Letter's From Prudence

To the Citizen Who Expects Better,

I have noticed a peculiar American talent of late. We are remarkably skilled at detecting dishonesty in politicians we dislike and remarkably charitable when the same disease afflicts our own. Apparently falsehood, like beauty, now resides largely in the eye of the beholder. This might be merely amusing if we were arguing over baseball, but the consequences become considerably less entertaining when we are choosing the people entrusted with the powers of government.

Donald Trump provides us with an unusually useful study of the problem because his social-media habits leave so little to the imagination. A favorable event becomes proof of his success, while an unfavorable one is attributed to someone else’s failure. A complimentary report is credible; an unflattering one is suspect. Institutions, officials, journalists and judges may be praised when they confirm his account of events and attacked when they contradict it. After sufficient repetition, one begins to wonder whether reality itself has been expected to declare a party affiliation.

Yet, I am less interested in why Mr. Trump writes these things than in what happens when the rest of us read them. For that, psychology offers a useful little discomfort called cognitive dissonance. The term sounds considerably more exotic than the experience, which most of us have probably encountered before breakfast. It describes the discomfort we feel when two things we believe cannot easily live together, particularly when one threatens our judgment, identity, loyalty or understanding of ourselves.

Suppose I have supported a politician for years. I voted for him, defended him, repeated his arguments and perhaps endured more than one dreadful family dinner on his behalf. Then I encounter credible evidence that he has behaved in a way I would ordinarily condemn. I now have two uncomfortable facts occupying the same chair: I believe myself to be a sensible person who exercises good judgment, yet the person upon whom I exercised that judgment may not deserve my confidence.

I could reconsider my opinion, of course, but reconsideration is unpleasant business. I might have to admit that I was mistaken, perhaps publicly and possibly to someone who remembers with irritating precision how confidently I once informed her that she was wrong. The human mind, being wonderfully inventive when protecting its pride, therefore offers alternatives. The newspaper may be biased, the judge corrupt, the statistics manipulated, the recording taken out of context, the offending remark merely a joke, or the conduct excusable because everyone does it and the other fellow is worse. The uncomfortable evidence has been disposed of while the original belief remains safely on the shelf.

This does not make a person stupid. It makes a person human, and that distinction is important. Cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias and motivated reasoning do not belong exclusively to Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, progressives or whatever political tribe has lately invented a flattering name for itself. They belong to the species. The sensible citizen therefore does not merely ask how those people can believe something so obviously questionable. She asks the considerably less comfortable question of what she herself might be willing to believe—or excuse—because she very much wants it to be true.

Here we arrive at the more serious matter. When a political leader repeatedly teaches supporters that unfavorable information comes from dishonest journalists, corrupt officials, partisan judges, fraudulent elections, crooked opponents or compromised institutions, the effect can extend far beyond belief in any particular falsehood. The citizen’s very method of deciding what is true may begin to change.

The process is not difficult to understand. A leader makes a claim and credible evidence contradicts it. Rather than answer the evidence, the leader attacks its source. The supporter is then presented with a choice: reconsider the leader or distrust the source. Distrusting the source resolves the discomfort without requiring any reconsideration of the original loyalty, and the next time that source presents contradictory information, it begins with less credibility than before. Repeat the process often enough and contradiction itself may eventually be interpreted as evidence of persecution. A newspaper’s correction becomes proof that the newspaper is hostile; an adverse judicial ruling becomes proof that the court is corrupt; an unfavorable election result becomes proof that the election was fraudulent.

This is a remarkably convenient arrangement for anyone possessing power, because the ordinary means by which error and misconduct are exposed have been converted into further evidence that the powerful person was right all along. It is also poison to self-government.

Our constitutional system assumes that powerful people will occasionally behave badly. The framers were under no illusion that election to public office performed some miraculous improvement upon human character. They divided authority precisely because ambition, vanity, faction and self-interest were expected to arrive at government each morning along with everyone else. The structure they designed therefore depends not upon perfect leaders, but upon competing institutions, independent sources of authority and a citizenry capable of judging among them.

Those restraints become fragile when political loyalty determines which evidence citizens are willing to consider. A court can check a president only while citizens remain willing to accept that courts sometimes rule against presidents for legitimate reasons. A free press can expose misconduct only while inconvenient reporting is examined rather than automatically treated as treachery. Elections can settle political contests only while losing an election is still permitted to mean that one lost. Accountability itself becomes little more than decoration when every accusation against our preferred leader may be dismissed before we have troubled ourselves to discover whether it is true.

No constitutional amendment can rescue us from that habit, because the final remedy is irritatingly personal. We must learn to become suspicious of our own certainty. When someone we support is accused of wrongdoing, we ought to ask the same questions we would ask if the accusation concerned someone we despised: What is the evidence? Where did it originate? Can it be independently confirmed? Am I rejecting the claim because it is poorly supported, or because accepting it would make me uncomfortable? Most revealing of all, would I excuse precisely the same conduct if the politician belonged to the other party?

There is one question I would place above all the others: What evidence would cause me to change my mind? Every citizen ought to be capable of answering it. If the honest answer is nothing, then evidence no longer governs the belief; loyalty does. At that point we have ceased evaluating a public servant and begun protecting an allegiance.

That is a dangerous bargain in any republic because democratic citizenship requires something more difficult than possessing opinions. It requires retaining ownership of them. No politician is entitled to that ownership—not Donald Trump, not his opponents, not your party and not mine. Public officials may ask for our votes, our support and occasionally our patience, but none may reasonably demand that we distrust our own eyes whenever they observe something inconvenient.

There is no shame in discovering that we were wrong. Indeed, the ability to discover it may be among the quiet virtues upon which self-government depends. The greater embarrassment would be arranging the whole of reality so that we never have to.

I remain, in expectation,

Prudence C. Wilder