Can Please We End Belief-Based Politics?
Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more. - Terry Pratchett
I am mostly deactivated on Facebook now, but I do pop in there occasionally to make announcements and link my blog posts. When I reactivate, I stay on there for twenty-four hours to check out everyone's feeds and see how my friends are doing. Most of the time I realize I'm not missing much by staying off. Facebook has become like Groundhog Day. Everyone makes the same posts about the same stuff. (I would love to never see Baby Yoda ever again anywhere.)
During one of my recent reactivations I saw a post that made me despair of how politics are now viewed in this country. We have lost our ability to reason. We don't base our votes on policy. We don't base them on facts. We base them on beliefs.
The post in question was a meme trashing the candidate one of my friends did not support. The meme supported outright lies. I was ready to keep scrolling when I noticed one of her other friends decided to post a fact check. The commenter linked to a fact check site showing how the meme contained some gross misrepresentations of the politicians it depicted.
My friend's response to that was, "You believe what you want to believe and I'll believe what I want to believe."
This is what the state of our political discourse has been reduced to. It's about belief.
What is belief? It is the conviction that something is true despite lack of evidence. People believe in gods and fairies and unicorns. We believe in Heaven and Hell. We don't believe in gravity. We don't believe water freezes at a certain temperature and evaporates at another. When someone believes something, that person isn't necessarily wrong, but we have no way of proving him right. If there was a way to prove someone right, then it wouldn't be belief. It would be acceptance of fact.
Today it no longer matters what the facts are. It no longer matters if there is evidence to support our claims. If we believe something to be true, then it's true. Others can throw facts at us a hundred times a day, but that won't do any good. We base our worldview, our voting habits, and our advocacy based only on what we think is true and not necessarily what is true.
Whatever happened to basing our opinions of political candidates based on policy? It's a simple way to do it. Do you prefer the candidate who says he's going to lower certain taxes, or do you prefer the candidate who says her priority is fighting climate change? Do you like the candidate who says her priority is to outlaw abortion or the candidate who says he wants to broaden the social safety net for dependents? Do you like the candidate with strong foreign policy experience or the one with successful business experience? These should be the reasons why we vote. They are based on our personal priorities and convictions (and I am separating the word conviction from the word belief).
The problem I see in recent years is that voters are beginning to conflate a candidate (or even a private citizen whose policies or views with whom they disagree) with being a bad person overall. It's not enough that a business owner publicly opposed the US invasion of Iraq. That business owner also refuses service to armed forces members and veterans. That congressman isn't only publicly pro-choice. He also believes in giving hug therapy to convicted murderers. That candidate speaks against fighting climate change, so she must also want to ban the celebration of Christmas. Does your presidential candidate support gay rights? Well, let me tell you about how he tortures puppies in his backyard for sport.
I am barely exaggerating about this. I see similar posts like this all over social media as well as warnings from well-meaning friends in my email (the one about the veterans is one that I received in an email years ago). Nobody fact-checks. Nobody even pauses to consider if the story sounds implausible. Everyone just sends it out there to the internet, hoping to spread the outrage and hate. It's not only important for you to believe it, you want everyone else to believe it too.
I understand much of this is about psychology. Nobody likes to be fact-checked. I know all about doubling down. Humans don't like to be presented with any data that contradicts their worldviews. If I present someone who holds belief-based views with facts, I am going to be told I got my facts from a liberally biased source, or that there is some kind of sinister conspiracy movement at play that is preventing the truth from coming out. One perfect example of this is the birther movement. No matter how much evidence, including the birth certificate, was presented regarding Barack Obama's place of birth, there are Americans who will stand firm that he was born in Kenya. Another example is an anti-vaxxer who will stand by the findings of Andrew Wakefield even though his autism study was thoroughly debunked by the medical establishment. Anti-vaxxers think that's a Big Pharma and media conspiracy.
