It’s even worse than being uninformed, it’s being purposely misinformed, by politicians who have trained large parts of the public to ignore facts and listen to them instead. I need to go re-read 1984 while I still can.
By politicians who have trained large parts of the public to ignore facts and listen to them instead
I would argue that particular surrogacy was handled by religion in the US, especially fundamentalist evangelicalism.
For religions of this kind, belief without evidence, and especially contrary to evidence, is virtuous, the purest form of devotion — blessed is he who believes without seeing — and it’s not a big leap from spiritual authority to political.
Politicians didn’t have to do any training, unfortunately. We trained ourselves.
Edit: made exception for mindfulness religions, my apologies
I know a very intelligent, analytical, freedom loving Republican. With every conversation, I’m more shocked he’s not a hard-lined Democrat. He’s not into the conspiracies or anything. It’s just that everything is a bit skewed.
“I don’t think he’s saying that.”
“Most Democrats agree.”
“I just assume most politicians are like that.”
“I support that, but I think states should be deciding that.”
I’m like he is saying that, the Dems on Fox agree, assuming just gives a pass to offenders, and “state rights” has always just been an excuse to oppress without federal protections.
He also listens to right-wing people he disagrees with because sometimes they make a good point. In other words, he knows they’re being dishonest, but sometimes he can rationalize what they say. It’s willful ignorance.
Yeah I’ve met several people like this. I’ve yet to figure a good general understanding of why this happens, but I think as a first step, people need to have much more humility about their own intelligence. No one is immune to the standard cognitive biases
It’s even worse than being uninformed, it’s being purposely misinformed, by politicians who have trained large parts of the public to ignore facts and listen to them instead. I need to go re-read 1984 while I still can.
Yeah, wilful ignorance is far worse than plan old ignorance.
I would argue that particular surrogacy was handled by religion in the US, especially fundamentalist evangelicalism.
For religions of this kind, belief without evidence, and especially contrary to evidence, is virtuous, the purest form of devotion — blessed is he who believes without seeing — and it’s not a big leap from spiritual authority to political.
Politicians didn’t have to do any training, unfortunately. We trained ourselves.
Edit: made exception for mindfulness religions, my apologies
I know a very intelligent, analytical, freedom loving Republican. With every conversation, I’m more shocked he’s not a hard-lined Democrat. He’s not into the conspiracies or anything. It’s just that everything is a bit skewed.
“I don’t think he’s saying that.”
“Most Democrats agree.”
“I just assume most politicians are like that.”
“I support that, but I think states should be deciding that.”
I’m like he is saying that, the Dems on Fox agree, assuming just gives a pass to offenders, and “state rights” has always just been an excuse to oppress without federal protections.
He also listens to right-wing people he disagrees with because sometimes they make a good point. In other words, he knows they’re being dishonest, but sometimes he can rationalize what they say. It’s willful ignorance.
Yeah I’ve met several people like this. I’ve yet to figure a good general understanding of why this happens, but I think as a first step, people need to have much more humility about their own intelligence. No one is immune to the standard cognitive biases
“But I didn’t know about that!”
Re: Virtually any topic which has multiple news sources explaining it in their texts, from myself.