My colleague David Brooks, a longtime opinion columnist right here, thought of that phenomenon lately. The massive information occasions in our liv
My colleague David Brooks, a longtime opinion columnist right here, thought of that phenomenon lately. The massive information occasions in our lives, David wrote, “have ceased to drive politics the way in which they used to. We’ve seen gigantic occasions like impeachment, the Kavanaugh hearings, the Mueller investigation and the ‘Entry Hollywood’ tapes. They arrive and go and barely depart a hint on the polls, the political panorama or evaluations of Donald Trump.”
The organizing precept that may clarify the development, David says, is sociological. “When an entire nation sees occasions via an identical lens, you then don’t need to assume so much concerning the course of folks use to make that means. It’s comparable throughout the land,” he wrote. “However when folks in numerous areas and subcultures have nonoverlapping lenses, the method by which individuals make sense of occasions is extra necessary than the occasion itself.”
I requested David about how we — and people we don’t agree with — can take into consideration the cycle of impunity we appear to be in.
Each side walked away from impeachment with comparable ranges of indignation. What explains that?
We began out with the premise that this impeachment trial was like a jury, that folks stroll in with a clean slate and see the proof, resolve whether or not there’s against the law and resolve whether or not to convict. However that is taking place in the midst of principally a political chilly battle. The value of convicting somebody of your personal get together is perceived because the important elimination of the self. It’s perceived as dropping the ethical battle to the opposite facet, as giving in to one another, of giving up your loyalty to sacred concepts.
That is the issue with scandal politics. It’s the darkish legacy of Watergate: When Richard Nixon fell, you realized you didn’t need to defeat your opponent within the poll field. You may destroy him via scandal. It was simpler and extra morally satisfying. It additionally fed the fantasy that infects our politics which you could make the opposite 42 p.c of the nation go away.
However did Democrats have a case?
They did. The president was completely responsible. If I had been a senator, I’d have voted to convict and take away him from workplace. However the place I fault the Democrats is that there was by no means any likelihood of that. In case you’re like myself and assume he shouldn’t be president, you must discover that his approval scores are up and that the G.O.P. is standard. The reactions by the 2 sides are remarkably just like the Clinton impeachment. There’s one thing concerning the nation that simply doesn’t like this course of.
How a lot of that is about how the journalists talk the information? In our pages and on TV, for instance.