A mind is a difficult thing to change: here’s the typical spin on the Durham Report from the left
What was Russiagate? Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton, the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, and a bunch of other federal government players, as well as the MSM, conspired to lie about Donald Trump in a manner designed to harm him in the election of 2016, as well as to hamper and cripple his presidency and his 2020 candidacy. This is election interference on steroids, and imperils their supposedly favorite cause, “our democracy.”
The vast vast majority of people should now be able to see this and acknowledge it. There should be consequences for the perpetrators, but since many of them are powerful and allied with leftist power, this will not happen. There should be apologies, too. But that won’t be happening, either, although there may be one or two people here and there who offer one.
But what actually is happening is spin. The goal is to get readers and/or listeners to dismiss the Durham Report and everything I wrote in the first paragraph of this post. If you wonder how that can be done, just imagine that this sort of thing is what you’re hearing on the subject, and what just about all your friends are hearing. It would make it very easy to shrug, carry on, and continue to believe what you’ve been believing since 2016.
It starts with the headline. In fact, the headline is the most important thing of all, because it is all a lot of people will read before they move on:
“A big fat nothing”: Legal experts say “bogus” John Durham report proves “he’s failed miserably”
“Combined with his lack of success in the courtroom, this investigation was a flop,” ex-prosecutor says
An excerpt from the text:
Despite the lack of new information or any criminal convictions, Republicans touted the report on Monday…[various criticisms from the right follow]…
But legal experts largely trashed the document.
“This is it? This is the grand summary? It’s Horowitz with some extra commentary,” tweeted national security attorney Bradley Moss. “They’ve got nothing. No grand conspiracy. No effort to take down Trump. It’s ‘you messed up surveilling Page’ and ‘be more careful next time with political-affiliated sources.’ What a flop.”
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said that Durham’s report is “full of ‘observations’ but does not present evidence of uncharged crimes, as Mueller did.”
“It reads more like Durham’s spin on the OIG report than a prosecutorial document,” he wrote. “Combined with his lack of success in the courtroom, this investigation was a flop.”
That’s followed by additional cherry-picked comments from legal minds on the left, such as Andrew Weissman (if you’re unfamiliar with Weissman’s history, take a look).
None of this is surprising. I offer it, however, to illustrate the ways in which a person who’s been believing Russiagate is true all these years can keep his or her belief system intact. It’s not difficult; all the person needs to do is continue to read sources on the left or the MSM in general, and there won’t be any serious challenge. A mind really is a difficult thing to change, and people tend to read and believe things that confirm their already-existing biases. A belief system is an edifice that usually is quite strong, made of hundreds or thousands of elements – and although for some people, removing one element can make the whole thing topple down, that’s not the case for most people. And of course most people resist having even a single brick of the structure removed.
[ADDENDUM: Matt Taibbi writes:
Nearly seven years ago this idiotic tale dropped in my relatively uncomplicated life like a grenade, upending professional relationships, friendships, even family life. Those of us in media who were skeptics or even just uninterested were cast out as from a religious sect — colleagues unironically called us “denialists” — denounced in the best case as pathological wreckers and refuseniks, in the worst as literal agents of the FSB.
The sort of intensity Taibbi describes on the part of his friends and colleagues is recalcitrant to change. Nor is there any desire to change, which makes it even less likely.]
A perfect example of this is of course the Rittenhouse case. Look at how many people continue to point out “Crossed state-lines with a weapon” but never checked to see how much of that was true because that’s what the MSM told them. (He crossed state lines but Antioch is about 15 miles away and a 25 minute drive from Kenosha. The kid lived in the Kenosha area and his friend who lived in Kenosha possessed the gun.)
Many of those instrumental in promoting and disseminating the most damaging political hoax in modern American history are not only absolved of any culpability (quite obviously, never to be held accountable for their misconduct), but are paid contributors in print or on cable providing endless “spin”, peddling more and more lies to obfuscate, and to conceal, and to distract the public from the destructive policies of the ruling elite.
BigD:
Apparently many people also continue to think that the people Rittenhouse shot were black.
Well the media didn’t help there either. I think I saw a video from Good Morning America about the result. They talked about one of the family members of the people Rittenhouse and how upset the person was. Then they went to a video to talk to a person. The person was black but given the cut you would have thought the person they talked to was the relative. (And that Rittenhouse shot a black person.)
