Learning environments, like news, should exercise critical thinking for viewers. Instead, a la Neil postman’s entertaining ourselves to death, our news sources have turned to entertainment and inaccurate information in order to manipulate. With repetition of consumption of news, in this largely devoid of critical thinking fashion, viewers will recall memories from that environment, that show, and ignore critical evidence based thinking.
Ask a car mechanic friend who identifies as republican, a vehicle related issue and they will blow you away with their knowledge, calling on memories from prior repairs and utilizing critical thinking. Now ask that same person a political question, one with evidence that shakes their current belief, and they aren’t as likely to utilize that critical thinking they expressed with the car question with repair memories, instead they call upon memories from their news show, devoid of critical thinking.
People heavily identifying with groups like MAGA, they can feel disassociation, loss of identity, symptoms similar to leaving a community web, when they learn their group may be harming them, and struggle to really internalize that evidence backed response regarding politics.
With the fairness doctrine repealed (deregulated news), taxes reduced (resource/wealth imbalance across our socioeconomic spectrum, and citizens united (enabling money from wealthy and corporations to corrupt politics), we face a divided nation, done so slowly overtime, like a frog in a boiling pot. We don’t notice the small changes overtime until we come to a headwind like we are all feeling.
Housing, cost of groceries, cost of living overall, is causing various symptoms, like Luigi, Trumps 4 or so attempts.
Below is a summary of what we face in our nation: