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| This and following images from FiveThirtyEight's article Do Americans Support Impeaching Trump? Both used under the "Fair Dealing" provision of the Copyright law. |
But if you break down those for or against impeachment by political party affiliation, you see a totally different trend.
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I find these graphs disturbing, not because people disagree with me about Donald Trump's impeachment, but because of the way the numbers break down. An outside observer would be excused if she assumed that support for or against impeachment is directly tied to whether or not she knows about what he did. Please note, that support for Impeachment was pretty much steady from March to September, but trended upwards in the end of September and beginning of October when a lot of news stories came out that explained how he leaned on the President of Ukraine in order to get Joe Biden smeared in time for the election next November.
What's important to recognize, however, is that the baseline for that change was wildly different whether you were a Democrat, Independent, or, Republican. The Democrats started out at 76%, Independents at 41.7%, and, Republicans at 12.1%. They all dipped a bit in April, then stayed steady until the end of September. The upward trend in October was pretty much the same among Democrats and independents, but was barely noticeable with Republicans.
Why do I think this is a big deal?
It's because deciding to impeach a President should be a matter of whether or not he did something unconstitutional---and that should revolve around facts not opinions. And I would hope that people in any party should be able to look at the facts of the matter and come to their conclusions based on some sort of objective analysis. Having this dramatic divergence in opinion while looking at the same event means that a huge number of voters in the USA have simply lost the ability to see the world as it really is instead of how they think it should be.
This bugs me, and I think it should bug everyone.
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If you find these articles interesting and/or useful, why not subscribe? As little as one dollar a month helps a lot. And it's really easy if you use Patreon or Paypal.
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Years ago a quite successful city Council member by the name of Maggie Laidlaw went through several election cycles switching from party to party as a potential candidate. She started out in the NDP, ran as a candidate for the old National Party of Canada---which was a "one day wonder" under the leadership of Mel Hurtig---and almost got the Liberal Nomination for Guelph by creating a "flash mob" that joined that party just to get her the nomination.
This is not a terribly common way for people to involve themselves in politics. Instead, they usually develop an emotional attachment to a particular organization and eventually it becomes a question of "my group, right or wrong".
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The last few decades have provided various examples of where I have ended up scratching my head about why it is that a given person still has loyalty to a party that would seem to have absolutely zero commitment to the ideals that that person has built their life around. I've known people that genuinely seemed to be concerned about the climate emergency, yet they adamantly refuse to give up the party that wants to pile lighter fluid on the earth and burn it down. Or they talk about how they are committed to ending homelessness, but still support the party that curb-stomps poor people whenever it seems useful to do so for purely political reasons. I find it hard to believe that they are simply being duplicitous. Instead, I've come to believe in an alternative hypothesis---namely, that they order their lives around a hierarchy of values, where loyalty is actually more important than being hypocritical.
(It's fair to ask why I've never put these individuals on the spot and asked them that question. This raises an important issue in journalism. I've always been afraid that if I asked such a pointed and personal question that it would damage the professional relationship between me and them---and that would cut down on my access. Questioning someone's motives is a prime example of a "career limiting move" for a journalist. This is a tightrope that everyone who writes stories about leaders has to navigate. I hope that I haven't made too many compromises, but I have to admit that it does sometimes give me pause to wonder if I've gone too far in one direction or another.)
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I suppose one explanation for this problem differentiating loyalty to an ideal versus loyalty to a group or individual comes down to someone's life experience. I've got a Master's degree in philosophy and Maggie has a Doctorate in nutritional science, which means that we've both been marinated in a culture where loyalty is to the TRUTH instead of the institution or individual person. Perhaps if we'd had backgrounds where it all comes down to the leader or group it would have been totally different.
My understanding is that human beings evolved to live in very small family-based groups where loyalty to the group was an absolutely crucial survival mechanism. We have long since gotten past that stage, however, and now we must learn to put facts and logic ahead of our personal loyalty. If we don't we will suffer mightily not only for dealing with things like the climate emergency, but also any number of difficult problems that face the human race.
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Furthermore I say onto you, we need to deal with the climate crisis!
I mention her because I can remember someone saying something to the effect that "that woman has no loyalty". I thought it odd, because I'd always seen her as being tremendously loyal; not to individual people nor to a given political institution, but to a set of very specific ideals, mostly based on environmental and social justice concerns. She had hopped from party to party simply because she'd never found one that really seemed to honestly commit to those ideals, so instead she kept looking for something that would give her the opportunity to push what she believed was "the right thing to do".
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| Maggie Laidlaw, former Councillor Ward Three. Image from her old website, used under "Fair Dealing" Provision. |
This is not a terribly common way for people to involve themselves in politics. Instead, they usually develop an emotional attachment to a particular organization and eventually it becomes a question of "my group, right or wrong".
&&&&
The last few decades have provided various examples of where I have ended up scratching my head about why it is that a given person still has loyalty to a party that would seem to have absolutely zero commitment to the ideals that that person has built their life around. I've known people that genuinely seemed to be concerned about the climate emergency, yet they adamantly refuse to give up the party that wants to pile lighter fluid on the earth and burn it down. Or they talk about how they are committed to ending homelessness, but still support the party that curb-stomps poor people whenever it seems useful to do so for purely political reasons. I find it hard to believe that they are simply being duplicitous. Instead, I've come to believe in an alternative hypothesis---namely, that they order their lives around a hierarchy of values, where loyalty is actually more important than being hypocritical.
(It's fair to ask why I've never put these individuals on the spot and asked them that question. This raises an important issue in journalism. I've always been afraid that if I asked such a pointed and personal question that it would damage the professional relationship between me and them---and that would cut down on my access. Questioning someone's motives is a prime example of a "career limiting move" for a journalist. This is a tightrope that everyone who writes stories about leaders has to navigate. I hope that I haven't made too many compromises, but I have to admit that it does sometimes give me pause to wonder if I've gone too far in one direction or another.)
&&&&
I suppose one explanation for this problem differentiating loyalty to an ideal versus loyalty to a group or individual comes down to someone's life experience. I've got a Master's degree in philosophy and Maggie has a Doctorate in nutritional science, which means that we've both been marinated in a culture where loyalty is to the TRUTH instead of the institution or individual person. Perhaps if we'd had backgrounds where it all comes down to the leader or group it would have been totally different.
 |
| My family grouping---right or wrong! Public domain photo of a painting by Charles R. Knight . Image c/o Wiki Commons. |
My understanding is that human beings evolved to live in very small family-based groups where loyalty to the group was an absolutely crucial survival mechanism. We have long since gotten past that stage, however, and now we must learn to put facts and logic ahead of our personal loyalty. If we don't we will suffer mightily not only for dealing with things like the climate emergency, but also any number of difficult problems that face the human race.
&&&&
Furthermore I say onto you, we need to deal with the climate crisis!
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