I don't like to talk politics, but occasionally I'll correct a factual mistake, just to be helpful. The speaker will never alter their opinion, never say "Oh, let me rethink that." They just keep the same opinion and shift the factual medium on which it's expressed.
There's a similar effect in health in fitness. If people are not meeting their goals, it's probably because their goals aren't what they are claimed to be.
That's the conditioning -- the brainwashing into a belief system that is not verified by actuality. Politicians are as susceptible as any ambitious, competitive types. They develop a real problem separating the fantasy from the reality, the wishful-thinking from the actual results, the image from the sordid reality of their existence. I'd say this inability to distinguish fact from fiction, fantasy and propaganda, is the great affliction of these times.
I don't try to convince anybody about these things before they are ready to recognize it when they see it. Every now and then, somebody will recognize the truth -- and that's a wondrous thing. The health crisis of people being in poor condition is largely this ignorance of what it means to be in condition. The solution is a whole new way of looking at the problem -- and not more time, energy and money into the old problem -- merely perpetuating by that perception of it. It is not a lack of time, energy or money that is the problem; it is the lack of understanding of the problem.
Most of what we read about in the media is of this faulty understanding of the problem because the writer/reporter's own lack of understanding; that is the problem, the limitation. One can keep pointing this out and they don't seem to hear you and insist more vehemently that you have to see their problem. But the same situation, with a better understanding, might not see it as a problem; he may see it as a faulty solution. Some people can only see problems, no matter what; a few can only see solutions, no matter what. There are far too many who can only see problems, who work in the media; that is the problem -- that distortion of reality and possibilities to the lowest common denominator of popular culture that they themselves have created. But that's not all there is; that's just all they know -- and forget that distinction.