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Are 'compulsive Believers' More Dangerous...

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vortex | 08:57 Sun 05th Feb 2017 | News
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.. than 'compulsive liars'?

Is this piece complete nonsense and an insult to suggest that people are so easily brainwashed?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/05/donald-trump-lies-belief-totalitarianism
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I only had to look at the source of this article to realise that it was going to be a load of gonads but in a nod to intellectual honesty I decided to read it. My first impressions were correct.
Saw the source didn't want to but tried to read it before commenting, okay the first paragraph wasn't particularly inspiring the rest just got worse, I'll never get that time back.

More nonsense fodder for the easily led I reckon
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Jackdaw33 - I agree, very poor article in my view.

You could say I am not taken in by the writer!
I'm not sure how easily we who take the time to come on sites such as this are able to judge how mass politics works. We, generally, take the time to read up and try to understand the political landscape whereas the vast majority of people don't. Their only contact with politics is reactionary and heavily influenced by their peers. It has nearly always been the proletariat's desire to overthrow the government of the day, regardless of their political standing. We are now seeing figures who realise this and are pandering to 'our' desires to revolt by promising us the world which we crave. Unfortunately, many of their promises are hollow as is beginning to be seen in the US.
The article is largely cobblers but it does have a few grains of truth.
It could be said that those of us who bother to involve ourselves in threads such as this have the wherewithal to scratch the surface of politics but we're a small minority and we don't represent how the majority of our peers interact with politics.
I think that there is a real danger that with the press and politicians pushing 'facts' to their credulous readers and supporters, we're now getting to a very dangerous place.

Take for instance the mosque attack in Québec City last week.

We had Fox News claiming that the attacker was of Moroccan origin, who shouted Allah Akbar as he opened fire.

This was nonsense.

Absolutely and completely false. The alleged shooter was French-Canadian far-right sympathiser Alexandre Bissonnette.

However, this didn't stop Sean Spicer from jumping in an using the killing as a justification for Trump's Muslim ban.

Even though the shooter was not Muslim.

At all.
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Zacs-Master //we're a small minority and we don't represent how the majority of our peers interact with politics.//

Hard to see how this trend will ever be more balanced.

The story, from beginning to end, including and in particular Trump's part in it, was/is of course fake news, isn't it ?
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Sp1814 //I think that there is a real danger that with the press and politicians pushing 'facts' to their credulous readers and supporters, we're now getting to a very dangerous place. //

But can viewers and readers discern the facts for themselves or are they so incapable they will just believe what is spoon-fed to them?

In other words, compulsive believers really are more dangerous perhaps?
* The story of The Central Park Five....
'Hard to see how this trend will ever be more balanced'

Quite. And that's the grain of truth in the article. At the risk of invoking Godwin's law again, it was the naivety of the public combined with a man who told the public what they wanted to hear, which gave rise to the Third Reich.
The hysteria generated by the opponents of the results of both the US election and the EU referendum, would suggest that people are, indeed, easily brainwashed. They love a band-wagon.
The only band wagon is the politics of Jam tomorrow combined with a politically illiterate populace.
vortex

Unfortunately it's not how news works now.

In the pre-Internet age, we had newspapers with large pools or reporters who would work independently, accessing a variety of sources in order to produce reports.

These reports would be verified within a 24 hour news cycle.

That has now completely changed. News as we know it now is instantaneous and often gleaned from the same sources, without due diligence on fact-checking. What we now see is the same reports from multiple news feeds, all reporting the same unchecked stories.

If, for instance, you see a story in the Independent and want to verify it against another source, you will often find that the Times, Mail, Mirror and Sun are all carrying the name story, lifted from the wire with the same errors.

And once a story is 'in the wild', the truth often gets buried in the snowstorm of opinion and confirmation bias.
Zacs-Master, the 'politically illiterate' - aka anyone who doesn't agree with you.
Agree 100% !

his is exactly what I have been saying for a long time now. ::

“Rednecks” are also embarrassingly evident among Britain’s expensively educated conservative commentators, who cannot see how the world has changed. They say that of course they don’t support everything Trump does. Their throats cleared and backs covered, they insist that the real enemy is his “foaming” and “hysterical” critics whose opposition to the alt-right is not a legitimate protest by democratic citizens but an “elitist” denial of democracy itself."

Says it all really doesn't it !
Mikey, // who cannot see how the world has changed. //

I hate to say this, but that's exactly how you come across.
No Naomi, the political illiterate who've voted in a POTUS who represents them, the consequences of who's actions are already beginning to be seen to be very damaging to individuals and quite possibly, illegal. If that's the kind of democracy you crave then......
Agree at 09:53 Zacs !

The gullible and credulous leap upon Trumps words like manna from heaven. He just keeps telling them exactly what they want to hear, and they lack the necessary intellectual vigour to be able to see his lies for what they are.
Zacs-Master, Approximately half of the US electorate are not just sick of self-serving, ineffectual politicians who, despite what they say pre-election, make no attempt to address their concerns - they’re also politically illiterate. Righto.
They're alternative truths tho aren't they? Ha!

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