Ideology Shapes Perspective
Policy 
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For a very long time critics and even neutral observers of Apple have made note of Steve Jobs’ “reality-distortion field”: the regrettable tendency of otherwise-sensible people to take complete leave of their senses when Mr. Jobs opens his mouth and weapons-grade insanity pours forth. Comments such as these have fallen off in recent years as Apple has found success with its excellent iPhone and iPod platforms, but there nonetheless remains a constituency of Macheads who’ll permit Jobs to convince them of almost anything.
I’m frequently reminded of this in politics, and the warping effect of ideology on perspective.
Consider the debate over socialized healthcare. Most reputable polling finds this to be a fairly close question with the electorate. Sizeable majorities are satisfied with their own health insurance, and while people see plenty of room for improvement in the current system, they’re skeptical that involving the government is going to reduce costs while improving service and consumer choice. Moreover, sizeable majorities reckon that socialized medicine is going to operate at a loss, and will thus require taxpayer subsidies to stay afloat. In short, people aren’t complete fools.
A couple weeks ago ABC held a healthcare “Town Hall” from the White House, which Right Blogistan derided as a prime time infomercial for President Obama’s healthcare policies. While it wasn’t quite that bad, it was, by any rational measure, a pulpit for the president rather than a serious attempt to wrestle with the pros and cons of socialized medicine. Most of the questions were softballs. The few that weren’t were by no stretch of the imagination hard-hitting. The president was permitted to caricature the arguments of opponents of his policies without addressing their strongest points. Little wonder that the special tanked in the ratings.
If you’re a normal person, this situation is utterly unremarkable: a popular but very liberal president is, even with the media carrying water for him, finding it difficult to persuade Americans of the munificence, aptitude, and probity of government with respect to something as important as healthcare. People aren’t necessarily impressed with what the market has been delivering, but given the incompetence and graft they see in the public sector as a matter of course, they’re skeptical that involving the government is actually going to improve things.
But if you’ve been inculcated in the fierce moral urgency of healthcare reform, to the point of considering it some kind of national disgrace that the United States alone among industrialized nations hasn’t completely socialized the provision of medical services, then you end up imagining that the ABC “Town Hall” was stacked with industry stooges planted to make the president look bad. It can’t be that the idea sucks and that even a reasonably articulate person like Mr. Obama has trouble polishing a turd; it’s that there’s a Nefarious Conspiracy™, which is thwarting the mountains of public support for a single-payer system that allegedly exists.