republished from my libertyBlog

It might come as a surprise to you, but once people believe in their partisan ways, whether Republican or Democrat, they are not easily swayed.

The effort it takes to overcome your personal confirmation bias is difficult. It's a lot easier to say the other team is EVIL and your team is always good. It's simple to call attention to missteps by the Other Side while four or eight years later making similar excuses for Your Side.

When confronted with ideas that you know just can't be true, you experience something called 'cognitive dissonance', a mental discomfort when you realize you might be holding onto two contradictory views.

The fact that so many people never receive opposing views and appreciate the reasons others would hold those views is why we experience the toxic online atmosphere where no real ideas get proposed.

Let's take the classic Man on the Street example.

I loved these videos whenever they painted Republicans against speech they thought was Obama’s (it was Bush’s) and I like this new version as well. It clearly articulates that people will value partisanship over independent critical thought.

What's the biggest shame in watching people embarrass themselves? It's not that they've inaccurately credited quotes from one major party to another.
​
No, the real shame in it all is that instead of real, genuine critical analysis of the President, we get lazy vomiting of old one-liners we get from the media talking points.

Let’s hate the President for continuing drone wars and spending the National Debt and our kids into oblivion, both actual immoralities. Instead on social media we see remarks about the color of his skin (ironically enough, it's orange, but these are the same people that say we should talk about the color of people's skin) or his funny hair or his bumbling baboonish nature.

Where's the progress in that?

Sure, you can say he's the anti-Christ, but Republicans said the same thing about President Obama.

​"He's a literal embodiment of the worst parts of human nature and he doesn't actually care about the United States or its citizens". Who said that? Democrats are saying it now, Republicans said it during the Obama years.

Eventually, and this might not happen for another 50 years of your life, you'll end up hating ALL of them.
​

I hate all of them.

​So I refuse to fall into this category of “no no no you have to ESPECIALLY hate Trump! Come over here and loudly proclaim how much you hate Trump with us!"

No thanks, I hate all of them!

They all get away with the same shit.

President George Bush’s wars directly attributed to the death of a million ‘brown people’.

Obama continued and even extended it.

Trump has shown no evidence that he’ll curtail that anytime soon.

So no, I don’t give a lot of credence to whether President Trump is a blabbering idiot, or he looks orange, or he has been lying to get center stage his whole life.

Let’s reframe our debate:

Killing people is more important than saying rude things. If we get caught up in hating the Cheeto because it’s 'what everyone else is doing', we might get a lot of likes and reposts and shares.

But it’s a disservice to real bad stuff that the media will refuse to cover.

​But did you hear he has ‘little hands’? Har har!

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