Do you want to hear a funny story? Back in 2008 I decided to do a little experiment with how voters are willing to believe anything bad you tell them about the candidate they oppose. I posted an "article" on my MySpace blog about how Barack Obama tortures puppies for fun. I didn't say where the article came from. I didn't link to any sources. All I said was that "sources say" he has a puppy torture chamber in his backyard.
It took only a day for one of my Republican friends to find that article and share it on her feed as another reason to oppose that "Anti-Christ". She bought it and never once questioned where the article came from or what the sources were. I was tempted to see if that post would go viral and make its way around the internet, but I decided to be nice and let my friend know it was a joke. It was a classic case of, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet."
If we are going to base our political leanings only on what we believe, then I have to ask why it's only based on our beliefs on the faults of the opposition rather than on the virtues of our own side. Once upon a time we believed George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and began a lifetime of never telling a lie. We believed lies about good stuff from the good guys. Now we seem to believe only the bad stuff about the opposition. Joe Biden says he is taking away everyone's guns. Nancy Pelosi is an alcoholic. Ilhan Omar hosts flag burning parties. Joe Biden supports the KKK.
Why must we believe the vices of the one we oppose rather than celebrate the virtues of the one we support? Is it because the one we support has no virtues?
It is probably petty for me to say this, but conservatives take up a lot of space on my social media feeds trashing the candidates they oppose. For a while I did see some posts trying to portray Donald Trump in a positive light, focusing on a few pieces of legislation or a few altruistic actions that any decent American would get behind (for example, clemency for Alice Marie Johnson). I don't see too much of that anymore. As Trump is caught in lie after lie and scandal after scandal, it must be hard to support him. Maybe believing unsupported claims about the other side is all conservatives have left. Believing the worst about the other side makes it easier to believe the best about Donald Trump (or at least he is a better man).
I don't want to sound harsh, but what you believe doesn't matter. Facts matter. Your unwillingness to accept the facts doesn't mean those facts are lies. Believe whatever you want to believe, but use the facts to vote.
I am mostly deactivated on Facebook now, but I do pop in there occasionally to make announcements and link my blog posts. When I reactivate, I stay on there for twenty-four hours to check out everyone's feeds and see how my friends are doing. Most of the time I realize I'm not missing much by staying off. Facebook has become like Groundhog Day. Everyone makes the same posts about the same stuff. (I would love to never see Baby Yoda ever again anywhere.)
During one of my recent reactivations I saw a post that made me despair of how politics are now viewed in this country. We have lost our ability to reason. We don't base our votes on policy. We don't base them on facts. We base them on beliefs.
The post in question was a meme trashing the candidate one of my friends did not support. The meme supported outright lies. I was ready to keep scrolling when I noticed one of her other friends decided to post a fact check. The commenter linked to a fact check site showing how the meme contained some gross misrepresentations of the politicians it depicted.
My friend's response to that was, "You believe what you want to believe and I'll believe what I want to believe."
This is what the state of our political discourse has been reduced to. It's about belief.
What is belief? It is the conviction that something is true despite lack of evidence. People believe in gods and fairies and unicorns. We believe in Heaven and Hell. We don't believe in gravity. We don't believe water freezes at a certain temperature and evaporates at another. When someone believes something, that person isn't necessarily wrong, but we have no way of proving him right. If there was a way to prove someone right, then it wouldn't be belief. It would be acceptance of fact.
Today it no longer matters what the facts are. It no longer matters if there is evidence to support our claims. If we believe something to be true, then it's true. Others can throw facts at us a hundred times a day, but that won't do any good. We base our worldview, our voting habits, and our advocacy based only on what we think is true and not necessarily what is true.
