When new facts don't produce new conclusions
On our minds: Impeachment, parliamentary shenanigans, and polarization |
When Feelings Don't Care About Facts |
 | | President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met with President Trump on Wednesday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.Doug Mills/The New York Times |
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The big stories on both sides of the Atlantic this week have been about leaders in trouble. |
President Trump is now facing an impeachment investigation for allegedly withholding aid from Ukraine in order to pressure its government to investigate Joe Biden. And here in London, the British Supreme Court held that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had acted unlawfully when he suspended Parliament as part of his pro-Brexit constitutional hardball. |
Or at least, that's one version of those events. For supporters of Mr. Trump and Mr. Johnson, the narratives almost certainly seem quite different. |
In Britain, many staunch Brexiteers saw Mr. Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament as part of a heroic attempt to secure a democratically mandated exit from the European Union. |
Remainers may be horrified at Mr. Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament, said Sara Hobolt, a political scientist who studies British politics. But given the same information, she said, "a lot of Brexiteers will look at Boris Johnson and say: 'Yes, he's standing up for the people, he's standing up for us. He's not letting these Westminster elites take away our democratic choice.'" |
And many of Mr. Trump's supporters, instead of seeing evidence that Mr. Trump used federal funds to pressure a foreign government into interfering in the 2020 election, see him as doggedly pursuing Mr. Biden's wrongdoing in Ukraine. |
To be clear, the claims about Mr. Biden's supposed wrongdoing have been debunked. But that does not seem to have changed many Trump supporters' minds. |
Welcome to reality, polarization-style. |
A number of studies have found that partisan identity is now strong enough to shape Americans' views of reality. Democrats are more likely to believe negative stories about Republican politicians and doubt negative stories about fellow Democrats; Republicans are precisely the opposite. |
That filter even extends to matters that aren't as explicitly political: supporters of the party running the government tend to think that the economy is doing better than supporters of the opposition do. And as each new piece of political information gets passed through that partisan filter, the result is that the two sides don't just hold different beliefs, they live in different realities. |
Partisan identity isn't as strong in Britain as it is in the United States. But a very persuasive working paper from Dr. Hobolt and her colleagues Thomas J. Leeper and James Tilley found that "Brexit identity" — whether people support Britain remaining in the European Union or leaving it — has created a kind of polarization similar to America's extreme partisanship. Leave voters, for instance, were much more likely to believe that the economy was doing well than Remain voters were. |
Differing views about the economy are relatively harmless. But when voters instinctively support politicians on their "side" and automatically condemn those in the opposing group, regardless of evidence, then there is little incentive for politicians to obey democratic norms. |
That could be an incentive for wrongdoing. Congress's investigation into Mr. Trump's conduct is just beginning, but it is not clear that the president will pay a political price, regardless of Congress's findings. As of now, most observers expect that Republican senators would refuse to impeach him. And there is little sign that the new allegations are affecting his popularity with voters. |
If that continues, the impeachment process could turn out to just be a demonstration of how few consequences there are for political wrongdoing in this age of polarization. |
Lisa Goldman, an editor for the Israeli publication 972 Magazine, on the historic move by the Joint List, a coalition of Israeli Arab parties, to throw their support to centrist opposition leader Benny Gantz in coalition talks, potentially unseating Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister: |
| For the first time, Palestinian voters (representing the 23% of Palestinians under Israeli control who are citizens of Israel) de facto decide who becomes the next prime minister. … But let's be very clear here: the Joint List has enough power to get Netanyahu kicked out. But only so that Gantz can form a coalition with the right wing parties. Even after voting in the 3rd largest party, the Palestinian-Arab electorate cannot aspire to be *in* the government. The Joint List's power is not a victory for or a testament to Israel's democracy. It's actually a testament to the fact that Palestinian citizens of Israel, no matter how well they play the political game, are blocked from taking their rightful place as equal citizens. |
- Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli pollster, writes in The Forward about a revival of Israeli enthusiasm for liberal politics and parties, including on the right — but not liberal in the ways that might be familiar to Americans. Rather than standing for center-left pluralism, it's about championing security-minded secular nationalism by opposing the influence of right-wing religious parties. Being "liberal" has become a way for centrist and right-wing parties to attract voters who would otherwise support Mr. Netanyahu's Likud Party, which has joined with religious parties. But, Ms. Scheindlin writes, this may also give new salience to "another liberal-conservative axis altogether: democratic governance and rule of law, and fear that Netanyahu will sacrifice them to get away with corruption."
- Martin Wolf, a Financial Times columnist, documents the ways that rent-seeking — a high-class and legal form of corruption — by the financial industry and by corporate boards is driving the rise in income inequality and slowing growth across Western economies.
- A photo essay by Ekaterina Anchevskaya, with text by Sarah Dadouch, documents the lives of Syrian refugees who have lived in Turkey for now five years or more, settling in for new lives in a place that isn't quite home.
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