“Isn’t the basic problem not “information” but the subordination of rational analysis to emotion?”
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Exactly! Some people just seem to be incapable of rational analysis. I don’t know whether they really are incapable or not, I tend to refer to them as WILLFULLY IGNORANT. They strongly object to almost anything that actually makes sense. They will loudly praise anyone who says the equivalent of two and two make five but will call someone who says that two and two make four an idiot, racist, retarded, intolerant or whatever current buzzword comes to mind.
As with most things, I figure there are probably numerous, spmetimes overlapping, sources of idiotic behavior, of which natural talent cuts a wide swath, followed by, as you say, willful ignorance. The Leftist political agenda is at root irrational (i.e., allocation of resources and control of individuals by socialist coercion rather than free rational choice), which is why “normal” people experience the current world as an Alice in Wonderland dystopia. The Zimmerman trial is a battleground of a larger culture war, wherein normal people are required to kowtow to and financially support violent, ignorant, non-productive thugs and morons, domestic and imported, as part of a forced political correctness agenda. Question for leftists: what would the world be like if we depended on people like Trayvon and Rachel Jeantel to run things and maintain a civilization?