How many times have I heard a sentence start with that phrase? I don't know, but anyone who starts off that way really shouldn't aspire to hold an opinion about politics.
I realize that there is no one correct way to govern the country. Every policy has unintended consequences. Every policy that benefits one segment of the population is virtually guaranteed to negatively affect another group. But wouldn't it be nice if the majority of our fellow Americans actually did their homework regarding the various policies of the people who run the government?
But this isn't the current reality.
Granted, the electorate hasn't ever been particularly educated. I'm thinking of the days of the urban political machines, where jobs, and even bribes, determined the votes of whole groups of people. But what's the excuse today? We have access to more sources of information than ever. We can cross-check a politician's claims faster and with more accuracy than ever before, but the problem is that we aren't any smarter than ever before. There are more sources of information, but also more sources of disinformation, and people are just as lazy as ever in regards to the effort they are willing to put into sifting through the flood of words to determine the facts.
I was recently challenged on my use of the term "talking points" in some of my Facebook posts criticizing Republicans. My challenger wanted to know if I thought Democrats used talking points as well. As I understand the term, "talking points" are not inherently good or bad, true or false, they're merely agreed-upon responses to an issue. For example, one political party has proposed a bill that they know has some opposition, so they provide a list to their supporters of benefits of the legislation, and canned responses to any objections. There's nothing necessarily dishonest about it, but when you hear multiple people making the same point, with mostly identical language, it's highly likely that a lot of those people have not thought through their responses, but are just repeating what they heard, not as the result of a reasoned thought process.
My annoyance level is highest when I hear people with whom I have a large overlap of opinions doing this. Perhaps because I have deluded myself into thinking that people who think like me actually think, and therefore are smarter than the average bear. Like I said - a delusion.
Despite the existence of irrational opinions and ill-informed positions by my fellow progressives, I definitely encounter more of this from the so-called conservatives. And I say "so-called", because the existence of true conservatives in the Republican Party have become harder and harder to find as Trumpism and its attendant cult of personality has taken over.
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