The Roots of Partisanship

The philosopher/mathematician Bertrand Russell once wrote the following:

"If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts,
he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is
overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other
hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for
acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even
on the slightest evidence."

This simple observation about human nature goes a long way toward explaining the polarized partisan squabbling that currently passes for political discourse in this country. If anything, Russell understated the problem. All too often, people will refuse to believe something even when the evidence is overwhelming (evolution is a good example). Conversely, in the age of the internet, it's possible to find "evidence" for just about any belief, no matter how ludicrous. After all, someone somewhere is saying exactly what you want to hear; the "evidence" is just a Google search away.

In the old days, before the internet, FoxNews, and talk radio, the major media outlets largely controlled the flow of political information. By necessity, most people formed their political beliefs by reading the newspaper or watching the network news. This meant that no matter where you fit within the political spectrum, you were generally exposed to the same basic facts. The same is simply not true today. There are so many sources of information at people's disposal that any two people will likely be exposed to a very different set of facts. Partisan media outlets cherry-pick and spin facts, giving people an incomplete picture. The less scrupulous sources (of which there are many) will actually manufacture facts. The result is that people are often able to avoid altogether those facts which would in any way challenge their worldviews. Even more troubling is the fact that those with agendas (such as political operatives and unprincipled partisans) are able to manipulate the flow of information to a large percentage of the public, making a joke of our political discourse.

In this brave new world, the responsibility lies with each of us to avoid the traps of partisanship, to be wary of the evidence as it is presented to us by any one source, especially when it is exactly what we want to hear. We must always be skeptical and empirical. Participating in politics in any meaningful way will always require us to choose "sides," but we must remember that those on our "side" can be and often are wrong. Partisanship is all too often the result of intellectual laziness, of poor inductive reasoning. Rather than checking our facts, we simply assume that those who have so often been wrong in the past are wrong again, and those who have been right are right about all things. If enough of us make the effort to police our own assumptions and to verify all our facts, we can eventually restore some measure of sanity to our political discourse.