Schrödinger's Senate Hearing
September 28, 2018·0 comments·In Brief
Before the Kavanaugh hearing, Americans could inhabit the same political reality while holding opposite beliefs about what happened. The hearing changed that. What seems like a moment of clarity is actually something far stranger: a permanent break between populations that now experience mutually exclusive versions of truth.
• The hearing wasn't a resolution, it was a rupture. Before it happened, people could remain uncertain about which version of events was real. The hearing forced everyone to choose, and that choice locked them into separate realities with no overlap.
• This isn't disagreement within a shared world—it's inhabiting different worlds entirely. Once you've witnessed the hearing and formed your interpretation, you cannot go back to a state where both interpretations coexist. Your reality has been set, and it's incompatible with the opposite reality.
• The fracture is irreversible in ways we don't usually acknowledge. If you now believe Kavanaugh is guilty, there's no waking up next week thinking maybe innocence is possible. The same applies to the opposite belief. This isn't a pendulum that swings back.
• We've seen this happen before, but not often. The OJ Simpson trial created a similar break between Black and white Americans. They experienced different realities, different facts, different worlds. This moment is comparable but larger and more evenly distributed across the population.
• What happens when both sides keep forcing these moments? Each decoherence event—each forced choice that splits realities—makes it harder for any shared political world to exist. The question becomes whether a country can function when significant portions of its population are literally living in different worlds.
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