It can be comforting to hold that bizarre beliefs and apparent resistance to fact are a sign of irrationality and detachment from reality. But partisan heuristics, political loyalty and insufficient reporting methods play a bigger role than the application of reason, painting an inaccurate picture of a world divided by divergent beliefs.

In 2004 an unnamed member of the Bush administration reportedly described critics as belonging to the “reality-based community”. Members of that community base their proposals on “judicious study of discernible reality”. We, the official said, “create our own reality” instead. The description of liberals as members of the reality-based community was embraced by the left as a badge of honor. Our view of the world is based on fact; theirs is based on fantasy, wishful thinking and prejudice.

If the liberal/conservative divide was a distinction between those in touch with reality and those with a more tenuous grip on it in 2004, how much more is that the case today? We live now in a world of “alternative facts”, in  which the US president’s continuous and blatant lies are accepted by his supporters and the right consumes news of dubious legitimacy. Rejection of established science, especially evolution and – tragically – climate change remains (as it was in 2004) largely a right-wing phenomenon. While we on the left may despair at the state of the world in 2020, there is some comfort to be found in the picture of ourselves as the bastions of reason and truth.