I have tried discussing Obama's policies and his cabinet appointees with my mother's husband. This man has never been one to listen to other opinions. He fits the mold of the typical Democratic supporter where they speak their mind, then shout you down when it is your turn to speak. This man is so stubborn and thinks everything Obama is doing is great. What I found very amusing was he also applies his shouting down to the TV. I witnessed him watch a news story on the financial crisis and Geithner's plan. As soon as the story turned to Republican House Minority Leader, John Boehner to give his perspective, he yelled at the TV and walked out of the room. So when you have people like this who refuse to even listen to a short counterpoint view on a news network that is already biased towards the Obama administration, I guess I shouldn't be amazed a community organizer got elected to the highest office of the U.S. People can be so stupid.
Conservative people, because of the ubiquity of liberal news sources, get a constant sampling of liberal opinion. If (like I do) they listen to NPR in the mornings and evenings, read their local newspaper which relies on AP and UPS reports, or if during the day or on sunday mornings they tune into the usual
fora on CBS, ABC, or NBC, watch or listen to C-SPAN in the mornings when calls are taken, they are handed the liberal slant at all times as if it was the only view worth considering. We learn to live with that as if it were the atmosphere; in effect it becomes the manufactured conventional wisdom and is believed to be public consensus.
Liberals see all of that foggery as if it actually were the only valid point of view, and instantly reject any other viewpoint as though from the lunatic fringe, and those who don't necessarily agree with their self generated'conventional wisdom' or 'consensus' as "sheep". That just requires less work on their part.
Just as a clarification without going into political viewpoints either way I offer CSPAN's 'Morning Journal': On the morning segment articles are read for public review and input by the audience. These are read from major US (and some European) newspapers by the call-in host. Out of this grouping of newspapers there only two which could be classified as "conservative";
The Washington Times and secondly
The Wall Street Journal. The
WT has reporting that you simply won't get in the news sections of other major newspapers, catering to those who want those news items which are usually buried on the back sections of other papers because they are critical of the D party, and an editorial page which clearly leans right about as much as the
NYT leans left. The
WSJ has neutral news reporting and a conservative leaning editoral page with liberal thought pieces being common, but in the minority.
The C-SPAN caller lines are divided into three categories: Democrat, Republican, and Other. All the calls on the
Democrat line are Democrats, all the calls on the
Other line are Democrats and at least half the calls on the
Republican line are dubiously Republicans and almost certainly Democrats. Real Republican caller often complain about how hard it is to get through, and that the Ds use their line to make crank or spurrious calls. This situation produces about 85 percent D callers and 15 percent R callers. Therefore, watching this program would give the impression that that is about the make-up of the country at large, since the C-SPAN show is created by the cable industry as a non-partisan public service to cable viewers. The host will challenge some of the D callers on the R line, but since that slows down the need for expeiency, these challenges are rare. This becomes a self reinforcing phenomena.
But there are several moral hazards in this brew for the Ds and for the country. One is that they deceive themselves as to the acceptance of their opinions and policies by the broader public. Another is that since they are not often tested or challenged they become dogmatically convinced of the correctness of their ideas. Because of that they are more apt to rely on ad hominem attacks when challenged, to rely on emotional arguments, and are inflexible or a better word might be "brittle"; finally this leads us to be a nation without having any useful debate about major issues which affect us all. This includes the 54% who voted for the present administration, and the 46% which voted against it. We become a nation in which our sentiments are reduced to polling data, and that too can be deliberately infected with distortion by the pollsters.
