After the explosive Comey hearings last week, it was as if people had been watching two different events. The event I saw was nicely summed up by The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan. James Comey's testimony, she wrote, demonstrated that "Mr. Trump does not understand the norms, rules and traditions of his job."
You can say that again.
Presidents are not supposed to interfere with FBI investigations – especially if the issue is Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Presidents are not supposed to corner the director of the FBI in their private dining room and act like a two-bit mob boss. "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty," the President told Mr. Comey, who promptly took detailed notes.
Mr. Comey is a cautious man. He plays by the book. Donald Trump is a liar and a bully who shoots his mouth off.
Comey speaks: What you missed from his Senate testimony on Trump and the Russia probe
The fact that "he's just new to this" (as House Speaker Paul Ryan lamely pointed out) is beyond parody. Who's more credible? The question answers itself.
But there's another version of the story. It's Mr. Comey, not Mr. Trump, who's in trouble. The President has been entirely vindicated, because Mr. Comey was forced to reveal that Mr. Trump himself is not the object of any investigation. Mr. Comey improperly leaked sensitive conversations with the President to The New York Times. The real liar is Mr. Comey – because he also told a confidential Senate hearing last month that the President had never tried to interfere with agency investigations. Actually, that last part is a fabrication. It was concocted by someone named Jack Posobiec, a conspiracy-minded, self-styled "journalist." He tweeted it out over the Internet last month. It spread through the netherworld of Trump alt-media like the plague, and has taken on a life of its own.
"How can people believe this stuff?" I asked my friend Bill, who happens to live in the United States amidst a nest of rabid Trumpistas.
"Because they think The New York Times is full of lies," he said.
This is U.S. politics today. People don't just disagree on their interpretation of events. They disagree on the events themselves. There are at least two parallel tracks of "truth," running on and on to the horizon, destined never to meet.
To an extent that's new in history, the people who hold these opposing views are destined never to meet either. The United States is becoming increasingly segregated, not just by race or class but also by ideology. People have always clashed over politics, of course. What's changed is that each side regards the other with far more hatred and contempt.
"Americans tend to belong to their political 'tribe' not so much because they love its ideas but rather because they despise their opponents," writes David French in the National Review. And now, thanks to the Internet, people are able to group together with like-minded souls in increasingly insulated subcultures. As Mr. French points out, a whopping 60 per cent of Americans now live in "landslide counties," where one or the other party won the last election by at least 20 per cent.
It's not just the Trump tribe that has moved to the extremes. So has the Democratic tribe, where the Bernie Sanders wing now makes up the loudest voices in the party. Their strident brand of identity politics is doomed to fail in the heartland, where people care more about the economy than social justice. And they can be as conspiracy-prone as the nutbars on the other side. In their view, Mr. Trump and his cabal of evil schemers are virtually on the payroll of the Russians. They're convinced that Mr. Trump must be impeached, the sooner the better.
I hate to say this, but they're dreaming. The Comey hearing hurt Mr. Trump, but it was by no means a mortal blow. It's no revelation that he's unfit for the job. It's a stretch to argue that his improper suggestions to his FBI director added up to obstruction of justice. In any event, this is all a sideshow. The biggest questions – to what extent the Russians interfered in the U.S. election, and whether Mr. Trump or any of his minions colluded with them – remain unresolved, and may never be cleared up. There may never be a smoking gun. The investigations will multiply and drag on and drive the political process to a grinding halt, as the tribal warfare in Washington keeps tearing the country apart.
The only winner is Vladimir Putin, who must be marvelling at his good fortune and laughing his head off.