BigD:
Yes, I think the MSM encouraged it, sometimes subtly and sometimes less subtly.
I’m probably not even going to raise the subject with my leftist California family members. Once minds are made up, they seldom change.
I offer it, however, to illustrate the ways in which a person who’s been believing Russiagate is true all these years can keep his or her belief system intact.
Just more evidence that extreme political views are a form of religion. Lotsa people ready and eager to become martyrs before relinquishing their certainties of belief – particularly when a nice Devil is presented for them to righteously hate.
But the idea of a universal love for fellow humans of whatever ideology is still admirable. Maybe that’s one reason for its being chased out of public respect – access to more enemies.
A perfect example of this is of course the Rittenhouse case. Look at how many people continue to point out “Crossed state-lines with a weapon” but never checked to see how much of that was true because that’s what the MSM told them.
==
Judging from what comes over our Fakebook wall, I’d guess partisan Democrats were embarrassed enough about the Rittenhouse case that they just stopped talking about it. The only one of our correspondents who tried to push the Official Idea is an alcoholic nutcase who fancies she’s a man trapped in a body with boobs and a vagina.
Just more evidence that extreme political views are a form of religion.
==
No it isn’t. There is nothing transcendent in the delusions of political fanatics. Just a mess of conceits.
I don’t discuss these things with my older son and DIL. They think that Twitter was perfectly open and didn’t censor or banish accounts that weren’t left wing and Mat Taibbi is a man of the hard right. There’s lots if other things to talk about that have nothing to do with politics.
I wonder if it’s possible to discern between the folks who are still true believers and those who know better–whether for a long time or just found out–and refuse to allow anyone to force them to–publicly, anyway–change their minds.
Is it better to allow people to think you’re a moron or to acknowledge you were wrong?
I really need to proof read my posts better
There is nothing transcendent in the delusions of political fanatics. Just a mess of conceits.
Oh, I’d say that rewarding martyrdom with 72 virgins is pretty good transcendence.
neo is so good at understanding the Left, as well as humans in general.
As Jonathan Haidt has noted, most on the Right are better at understanding the Left than the Left is at understanding the Right.
But that’s an extremely low bar.
The consistent error I see on the Right is to analyze Leftists as though Leftists shared the same worldview as the Right.
They Do Not.
They are not trying to destroy America. They are trying to save America from the Right, which (coincidentally — ahem) keeps the Left in power.
Sure, it’s not a well-thought-out, fact-based position. It’s largely emotional and self-serving, which those on the Left (pragmatically) refuse to debate. They tried and it didn’t work. Shouting down, cancelling and doubling down have been working, so they keep doing it.
I grant that those at the top of the Left have some idea of what they are doing. but your average leftist, such as myself 25 years ago, does not.
Assuming those on the Left are ravening zombies solely intent on destroying Western Civ is IMO a self-serving conceit on the Right.
It’s hard to be human. It’s hard to be rational. It’s hard to be moral. I didn’t expect choices at this level to come to America, but they have.
no, but those at salon, certainly are, remember when they declared that we should lose the iraq war, at the outset, this new cat, is deliberately ignoring the finding of the report,
Oh, I’d say that rewarding martyrdom with 72 virgins is pretty good transcendence.
==
You don’t live in the Near East.
Just for grins:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire
Turns out that, to save the planet and the ozone layer, to prevent Antarctic penguins from needing beach umbrellas, freon has been phased out. Replacements are less efficient and….flammable.
Additionally, to save the planet and reduce energy, the building was “cladded” in a flammable aluminum compound offset from the building to allow for the stack effect in case of a fire and to minimize its utility in insulating the building.
Fire started in a fridge. Seventy nine people died.
“It’s a price we have to pay,”. You can imagine the tone and the expression on the faces of those who had no relatives in the building.
I’m not sure whether the myriad other examples as well indicate a desire to…do what? Ruin the world? No interest in consequences, even if you find them out? Virtue signaling? Making people do stupid stuff and feeling all holy about it? One factor relating all such items is that they’re pointless. As if that’s a requirement.
huxley: “The consistent error I see on the Right is to analyze Leftists as though Leftists shared the same worldview as the Right.
They Do Not.”
Yes. In 2003 I wrote a fiction book about a person who was a conservative. I followed his life and the problems he faced along the way. The way he approached and solved his problems was illustrative of conservative values.
