we may need a new phrase to mean something like "jury nullification" except applied to what the electorate will accept as evidence or pretend to believe when they don't really, for the sake of supporting what they see as larger fairness or justice.

(Ballot) Boxers Rebellion?

It is honestly too harsh and doesn't fully reflect my own tangled views, for me to flatly say that we the American people were just plain duped, either by the Ds or the Rs, then or now. I think we individually struggle to make it right through whatever collective wisdom mechanisms or tortured rationalizations we can grab, until we do GET it right somehow, and that there is larger and more important truth in understanding how all that wrongness usually adds up to justice eventually.