No.Nonsense.

I was going to do a feel-good column today but a thread on my social media has led me to redirect to talk about an issue I see on both sides of the political aisle- willful blindness.

Yesterday, prompted by a discussion I heard on a conservative podcast regarding recent polls showing that President Trump’s approval rating has plummeted, I highlighted a poll from UMass Amherst that outlined the numbers. In every metric from the economy and jobs to Iran and immigration, his negatives outweigh the positives for support for his policies. I pointed out that if the trend continues, all of the down-ballot races look like they will be tough wins for Republicans in the midterms. What this means is that even with Trump having two more years, the Republicans would lose control of the House and Senate and put an end to their agenda.

In watching the comments that came in, my friends on the right tried to shift the focus to TSA’s non-funding and the Democrats. One went back to Joe Biden and COVID restrictions. My friends on the left brought up Republican resistance and Fox News propaganda.

And both sides were saying the same thing.

Stay with me here.

We all view the metrics in light of our own biases. If they agree with our position, they’re a great measure of the pulse of the voting public. If they show the opposite of our view, they’re obviously inaccurate.

The truth is that Trump is underwater with voters. While 90% of MAGA voters support what he is doing, they only represent 30% of the electorate. The other 70% are Democrats and independents with independents in the majority. Overwhelmingly, independents will vote for the policies over the candidates so if the policies don’t align with their values, they will vote accordingly.

What all of this shows is a willful blindness to anything that doesn’t match our narrative. We see what we want to see. And it goes for both sides.

In 2020, I saw a candidate in Joe Biden that had clear cognitive deficits. Throughout his presidency, we had every left-leaning media outlet and every Democrat politician telling us that what we could clearly see happening to him, a significant decline, was not the truth and that he was perfectly fine. All the way to just four months before the election, he was fine. And then he wasn’t. We were gaslighted for four years.

Now, we have a president who was the first in recent history to win both the popular vote and the electoral college in an overwhelming victory. He wasn’t just a rejection of the pitiful candidate that he ran against; he was a promise of something different from the previous four years. He made promises in the direction he would take the country, fixing everything that had gone wrong in the previous administration.

And he’s done none of it.

I applaud what he, through Tom Homan, has accomplished at the border. But the heavy-handedness of ICE operations broke something significant in our country- civility. I support trade equity but his tariffs have been used as a cattle prod to make the countries of the world bow to our demands. He’s led us into more military conflicts in a single year than any other president in recent memory. And he has us stuck in a war with no easy out.

It’s foolish to ignore the red flags. No matter what political philosophy you adhere to, don’t close your eyes to the truth. Research, read, examine. Don’t take the word of a single party or a single news outlet.

My mom always said there are three sides to every story- my side, your side, and the truth. I seek the truth. Which side at you on?