Whatever happened to basing our opinions of political candidates based on policy? It's a simple way to do it. Do you prefer the candidate who says he's going to lower certain taxes, or do you prefer the candidate who says her priority is fighting climate change? Do you like the candidate who says her priority is to outlaw abortion or the candidate who says he wants to broaden the social safety net for dependents? Do you like the candidate with strong foreign policy experience or the one with successful business experience? These should be the reasons why we vote. They are based on our personal priorities and convictions (and I am separating the word conviction from the word belief).
The problem I see in recent years is that voters are beginning to conflate a candidate (or even a private citizen whose policies or views with whom they disagree) with being a bad person overall. It's not enough that a business owner publicly opposed the US invasion of Iraq. That business owner also refuses service to armed forces members and veterans. That congressman isn't only publicly pro-choice. He also believes in giving hug therapy to convicted murderers. That candidate speaks against fighting climate change, so she must also want to ban the celebration of Christmas. Does your presidential candidate support gay rights? Well, let me tell you about how he tortures puppies in his backyard for sport.
I am barely exaggerating about this. I see similar posts like this all over social media as well as warnings from well-meaning friends in my email (the one about the veterans is one that I received in an email years ago). Nobody fact-checks. Nobody even pauses to consider if the story sounds implausible. Everyone just sends it out there to the internet, hoping to spread the outrage and hate. It's not only important for you to believe it, you want everyone else to believe it too.
I understand much of this is about psychology. Nobody likes to be fact-checked. I know all about doubling down. Humans don't like to be presented with any data that contradicts their worldviews. If I present someone who holds belief-based views with facts, I am going to be told I got my facts from a liberally biased source, or that there is some kind of sinister conspiracy movement at play that is preventing the truth from coming out. One perfect example of this is the birther movement. No matter how much evidence, including the birth certificate, was presented regarding Barack Obama's place of birth, there are Americans who will stand firm that he was born in Kenya. Another example is an anti-vaxxer who will stand by the findings of Andrew Wakefield even though his autism study was thoroughly debunked by the medical establishment. Anti-vaxxers think that's a Big Pharma and media conspiracy.
Do you want to hear a funny story? Back in 2008 I decided to do a little experiment with how voters are willing to believe anything bad you tell them about the candidate they oppose. I posted an "article" on my MySpace blog about how Barack Obama tortures puppies for fun. I didn't say where the article came from. I didn't link to any sources. All I said was that "sources say" he has a puppy torture chamber in his backyard.
It took only a day for one of my Republican friends to find that article and share it on her feed as another reason to oppose that "Anti-Christ". She bought it and never once questioned where the article came from or what the sources were. I was tempted to see if that post would go viral and make its way around the internet, but I decided to be nice and let my friend know it was a joke. It was a classic case of, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet."
If we are going to base our political leanings only on what we believe, then I have to ask why it's only based on our beliefs on the faults of the opposition rather than on the virtues of our own side. Once upon a time we believed George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and began a lifetime of never telling a lie. We believed lies about good stuff from the good guys. Now we seem to believe only the bad stuff about the opposition. Joe Biden says he is taking away everyone's guns. Nancy Pelosi is an alcoholic. Ilhan Omar hosts flag burning parties. Joe Biden supports the KKK.
Why must we believe the vices of the one we oppose rather than celebrate the virtues of the one we support? Is it because the one we support has no virtues?
It is probably petty for me to say this, but conservatives take up a lot of space on my social media feeds trashing the candidates they oppose. For a while I did see some posts trying to portray Donald Trump in a positive light, focusing on a few pieces of legislation or a few altruistic actions that any decent American would get behind (for example, clemency for Alice Marie Johnson). I don't see too much of that anymore. As Trump is caught in lie after lie and scandal after scandal, it must be hard to support him. Maybe believing unsupported claims about the other side is all conservatives have left. Believing the worst about the other side makes it easier to believe the best about Donald Trump (or at least he is a better man).
I don't want to sound harsh, but what you believe doesn't matter. Facts matter. Your unwillingness to accept the facts doesn't mean those facts are lies. Believe whatever you want to believe, but use the facts to vote.
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