Food for thought in examining our political biases: Are we willfully ignorant of key facts?

Here’s a short post, just to let you know I’m still around. I haven’t been posting much since the November elections.

We tend to be tribal, especially in politics. I think we are willfully ignorant, or at least we willfully minimize things in order to support our tribe. I think we support our tribe through thick and thin, even if that means we conveniently do not give appropriate thought to some fact or other.

I think the Republicans are worse than the Dems in ignoring facts and blindly cheerleading for their tribe. I see this trait manifested in public discourse, and also in private discourse. I’m sure the far left flaming libs are just as nutty as the highly partisan Republicans, but the nutty Republican cheerleaders have achieved very high profiles in society. Flaming libs are not well represented in the public arena.

Libs in the public arena tend to be mainstream liberals, and not radical leftists. Republicans in the media are often radical rightists, cheerleading for their team even in the face of harsh opposite reality (which Rush calls “Carrying the water”). Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh, Beck, Ingraham, etc etc etc…..

Check out this article on DailyKos for a depiction of the ways in which the Right seem to be willfully blind these days.