The current divide

Dilbert cartoonist/blogger Scott Adams put up another post about confirmation bias. I like his articles because they explain the world in a way that allows people to disagree without one side being stupid, evil, or manipulated.

What's priceless is the way people prove his point through their comments. I didn't have time to go through all 574 of them (at the time I posted mine), but here's what I added:

Every one of these "dual perception" articles ends with a confirmation of Scott Adam's theory -- that we're watching the same movie but interpreting things differently because of our own confirmation bias. Look at what people are arguing about: 1) Obama was terrible. Trump's awesome. 2) Trump's terrible. Obama was better. 3) Clinton was horrible. Trump deserved to win. 4) Some variation on the theme.

You know who had a similar effect on people? Andrew Jackson. He was a big jerk, too, but enjoyed immense popularity among his base. (Good book: Jon Meacham's "American Lion") It makes me wonder if there's a bigger issue in our society. Is it the president himself? The country survived Andrew Jackson, even if it went a direction many people didn't like.

Rather, I think the bigger issue is our inability to listen to the other side. I don't think the country's been this divided since Vietnam; maybe even the 1850s. In the 1850s, too, people were stuck in a feedback loop that decried the other side as evil, stupid, or manipulated. The voices who valued what the other side had to say were drowned our by the extremes of both sides.

And as I recall, things didn't go so well after the 1850s.