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The Left Is Now an Honor/Shame Culture
Anecdotal evidence, especially from Twitter, suggests that the American Right and Left reacted to the Ford/Kavanaugh Senate hearings in the following three ways:
- Both tribes generally thought that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was believable and sympathetic. Most seemed to feel bad for her, even wishing that she didn’t have to expose herself in this way.
- The right essentially had the same response to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony. It made sense that he would be angry, but even more so, if he was innocent he should have been angry.
- The left universally seems to have found Kavanaugh’s testimony to not only be unsympathetic but on some level an indictment of him personally.
Basically Dr. Ford was met with near-universal empathy but Kavanaugh was a like a thermometer for partisanship. This outcome wasn’t terribly surprising to most conservatives. But does it have an explanation beyond tribal loyalties?