A cousin, who was quite brilliant and successful ion the academic world (Dean of Mills college, VP of the L-SAT Corp., etc.), offered to proofread it and offer suggestions. She read it and told me she couldn’t understand much of it. She had a friend who was a conservative and she asked him to read it because she was unable to grasp some of the ideas in the book.
Her friend read it and offered me some good feedback. The most cogent thing he told me was that liberals are mostly unable to grasp conservative principles. Their way of thinking about things is more oriented toward group identity and using government as the fixer of all things. Understanding Individual responsibility, frugal living, the mystery of how capital works, and that the rule of law is a necessity for markets to work all seem to be things they don’t want to or can’t understand.
In spite of history’s examples, they want to believe that socialism/communism, or some facsimile thereof, can produce a utopian world. I think a lot of this is inherited. Steven Pinker’s work on basic personality traits that are inherited indicates that these traits may have a great influence on how you view the world. That’s why a mind is so hard to change.
JJ:
I doubt it’s inherited, except for slight tendencies. The reason is that I see plenty of Democrats who are conservative in their private lives as individuals or family members. They aren’t wild. They are faithful to spouses. They expect their children to behave. They are frugal. And so forth. When I talk to them about things like the medical treatment of trans children, they are horrified and think it’s a terrible practice.
However, they always vote for Democrats. This is because they think Republicans are mean and nasty and bigoted, which they hear all the time and read all the time. It’s the bubble in which they live, both social and informational. I often joke to them that they are REALLY closet conservatives, but they can’t make that leap to voting that way.
And when I underwent my “change” experience, it took an awful lot to get me to admit to myself that I was on the right. I think people underestimate what a difficult thing that sort of admission can be.
I also will add that confirmation bias does not just exist on the left. It also exists on the right.
Neo, your closet conservative friends who vote Democrat exhibit a strong closed-minded trait. Closed and open mindedness is, according to Pinker, an inherited trait. When they are showered with the Democrat propaganda, they accept it without question. They could ask themselves, like you did, if it’s all true. They could look at different sources, but they don’t. Their minds are closed and will remain that way until what’s happening affects them directly. Then, depending on where they are on the open/closed-minded spectrum, they might change their minds. Very closed-minded people go to their graves without ever changing their minds about anything – no matter what.
You are probably75% of the way or more to a fully open mind. Thus, you were able to change, and most changers are probably more open-minded than most people. It’s not a learned thing according to Pinker.
I was raised with conservative values. But I have looked at history, I’ve read many books, I’ve been a student of markets, and I’ve observed what so-called progressive policies have wrought. It may be confirmation bias, but I have seen nothing that works better than free and fair markets, private property backed by courts of law, and reasonably honest democratic government. Anyone with an inquiring mind can find these ideas laid out in an understandable fashion. But are they open to change?
My cousin was not open to exploring what my ideas were. Had she been open-minded, she could have asked me to explain further. She didn’t.
One example, IMO, of a very open-minded person is Elon Musk. He changed his mind about the Democrats rather quickly when he saw what they stand for – censorship, secrecy, and political dirty tricks. How many people would change as quickly? Not many, IMO.
JJ:
I am not impressed by the data indicating it’s an inherited trait.
And mostly the people I know are not all that political and get their news from the MSM and other friends. I think that is far more important in terms of their politics. People may be open-minded but just not all that interested in politics. Plus, if they have been told over and over what Republicans are and what they believe, they think they already know.
For more than half of my voting life, I was a Democrat. If I hadn’t gotten more interested in politics and history about twenty years ago (mostly as a result of 9/11), I would probably still be a Democrat. My DNA hasn’t changed.
By the way, Jordan Peterson – who thinks political orientation is fairly influenced by personality traits, which are in turn fairly influenced by heredity – says that the trait of “openness” is correlated with being liberal rather than conservative.
