McLarenblog

If you surround yourself with like minded people, you are more likely to accept the group view.  Parents typically hold a lot of sway over their children.  Religious schools, religious colleges, NRA,  political party membership, also fall into this category.

Ronald Regan before he married his second wife was a Democrat.  His second wife and more importantly a rich father in law influenced Regan to switch to become Republican.

Being a part of a like minded group can to some extent cement a person in place from reviewing the basis for their beliefs and looking at the facts from a fresh perspective.

I personally have noticed that even well educated individuals can utterly fail to properly process known facts.  Individuals who reject the global warming issues are a wonderful example.  They reject the overwhelming evidence.  I have an acquaintance who was a electronic engineer before retirement.  His father was forced to be a union member and evidently the union bosses may have been corrupt.  The father’s views about unions imparted the son to be anti union, anti progressive and pro Republican.  This person vehemently denies that global warming is occurring.  An indicator of this behavior is the process that these people seem to cherry pick their “facts” to support their prejudice political views.

There is “a chronic and widespread gap between Americans’ expectations for themselves and their actual achievement”   which can lead to mass shootings and joining extremist groups like ISIS.  But what about the population of people who still perceive this wide gap in their lives and do not go postal?  Who are they to blame for their problems?  Top of the list is government.  Is not our government in control of the economy and from that our chances of getting a good job and ultimate personal survival?  If this is the perceived cause of a person’s problems they often times turn off the shades of grey views and look at political issues as black and white.  This may help explain why some people position themselves as being far right in their political views.

My daughter came up with the idea that a lot of people are not exposed to the facts.  It is true that newspapers readership has fallen.  Young people do not read newspapers or political magazines.  They instead use Redit on their sell phones which utterly fails going into depth on issues.

It seems that print news reporting is less about vetting a candidate and more about describing the  event like it is a horse race.

To properly vet a candidate takes way more effort to research and write the  findings.  News organizations seem to have lost their backbone and just seem to skim the surface, probably because its way less effort to swim along the surface than to hold your breath while taking a deep dive.  An expose, typically, takes a number of news assets such as reporters, researchers and lawyers.  That translates into added cost.  It seems only very large newspapers can undertake proper vetting of candidates but they seldom perform this function.

News organizations profit from publicizing the political race because the public is driven to know who is in the lead.  This translates into more papers being sold and more TV viewers.  The public may think the news organizations are doing their job properly but in reality they provide less informed knowledge about issues.

Some news organizations feel the need to validate their subscriber’s views and management seem to hesitate from exploring views that run counter.  For example, FOX News is considered by some to be a propaganda operation and by most measure it is.