Monday, December 11, 2023

Some critical thinking all around, please

Kevin Drum did the work to create this visual summary of common Republican beliefs based on wide ranging poll questions by the firm YouGov.

Click to enlarge
There's a lot of scary stuff in there. He comments:

My point is ... that, thanks to Fox News and Donald Trump and the rest of the conservative ecosphere, this is what Republicans think of the world. 

They believe Christians are widely discriminated against. They believe Biden stole the election. They believe COVID came from a Chinese lab. They believe we're in a recession. Virtually all them believe the country is "out of control."

If you believed this stuff, you'd act like a Republican too. We are all far more susceptible to what the media tells us than we like to think. The problem with Republicans is just that their media is so much worse than ours.

Yes, I think that's fair. We have a right to expect that which labels itself "news" -- and even responsible politicians -- to operate in a world of verifiable fact. 

But also, above and beyond all our different information sources, people in this country live in different worlds. And all of us need to cultivate the habit of subjecting our own worlds to critical examination.

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