It’s anecdotal, for sure, but there is a clear pattern of people simply ignoring facts that do not correspond to their preconceived notions. I saw a Mark Twain quotation the other day, and I’ll have to paraphrase because I didn’t mark it, but it’s basically: it’s easier to fool someone that to convince them that they’ve been fooled.
People who have had their opinions shaped by the schools, the media, and Hollywood, simply cannot process information that contradicts that. I’ve seen it in action over and over again — they will either ignore an inconvenient fact, or if they can’t ignore it, they will dispute the source (”oh, that came from Fox News’), question the motives (”that research group is funded by a foundation who has one member who does business with the Koch Brothers!”), or, a personal favorite of mine, the good old false moral equivalence (”well, even if that is true, what about [insert totally irrelevant “counter-example” here]?”).
And that’s the behavior from people I know to otherwise be of high intelligence.
All we have to do is change about 1-2% - to win elections we are now losing. That’s all. We don’t have to change the entire 51%. We have a huge weapon on our side - we happen to be right. With that, we can change 1-2%.
All we have to do is change about 1-2% - to win elections we are now losing. That’s all. We don’t have to change the entire 51%. We have a huge weapon on our side - we happen to be right. With that, we can change 1-2%.
Excellent post. I didn’t read it before my post #41. You are so right. You can articulate conservatism using everything from brilliant dissertations to pencil drawn stick figures and the majority won’t get it. Their political thought has almost become an uncontrolled reflex due to a lifetime of propaganda. If we do not wrestle back control of our schools and the media, any effort to promote conservative principles is futile and the country is finished. I hold little hope, because the lake of the electorate is being restocked with more liberal fish every day.
Bingo, Kevkrom! Very true! Well said.
It’s called cognitive dissonance. The new information doesn’t match what they “know” to be true. When this happens there are only two choices in people’s brains. Either they have to clean out their old opinions and expand their view to include the new facts —— something rush Limbaugh has done for a lot of us personally, simply by being true and consistent over days, weeks, months, and years, or they cast out the new stuff even against all logic.
The mainstream and all of the individuals’ contacts help to keep people on the wagon of liberalism. Slight mocking a la Alinsky keeps them in check. No one wants to be made fun of.
When a lib listens to rush enough to have cognitive dissonance occur, he has to stand up to his spouse, friends, whomever, and the reason he becomes a new conservative is because rush is there the very next day and the guy realizes his friends are bamboozled. Truth wins every time it’s tried. We are created by Gd to seek truth.
The guy has to be listening alone in his car, finding himself nodding to what rush is saying. If he heard rush for the first time in a circle of libs at the office, they will likely all be laughing their heads off at the blowhard and his massive ego, missing the point entirely.
I use rush deliberately both because he made me a conservative and because he is doing what we wish to do to the general public. It’s a formula that works.
We can only teach through exposure to the truth, and steady repetition.
And we must realize that most media are our abject enemies.
There's a substantial "Emperor's New Clothes" element at work too. Those who have taught themselves to see the emperor's raiment will regard as fools anyone who does not.
Additionally, many people believe that there is some fundamental limit as to how evil a person can be; if they are put in a situation where someone must either be telling the truth about something, or else be unimaginably evil, they will take the view that because the person cannot be unimaginably evil (implied by the fundamental limit above), the person must be telling the truth. The stronger the apparent evidence that the person must be evil, the more unimaginably evil the person would have to be, and thus the greater the impossibility of the person actually being that evil.