This is, of course, a bipartisan vice. Democrats seem equally bewildered to find that no, Republicans actually care enough about Obamacare to make a hard stand against it. That’s not how the script works. In the script, President Martin Sheen … pardon me, President Barack Obama … gives a stirring speech, and shamed moderates cross the floor to get started on the hard work of making the Affordable Care Act even more awesome than it already is, while the rest of the Republican legislators have to join the witness protection program to protect themselves from an angry mob of voters.

The ability to understand that the other side is people, with regular people feelings and their very own thoughts and motivations, seems to have been almost completely erased over the last decade or two. My Facebook feed is filled with liberals saying how they just can’t understand why Republicans are so determined to take health insurance away from poor people … as if that could be the only possible motivation to oppose Obamacare. It’s a galloping case of the tendency to believe that if someone disagrees with you, it’s because they reject whatever value you are trying to further. …

It is entirely reasonable to believe that Obamacare is terrible policy that will hurt more people than it helps. Your inability to grasp that anyone has this belief does not mean that everyone who disagrees with you is a venal, amoral wretch; it means that you have been blinded by confirmation bias and your own lack of empathy.