(02-23-2024, 03:35 PM)homebiscuit Wrote:

(02-23-2024, 01:55 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: I'm a thinker, dummy. I'm not a ref and I'm definitely not competing. Certainly not with anyone on this board. 

I don't care what people tell me. I look at data, and I try to make informed and, more importantly, critical decisions. The critical is the important part, and it's what separates me and you. I'm comfortable challenging the status quo when it doesn't make sense. I rarely ever just swallow what I'm told, and, when I realize I got lazy and did that, it shames me. I feel literal guilt when I repeat a lie. 

I have more time than most to research what I want to, and I just happen to care about most politically relevant topics. I'm not [BLEEP] on Marty for not knowing... I'm saying he has a media group that is constantly lying to him, and he just doesn't realize it. It wasn't just that site that lied. I can probably produce at least 10 different sources that ran with that story. Our media lacks credibility. Period. You and Marty and the like are constantly being lied to by people you should trust, and you haven't yet begun to question why that is. You don't even see it half the time. You're still over here bloviating about Trump lying about Mar-a-Lago, while the NY governor is trying to do damage control to keep other billionaires from leaving the state. People in-the-know know it's a crooked decision, but not you.

I sincerely believe most of them do realize it but they’re being told what they want to hear so they don’t question it.

I think it's cognitive dissonance, man, so you're not entirely wrong, imo. We all have it to some degree, but establishment folks have it in a way that keeps them misinformed about the current state of America. 

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person experiences a conflict or inconsistency between their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, or actions. In their case, they believe that there is a level of integrity in our academic institutions, media complex, and political system that has some level of integrity and accountability. It was drilled into them for their entire childhood. So, when they see actions that counter that belief, they don't know how to reconcile it, which means they have to choose one of those two ideas to dismiss. You are correct that they are intentionally dismissing it, but I think you're wrong in that they realize it. They just can't process it. I think it often takes having an action take places that forces you to acknowledge the reality of the situation, and for most of the moderates, it's just not to that point yet. Yay for us.

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