Political pornography

bill moyers...

There’s an interesting study out from the University of Michigan about how people don’t want to listen to the facts. Even if they know a fact is authentic, if they know it’s true, but if it offends their—or insults or undermines their belief system, they don’t want to, they don’t accept it; they reject it. That’s one reason, the explanation for the solid support the right-wing and conservative media have. Unless there’s an alternative to Fox News, to Rush Limbaugh—unless there are guys like you [Robert Scheer], Thom Hartmann and Amy Goodman out there, continuing to press the evidence to the contrary, continuing to do forensic journalism, deeply researched journalism—really we’re going to live in that smog of propaganda, sentimentality and frankly, pornography, which has—political pornography has transformed our discourse into an ugly and grotesque version of what should be a good conversation of democracy.

there's a lot of folks that i run across who fall in to the "don't want to listen to the facts" category... i have to say, however, that there's always somebody who surprises me...

this 28 year-old aussie private security company guy who has been helping out at the place i live in kabul is one of those... he only has a high school degree (level of education, as i learned long ago, is FAR from an indicator of intelligence) but his level of intellectual curiosity is remarkable... he knows more about what's going on in the world than a lot of much older, much more highly educated people and, what's more, he has a knack for putting the pieces together, an even rarer ability... it always gives me hope to unexpectedly find somebody like that...

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