I am old enough to remember when Republicans and Democrats disagreed on policy solutions to problems about which there was a more or less shared understanding–that the economy was sluggish, or violent crime was rising, or whatever. Often the parties were far apart on solutions, but they at least were living in the same world and could communicate and debate their differences.
No longer. Now, the differences between right and left are more nearly epistemological. Or would be, if there were any sane theory on which the left is in touch with reality.
Thus, from the Washington Post:
The NewsGuard survey found that 24 percent of U.S. adults believe the incident at the Washington Hilton was fake, compared with 45 percent who believed it was legitimate. An additional 32 percent said they were unsure. The survey of 1,000 American adults was conducted by YouGov from April 28 to May 4.
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Roughly 1 in 3 Democratic respondents said they believed the event was staged, compared with about 1 in 8 Republicans….
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The White House rejected the conspiracy theories in a statement provided after publication. “Anyone who thinks President Trump staged his own assassination attempts is a complete moron,” spokesman Davis Ingle said.
Yes, but “moron” doesn’t quite cover the case. This chart shows poll responses graphically:
So, at least in this data set, fewer than half of all Americans are confident that any of the three attempts on President Trump’s life were “real,” as opposed to being “staged.” I don’t even understand what that means. People think that Thomas Crooks was willing to get himself killed, and to actually murder another human being, in order to “stage” an assassination attempt? What, then, is “staged” as opposed to “real”?
And that Cole Allen is willing to spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary–not to mention sacrificing his own life, if the Secret Service agents had been better shots–in order to benefit Trump politically? And Allen didn’t really mean what he said in his manifesto, in fact he was just trying to help get the White House ballroom built?
The theory to which one-third of Democrats apparently subscribe is not even intelligible, let alone plausible. So this is where we are: the parties are no longer debating policy solutions in a more or less rational manner, they don’t even agree on what sort of world we are living in.
