few of those who oppose “universal, quality” health-care proposals contend that it is a good thing, or a matter of indifference, that some people are devastated by the costs of medical care for a severe illness.
So, on the surface at least, it would appear that the opponents share the ends of the proposals’ proponents. But if the opponents don’t discuss the proposals’ allegedly counterproductive effects; or if they discuss them and fail to be heard, or to be understood; then those effects will remain invisible to the proponents. It seems to follow logically that the opponents, having no legitimate reason for opposition, must be evil—they must have malign intent. Why else would they oppose a measure that “we all know we have to see” enacted (Clinton 2008) if not because they are insensitive to the suffering that “we all know” the measure will stop?
The real division between us and them, therefore, must be between those who, like us, are “compassionate, moral, or progressive,” and those who, like them, are “insensitive, selfish, or backward” (Tulis 1987, 29–30)…. [However, this] divisiveness is inadvertent. The politicians who pronounce such divisions, and their followers, have little choice but to believe that their opponents are uncaring—given their own equation of their proposals with their compassionate intentions, and the absence of overt conflict over those intentions. If we all claim to agree about the ends, and no serious qualms about the actual effects of the means are acknowledged, then our opponents must be lying about their real ends. “The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts” (Lippmann [1922]1977, 82).
Antipathy of this sort will tend to flow in both directions. The opponents of the proposal, trapped in their own version of “the facts”—which they see not as an “interpretation” of the possibly counterproductive effects of the measure, but as an obvious truth—will attribute sinister motives to its proponents. Why else would they favor a measure that is so clearly bound to produce disastrous results? Since each side interprets its version of the facts as obviously true—as if it has been delivered by reality directly to their minds, without mediation by the selective perception and retention of “information”—it will be “almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty” (Lippmann [1922] 1977, 82). “Out of the opposition,” therefore, “we make villains and conspiracies” (ibid., 83). [emphases added]
