I was reading “Fox News is no longer the flagship of GOP extremism after a surprising shift in the conservative media landscape” about how Fox News wasn’t extreme enough for Trump cultists...
Republican skepticism toward coronavirus vaccines and American democracy is increasingly being driven by Fox News' right-wing competitors.
One America News Network and Newsmax remain far behind Fox News in TV ratings, but the two upstarts are becoming the primary news source for an increasingly extremist slice of the Republican electorate, reported FiveThirtyEight.
"Republicans who got their news from OANN or Newsmax were generally more extreme in their beliefs around QAnon and in their refusal to get vaccinated than those who got their news from Fox News," wrote Natalie Jackson, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute. "Meanwhile, Fox News Republicans were often more in line with Republicans who got their news from other mainstream outlets."
… and it occurred to me how desperately some people are to cling to their biases. Any information that challenges their beliefs is dismissed as “fake news” and the source of this information, even when it’s Fox News, is sometimes tuned out and turned off in favor of sources like OANN and Newsmax.
By now readers of Daily Kos and other progressive websites all know the meaning of “confirmation bias” and how it applies to Trump cultists, an of course to Trump himself.
This is how former cult member, turned mental health counselor, cult expert, and author of “The Cult of Trump” Steve Hassan puts it in Is Donald Trump a cult leader? Expert says he "fits the stereotypical profile" from Salon interview:
Why do you think there has been so much resistance from many people in the political or media classes to engaging in direct discussion of Trump's cult-like control over his public?
People think, “It can never happen to me -- only the weak or the stupid and the uneducated could fall for that.” In fact, everybody is vulnerable. Once a person engages in a set of behaviors -- even something as simple as voting for someone -- the tendency is to want to have confirmation bias. You want to believe that you made the right decision. To maintain that belief, a given person will systematically ignore information which challenges the bias.
The more integral to one’s personal identity a set of beliefs is the more unlikely it is that someone will engage in critical analysis as to whether these beliefs are true. “Why bother” they may say if asked if they looked for evidence that contradicted their beliefs, “I know what I know.”
Here’s a good article about the ways people engage in conformation bias in everyday life. The article explains what confirmation bias is and then goes into detail with nine examples of ways you may engage or enounter this type of cognitive bias in your everyday life.
Introduction:
Confirmation bias is often still evolutionarily efficient, as reinforcing things we already believe to be true helps us make fast and accurate decisions.
For example, if you heard a bear growling in the woods, you wouldn’t sit around waiting to see if the bear confirmed your pre-existing belief that it may be dangerous. Instead, your memory would perform a quick sound check, confirm there is a bear near you, and you would run for the hills.
So, confirmation bias is an extremely useful survival instinct, but the issue that comes up when you apply this cognitive skill to our modern world is that it can cause you to manipulate research in a way that only confirms your beliefs without offering contradictory information. Even though we are now in an era where we aren’t being chased by saber-toothed tigers on the way to the grocery store, our brain activity has remained the same.
So now, you’re probably not surprised to hear that cognitive biases–such as confirmation bias–usually come as a result of your brain's tendency to want to simplify information. Accepting information that aligns with whatever you already believe and ignoring any evidence suggesting otherwise helps you make sense of the world quickly, accept your conclusions, and move on.
As Warren Buffet once said, “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”
If you watch MSNBC you’ve probably seen interviews with ordinary people explaining why they believe the “big lie” that Trump really won the election in some segments and why they say they’ll never get the Covid-19 vaccine in other segments.
If enough of these people believe the “big lie” about the election it could result in the death of American Democracy. If enough people believe the other lies about Covid-19 not being dangerous thousands of people could actually die.
Addendum: I got the idea to make the selfie of me clinging to a pillow from this photo of Mr. Pillow, Mike Lindell, holding a pillow (on the My Pillow website):
I used the photo in yesterday’s diary:
Pillow hugger Lindell promotes both dangerous and bizarre misinformation about Covid. For example, see “Anti-vax doctor, an adviser to Mike Lindell, claims COVID vaccine will "magnetize" you — Dr. Sheri Tenpenny, ally and adviser to MyPillow Guy, also says COVID vaccines will connect you to 5G towers”just pubished in Salon.
I couldn’t resist the temptation to make my own versions of Mr. Pillow blissfully clinging to a My Pillow covered with images of the Covid-19 virus.
Drawing representing Covid-19 spike viruses.
Transmission electron microscopic image of an isolate from the first U.S. case of COVID-19, formerly known as 2019-nCoV. The spherical viral particles, colorized blue, contain cross-section through the viral genome, seen as black dots.
I wish I knew a way to hack my photos into the MyPillow website. Note it has ads for some of Trump and LIndell’s favorite cultists:
Click here to go to my blog to see enlarged image
