If Obama did that…

Last night I launched this blog in a fit of drink and honesty, and woke to find a couple of very nice compliments on social media in response to it. That was a welcome and very brief change from the social media pattern of the last ten years.

It seems like every day since 2016 we wake up to another outrageous Trump moment followed by hours or days of calls for accountability from the left side of social media. He does something unconscionable, Republicans refuse to do anything about it, and the entire left side of the political discussion becomes engrossed in demanding he be stopped and calling Republicans hypocrites for their inaction.

That word, hypocrisy, deserves examination. Online leftists and liberals treat it like a smoking gun, the ultimate kill shot to stop the opposition in their tracks. All that’s required is to point at a Republican’s actions, say that word, and they will immediately correct course.

So why doesn’t it work?



In 2014, Obama appeared at a press conference in a tan suit. Conservative media treated this as a national emergency. The tan suit was “unpresidential” and indicated a serious failure of character. The tan suit said everything we needed to know about Obama and it wasn’t good.

Donald Trump appears in public with his face painted a garish orange, his suit and tie comically oversized, doing his stiff, “double jack off” dance. A literal clown. Republicans don’t blink. They cheer. They imitate him.

Eric Swalwell just resigned from Congress and withdrew his bid for California governor after accusations of sexual assault, as he damn well should have. The Department of Justice is launching an investigation and under a Republican administration, they will clamp down on him like a pitbull on a toddler’s throat. He’s a Democrat. He is doomed.

Donald Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse, and he’s been accused by dozens of women over five decades. He’s been credibly connected to convicted pedophile trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. There are recordings of him bragging about “grabbing” without consent. And yet he still sits in the White House, flailing wildly like a man who knows his own guilt every time a new accusation surfaces.

A lot of sane people have been driven to madness trying to make sense of this. They’ve regressed to posting memes, gotchas, and endless editorial witticisms on social media because at least it feels like doing something. Democrats in Congress have made a daily practice of sending out strongly worded statements for over a decade, to no avail. What the hell is happening?

Sexual assault is unquestionably wrong. Everyone who perpetrates something so horrible on another human being should be punished, decisively and harshly.

Right?

In psychology, there’s a concept called moral projection. It refers to the tendency to assume others share our moral framework; that the values and codes of conduct we adhere to are universal rather than personal or cultural. When we accuse someone of hypocrisy, we make the specific claim that they are in violation of a standard they themselves hold. Moral projection is the error of assuming a moral standard is shared when it is not.

When we call Republicans hypocrites for protecting Trump while condemning someone like Eric Swalwell, the accusation assumes they share our universalist standard of accountability that applies regardless of party. We say “we don’t care who is on the Epstein list, punish them all!” Social media turned against Eric Swalwell immediately when accusations against him surfaced. No quarter, no mercy, and no loyalty. But the Republican standard is clearly different. It does not begin with a question of whether a moral code was violated. It begins by asking “What side are they on?”

This is precisely why the hypocrisy framing fails completely. To accurately call someone a hypocrite, we must first establish that they have violated a standard they themselves hold. Republicans are not operating from a universalist standard of accountability. They are operating from a tribal standard which dictates they are right by virtue of being the in-group and we are wrong by virtue of being the out-group. For good or ill, theirs is a consistent moral framework and to call it hypocrisy is categorically incorrect because we are accusing them of violating a moral code they have never actually followed.

A Republican cannot condemn another Republican accused of sexual assault because he cannot arrive intellectually at a place where that assessment is possible. Their moral framework will not allow it. He has already determined that the accused is permanently correct by virtue of being Republican and once that determination is made, nothing else matters.

When we assume the Republican shares our universalist standard of accountability and accuse them of hypocrisy for failing to apply it, that is moral projection. We are describing our own values and assuming they are universal. They are not. We persist in bringing universalism to a tribalist fight, then we wonder why nothing changes.

Ironically, their “whataboutism” is the same error in reverse. Republicans project their moral framework onto us when they assume we protect Democratic politicians the same way they protect those in their in-group. Moral projection seems to be something we all do.

So, stranger, the next time you feel the urge to take your “gotcha” to social media, to draft a post that starts with “Let me get this straight” and ends with “got it”, why not pause for a moment. Ask yourself what standard you want to accuse them of violating, and whether they actually adhere to it in the first place.

Keep your arguments strong and your glasses full. Gracias.