Suspicion of Others is Bad Part 2 of ???

 A few months ago I wrote this post about suspicion.  The central thesis was this point from earlier:

"Many Americans hold essentially Manichean views of the world, but those views are mostly a direct consequence of our hegemony and our political system.  Our two party system leads to a red team/blue team mentality where people who identify with one team view anyone who doesn't adhere to all perceived tenets of that team with suspicion.  Similarly, people who view American hegemony to be "good" tend to be suspicious of those who voice concerns to the contrary (and vice versa)."

Since then I have seen this sort of thing transpire time and time again.  But today I saw an example so clear and so illustrative of this disconnect that I had to document it.  It started with this post from Edward Snowden about Biden's recent speech, the gist of which is contained in its introduction:

"“What’s happening in our country,” the President said, “is not normal.”

Is he wrong to think that? The question the speech intended to raise—the one lost in the unintentionally villainous pageantry—is whether and how we are to continue as a democracy and a nation of laws. For all the Twitter arguments over Biden’s propositions, there has been little consideration of his premises.

Democracy and the rule of law have been so frequently invoked as a part of the American political brand that we simply take it for granted that we enjoy both.

Are we right to think that?"

I think his argument that follows is largely true, if a little narrow in scope.  Yes, the CIA and other covert organizations are fundamentally un-democratic, but that's just one part of our wretched nation and not necessarily the one I would focus my argument on.  Regardless, I think his instinct to question Biden's premises in this manner is spot-on.

Not everyone agreed, of course.  One such dissenter was moderately good pundit/writer Ryan Cooper:

Cooper's characterization of Snowden's argument in the second tweet is perhaps the most clear example I've seen of someone who thinks America is "good" completely mischaracterizing the argument of someone who doesn't.  Snowden explicitly doesn't engage with Biden's argument but rather his premises.  Equating that with saying "Biden's wrong" misses the point entirely.  It's entirely possible (or even probable) that Snowden actually prefers Biden to Trump, but that preference is not cogent to the specific argument he's making, so he rightfully doesn't include it.  

What's more is that Snowden is in exile specifically because he exposed our government's crimes, and yet people use this extremely understandable reason for his opposition to our government to cast further suspicion on him:

What we end up with here is a demonstration of how the two axes of my thesis on suspicion often become entangled.  Someone opposed to the currently existing American state is also unlikely to be a blue team/red team partisan, and thus someone who is such a partisan may conflate an argument for the former position with a sort of softly peddled argument for the opponent.  Or more likely, they may view any argument that doesn't center their partisan views as being implicitly for their partisan opponents.  I think this is wrong obviously, but it's also just such a small way of seeing and interacting with the world.  Don't we want something better than this?  If so, isn't it our minimum obligation to avoid an appeal to suspicion when we see something we don't immediately agree with?