“Our democracy is safe for now,” she wrote. This was a Facebook post from someone I know, who was gloating over the guilty verdict in the show trial of Donald Trump. It was followed by several gushing comments. Neither my acquaintance nor any of her respondents seemed to realize that railroading an opposition candidate does not augur well for anyone’s democracy.
Why do people believe what they believe? Why are reasonable people so unreasonably partisan? Why can they tolerate anything other than an opposing point of view?
I began to puzzle over such things when, as a fairly liberal student in the sixties, I first noticed how quickly the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement converged. I remember actually being surprised when posters appeared announcing protests with the joint purpose of advocating civil rights and ending the Vietnam War.
It seemed odd to me. Why couldn’t someone be for civil rights and also support the military engagement in Southeast Asia? What did discrimination against black people have to do with whether or not it made strategic sense to forcefully resist communism in the jungles and rice paddies of Indochina?
American Thinker
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