Related:
“LinkedIn Bans Journalist For Mentioning Durham Report”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/linkedin-bans-journalist-mentioning-durham-report
+ Lee Smith with some interesting (as well as some curious) observations and links
https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC
A short list of lies you are not supposed to question:
– The Trump 2016 Campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the election
– The Covid virus emerged naturally, it was not created in a lab in Wuhan
– The Covid mRNA vaccine is safe and effective, prevents infection from and transmission of the virus
– A biological male is female if they say so
– George Floyd was murdered by the police
– Michael Brown put his hands up and said don’t shoot
– Kyle Rittenhouse’s victims were black
– Donald Trump said that white supremacists in Charlottesville were “fine people”
If you are in a position of status or power and publicly call out and document the falsity of these statements, you will be attacked up to and including destruction of your career and ability to earn a living. This is the world we live in.
how open have his liberal colleagues been, not so much,
the times lies about so much, not just in the field of politics and economics, but science, furthering rachel carson’s fraud, that had a death toll in the millions in the third world,
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/05/17/carsons-silent-spring-fails-test-of-time-new-york-times-verdict-in-2007/
We have 3 options:
1. Accept that we have lost, that our children are doomed to live in a totalitarian nightmare, and enjoy the ride,
2. Keep working as we have, hope that we can reverse the long march through the institutions as they either come to their senses or collapse under the weight of their contradictions.
3. Shooting war.
I’m taking a hard pass on #1.
#2 is underway. We’re picking off a few of them (Taibbi, Brett Weinstein, the feminists who are being hurt by the trannies, the suburban moms who don’t want their Beckys to turn into Billys).
#3 can start tomorrow, or next year, or never. I am confident that we will win, but how Pyrrhic will it be? My own mother and at least one of my siblings will be casualties- that’s how it goes in a civil war.
We’ll know a lot more by Nov 2024. The vote will tell us a lot, but the way the votes are counted will tell us more. The onus is on the left to allow a fair count- we’ll be watching, and I expect a few violent confrontations when they try the tricks that worked for them in 2018, 2020, 2022. There will be some arrests, and there will be some jury nullification, and some mostly peaceful demonstrations.
And then there will be a spark.
Speaking of spin…
” White House Report Card: Zogby says Biden ‘seems to have lost control’ “—
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/white-house-report-card-zogby-says-biden-seems-to-have-lost-control
H/T Instapundit.
Seems? Um, OK…sure…
(Of course, it’s the Great Zogby…doing the best he can…)
Trust in media is at record lows, so does it matter the media spin?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-remains-near-record-low.aspx
What will be more interesting is how Trump uses it. Gut feeling – huge!
Trump is a master at getting a message out. His repeated messaging on 2020 election issues has correlated with an increase of belief by most voters that fraud impacted the election.
Just a reminder of what might be getting lost between the Moon and New York City…
“FBI Leadership Sabotaged Clinton Foundation Investigations: Durham Report”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-leadership-sabotaged-clinton-foundation-investigations-durham-report
Opening grafs:
” Remember the Clinton Foundation? Which, took millions in foreign donations when everyone thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the 2016 US election, only to see donations plummet by 90% after she lost?
” Now we learn, thanks to the Durham report, that the FBI had three concurrent investigations into the Clinton Foundation, which were shut down during the 2016 election year by top brass….”
Say what you want about the FBI….
At least they’re consistent!
Refreshing to see neo’s pushback on the inheritability of party affiliation. I am a big Dr. Peterson fan, but that is one area where I do not agree with him. Maybe “openness” is sometimes inherited, but I lean conservative and am extremely “open.” “Openness” doesn’t fit neatly into Democrat or Republican.
Inheriting political preferences doesn’t make biologic sense, but, also, we see myriad examples every day (including on this blog) of offspring voting differently than their parents; siblings voting differently from one another, etc.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
Based on the recent E. Jean Carroll verdict, Officer Darren Wilson should win the biggest defamation settlement in legal history.
Is it better to allow people to think you’re a moron or to acknowledge you were wrong?
Even Pete Seeger, ever so belatedly, admitted that Bolshevik treatment of their proletarian ‘subjects’ was wrong. But that was after he’d defended the leftist position faithfully for three or four decades, and there was no more benefit in maintaining.
Pinker has some interesting data behind his theories on inheritance. Twin studies, for example. I grew up in a Depression Democrat family. When I cast my first vote for Nixon there was outrage, not least because of a family tradition that we were related to JFK.
“…there was outrage…”
Reminds me of my paternal grandmother (of sainted memory, of course…) after my father, a Scoop Jackson Democrat, realized he just could not vote for McGovern in 72. (He had voted for HHH in 68 and until November 1972 for every Democratic candidate since Adlai Stevenson, which was when he was first allowed to cast a ballot.)
