferred narrative because Trump is a liar is a good way to make the actual messy truth irrelevant, transactional, tribal.
Be careful you don’t become what you hate.
This is very good and true!