Ignorance: It’s not just for stupid people

Donald Trump was inaugurated as President today, and my Twitter, Facebook, and GroupMe feeds were filled with snark directed at both him and his supporters (I admit that I briefly joined in). For the past year, it has been a hobby of well-educated, liberal people to ridicule Trump voters for their ignorant worldviews. Of course not every Trump voter is completely misinformed, but there are numerous examples of Trump supporters saying questionable or even laughable things. Even more striking is how quickly Trump’s supporters come to his defense even when he does things that seem antithetical to his campaign talking points (rubbing elbows with Putin, hiring Goldman Sachs employees, having sizeable conflicts of interest, etc.).

Based on my social media feeds and most news sources, this seems like a phenomenon unique to Trump voters. However, I’ve recently started to notice that this is not the case. Many highly-educated liberals I know are unaware of significant actions of Democrats in recent years. They often are surprised to hear the following facts:

1. Obama oversaw the deportation of more people than any other President in history (roughly 3.1 million, about half of which were criminals). For reference, Trump’s immigration plan calls for anywhere between 3–4 million deportations of mostly criminals, according to an interview he gave to 60 Minutes.
2. Obama’s FBI spied on journalists involved in leaks by monitoring their phone records and issued subpoenas to reporters in order to get them to testify against/reveal their sources.
3. Two weeks ago, Obama significantly expanded the NSA’s surveillance program. They now can share all of their intercepted personal communications with the other 16 members of the United States intelligence community (FBI, CIA, State Department, etc.).
4. Bernie Sanders received more money from healthcare/pharmaceutical companies in 2016 than 97 other Senators. This is particularly shocking because pharma/healthcare companies have helped to spread prescription drug addiction and high priced treatments to millions of Americans. In many ways, they’ve had a larger negative impact on more American lives than “the big banks” that Bernie frequently rails against.
5. Along a similar vein, Cory Booker, a popular Democratic Senator, voted against the importation of cheap drugs from Canada into the U.S., along with 12 other Democratic Senators. This despite the fact that 72% of Americans supported importation of foreign drugs. The bill was voted down 52–46.

Much like Trump supporters, Obama supporters and Democrats in general are quick to defend their champions and justify their actions. I have a personal example of this which occurred recently. I was speaking with a group of friends, when the topic of “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” came up. Obama recently repealed this policy, which for decades had allowed Cuban refugees arriving on the shore of the U.S. to automatically gain asylum. One woman in the group seemed surprised by this, and quickly said, “oh, well I heard that lots of people were dying on the way over, so that’s probably why Obama stopped accepting them.” Regardless of Obama’s true reasons for repealing the policy (which he discusses here), I found it funny that this woman immediately assigned good intentions to Obama’s actions. I imagine her take on the issue would have been different if Trump had been the one to end the policy. Furthermore, I’d be curious to hear her opinion on the matter if they had been Syrian refugees rather than Cuban refugees.

It isn’t my intention to tear down Obama or other Democratic politicians with this essay (I think Obama did very well, overall). Rather, I want to point out that, while it may seem like “the other side” is full of ignorant, misinformed people, even highly-educated people who read voraciously can have an incomplete view of the actions of their favorite leaders. It’s important to monitor the actions of both parties, as they each are prone to make mistakes (just as they both often make positive impacts).

More importantly, when the leaders of your side do things that are hypocritical to their stated values, you should scrutinize their judgement, just like you would if Trump had done the same thing. Being their cheerleader doesn’t mean you have to defend their mistakes. If people were able to admit that their side isn’t always perfect, we could all have a much more constructive political dialogue as a country. That alone is worth swallowing our pride.