And since he felt he HAD TO vote for someone he pulled the lever for Nixon…
She was beside herself. Kept asking, “How could you do that? How could you…?” and muttered non-stop about Nixon’s dog, which latter fact went over my 16-year-old head until I found out about “Checkers”…and the famous speech that bears his name…
Never realized until years later how courageous my father had to be to do what he did—and then admit to it…
Ideology has become entrenched in identity for a lot of people so to acknowledge the Big Lie is to acknowledge that you were utterly played for a fool and used as a pawn and nobody wants to do that, not the talking asses in the media nor your neighbor down the street. Trump hate and its various ancillary ideological untrump positions is a world view, and people are emotionally, intellectually, and reputationally invested in it. It’s a religion. In addition, nobody wants to believe that their government – traditionally viewed as representative of the electorate – doesn’t actually care about us. Too awful to contemplate. God hates us!?!
AMartel,
I mostly agree with your statement, but this: “… nobody wants to believe that their government … doesn’t actually care about us.”
doesn’t correlate with what I observe. The same people who were adamant that the government was evil, greedy and full of buffoons in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s now regard it, its agencies and their staff as noble, humble, charitable and intelligent.
They had no problem believing their government did not care about them then.
Rufus T. – It’s “their” government now and the idea that it doesn’t care about them has got to be horrifying, unthinkable. Not on brand at all.
I don’t believe I’ve ever assumed that the government cares about me. I should have been more clear that I was referring to the progressive pawn people.
To those skeptical of inherited personality traits, there’s this:
“The Big Five traits are:
Openness to experience (includes aspects such as intellectual curiosity and creative imagination)
Conscientiousness (organization, productiveness, responsibility)
Extroversion (sociability, assertiveness; its opposite is Introversion)
Agreeableness (compassion, respectfulness, trust in others)
Neuroticism (tendencies toward anxiety and depression)
**********************************************
Research indicates that heritability explains around 40% to 60% of the variance in big five personality traits.9”
More here:
https://www.verywellmind.com/are-personality-traits-caused-by-genes-or-environment-4120707#:~:text=Evidence%20suggests%20that%20these%20big%20five%20personality%20traits,neuroticism%2C%20sometimes%20referred%20to%20by%20the%20acronym%20OCEAN.
If liberals score high on openness, why are they so reluctant/unable to look at and understand conservative ideas? It seems fairly well accepted that conservatives know and understand what the left believes, while the left accepts the stereotype of conservatives as mean, racist, homophobic, and anti-environment. The left accepts climate change claims without exploring the subject deeply. They can’t be bothered to look at conservative ideas. They dismiss them out of hand. So, who is showing a closed mind? I say it’s the left.
The personality traits you inherit are not necessarily those of your parents. My two brothers are totally different than me.
My younger brother and his wife have lived by conservative values, but believe the Democrats are more compassionate and carting. They cannot grasp the principle that the government has no money except what it taxes and borrows. They don’t seem to understand that the government is redistributing their tax money to other people who may not deserve it.
Their church hired an LGBTQ pastor who destroyed the congregation with her activism. Yet, they don’t see how this is happening all over the country. It’s closed mindedness or willful blindness to certain facts that don’t jibe with their worldview. They will not change their minds.
You may not agree about the inheritability of personality traits, but you have to admit that most people on the left are not open to, or even understanding of, conservative ideas and policies. They have closed minds.
From a review of Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind:”
“Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites.”
It’s not just university elites now. Most leftists of all economic and cultural classes now fit this description.
JJ, all ye need to know is that Republicans (most of ’em anyway) are EVIL and that Trump is Lucifer.
And anyone who takes his place will be Lucifer…because Republicans (or most of ’em) are EVIL. (It’s only logical.)
And they’re out to destroy the country. Undermine American DEMOCRACY. Put Black folks back in chains. Make everyone poor.
Isn’t that what Decent Joe—and his friends—tell us?
And the wall-to-wall media?
And why shouldn’t we believe ’em?
They’re fine, upstanding people. Clever.
And smart, to boot!
The bottom line is, “follow the science”. Like they tell us. You know that. Everyone knows it.
And if “Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia”, well, that’s because “the science changes”. We all know that.
(So why be curious when you know EVERYTHING there is to know…at least about the real IMPORTANT stuff?…Or…why be curious if it’s painful to be curious…?)
