Kevin Drum tidily sums up the effects of partisanship – which I suppose he should keep in mind himself:
This is American conservatism in a nutshell. Goldberg despises Trump, but he despises Obama even more. The end result is pretzel-bending arguments about things like this that ignore every scrap of evidence about Trump and Russia. It’s fair to say that Vladimir Putin hasn’t gotten the breather he hoped for when Trump beat Hillary Clinton, but that’s only because Congress and public opinion have forced Trump to back off. And in any case, surely the fact that Putin was so hellbent on defeating Hillary in the first place is evidence enough of how difficult the Obama administration made his life?
And I do see this in conservative publications. This is the single best reason to read partisan-authored articles and listen to partisans of either side in arguments with substantial skepticism, wondering the whole time how they’re trying to twist your arguments.
As an independent, I have no problem pushing pins into partisans on either side who can’t really see the world around them. Their ideology is more comforting to them than reality, and that’s a recipe for disaster. The pin is a favor to them almost as much as it’s good for me to blow off steam.