JJ:
My liberal friends and family are at least as generally open-minded, perhaps more so, than my conservative friends (I don’t find most people on either side to be especially open-minded or even logical). But as I said before, my liberal friends have been reading sources their entire lives that give them a large set of facts and evidence that have convinced them that people on the right are evil bigots. Plus they are not really interested in spending a lot of time on politics in general. So there is little that challenges their beliefs. My existence as an open-minded person on the right is chalked up to my general eccentricity, and mostly shrugged off. A few have stopped talking to me, but just a few, and none of my good friends.
I doubt the existence of any superiority of intellect, open-mindedness, goodness, badness, whatever, on one side or the other of the political divide. I live in the middle of a deep blue area and the “open-mindedness” is pretty much only with regard to placing burdens on other people. (They’re fine with that.) The same probably goes for the vanishingly small population of in-group red-staters. People are people. The fact that some people have the leisure time, money, and motivation to study up on improving and/or protecting their personal brand presentation doesn’t make them any better. Just trickier to unwind. In my view, the big difference is that liberals/progressives haven’t been challenged on their principals for decades (the cultural presumptions are on their side) whereas conservatives out in the world are constantly faced with challenges and have to develop intellectual agility and depth and honesty. Arguing with “educated” progressives is always a difficult and lengthy process because you first have to cut through the thick overlay of completely unearned superiority, then they are evasive and abusive, acceptance of new facts is fleeting and must be constantly reinforced, and finally a lot of the time is spent reassuring them that they’re not going to be struck by lightning if they say what they really think. It was probably the same back in the day arguing with the comfortable post-war swells.
neo
It appears you assert the massive imbalance in information intake as the cause for your liberal friends’ world view. Is there any room for personality type in deciding which information to absorb and which to ignore?
Or would it be that, due to circumstance, a blank slate started on liberalism and by the time any conservatism showed up, the liberalism was sufficient armor? Could have gone the other way?
It might be an accumulation of liberalism that causes a personality type, rather than the reverse.
But people do what they NEED, and liberals and progressives seem to NEED to be what they are.
I’m involved in some things retirees do…Meals on Wheels, mentoring, so forth. I would guess half or more of the other folks involved are not lib/prog, although I get that from listening and not from discussing.
Confession: Couple of years ago, some hysteric yelled at me, “Your speech is violence!”
“Yeah, so?”
“Now you’re threatening me!”
“Yeah, so?”
Am I a bad person to recollect that with some enjoyment? The point, however, is the absolute insanity of the nutcase yelling at me and the presumption I’d fold or try to defend myself by explaining what a good guy I am, or something. I try but I cannot think of any personality type, or how one would get there, which would believe in such or related items. It has to be a put on. Right?
Barry Meislin on May 18, 2023 at 2:54 pm:
“Or…why be curious if it’s painful to be curious…?”
So, what you’re saying is that that they are above it all. Like looking at conservative ideas is much worse than watching kiddie porn. Virtue is a grand reward for being incurious. 🙂
Maybe some of the other personality traits are at work also.
Conscientiousness – they aren’t conscientious enough to check other sources?
Agreeableness – they want to agree with their friends (or the herd) and trust the nice TV/newspaper propagandists?
Neuroticism – They are unhappy/depressed and need to blame it on someone? Those evil conservatives make an easy target.
Could be a combo of traits. 🙂
JJ.
Curiosity is an active trait. It presumes a positive action to find out what is curious. What I see is, at best, a passive effort to avoid, which is to say not attending to something which might conflict with the desired world view.
Worse is a positive, active effort to resist it, shout it down, condemn it by condemning that which purveys whatever it is which threatens the worldview.
Admittedly, off topic from the rest of this thread, but since this has been a bugaboo of mine for some time…
What’s happened is that certain folks have made up a new term and then slapped an old, popular term on it (in this case, democracy) in an attempt to play motte-and-bailey games with anyone who objects (with the motte being the common definition of the word, while the bailey would be their new definition) and to hijack the popularity of the original idea to promote their new one.
“Democracy” is apparently the belief that every particular group should have a similar amount of influence on every group that influences them. What does this have to do with voting or majority rule? Damfino.
How does this practically differ from “our democracy means we’re in charge?” It doesn’t, really (if we’re in charge, we can ‘properly’ distribute power and influence,) but it helps explain why they might support that use.