Confirmation bias

There's an information asymmetry in the political Left-Right divide, and it's taken this election to a really weird and scary place. Both sides have always pushed a narrative, one that helps their respective causes. Historically those narratives don't stray too far from what might be considered objective reality. The spread between the two narratives has been small enough that voters who are not partisans can find a middle ground that feels right and vote according to where they fall in the divide. Journalism has historically been the tether that has kept the narratives from straying too far from the truth. American Democracy has survived hundreds of years due in part to this self-correcting system. Information and facts are the reins that keep these narratives from diverging too far from objective reality.

Something changed in the 21st century. The conservative movement began to view journalism as being inherently biased against them. As a result, there was an explosion of conservative media. These so-called "news" sites exist solely to advance a conservative narrative. There's nothing inherently bad about that, in so much as it falls within the rights of free speech, but it has led to a faction within the Republican Party who view those conservative media sources as more truthful than traditional reporting. It's quite common to hear cries about the bias of the mainstream media, or "lamestream media" as they like to refer to it. They choose to be informed by conservative media instead. The problem is that conservative media is not tethered to truth by the pillars of journalistic integrity. Conservative media’s purpose is to advocate, not inform. Facts are only presented that fit the conservative narrative, or in some cases facts are twisted beyond recognition to the point where they can no longer be considered facts. There is certainly no mea culpa issued if the facts are proven to be wrong.

It's easy to understand why these Republicans prefer to get their "news" from conservative media. What they find when they read or listen to mainstream media is that it contradicts their opinions and viewpoints. This faction of the Republican Party prefers to search out news sources that validate their opinions rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance that's created when you are exposed to information that contradicts your deeply held beliefs. What we've seen with the rise of Donald Trump is that a significant portion of the Republican Party is made up of voters who are informed by news sources that are not tethered to truth, which has led to a radical divergence from objective reality. There is no limit to how far the narrative can be pushed. There is nothing that is beyond the realm of believability if it comes from conservative media. Literally anything can be believed if it's shared enough times on Facebook.

This has directly led to a large portion of the Republican Party believing things that are easily debunked or disproved, but they continue to hold those beliefs because they choose not to believe journalists, reporters, and debunkers. Worse yet, these extreme views are echoed so many times that they start to take hold in the minds of nonpartisans. Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya. Hillary has blood on her hands and deserves to be in prison. The election is rigged by the mainstream media to get Hillary Clinton elected. A shockingly large number of Republicans believe those things to be true. There is no amount of evidence or fact checking that would convince them otherwise. If Jesus Christ himself showed up at a Trump rally and said, "You know, this Clinton email thing is not as bad as you're making it out to be." He would get booed off the stage. He would probably get punched in the head as he was getting escorted out of the rally. There is literally nothing that would change these people's minds.

The reason why this matters is because this willfully misinformed faction of the Republican Party has taken control of the ship. They nominated Donald Trump to be their standard-bearer, and the rest of the Republican Party is along for the ride. My message to the rest of the Republican Party, the ones who care about the truth, the ones who have a genuine desire to learn about the world as it really is and not how they want it to be is this: you need to take a long hard look at what your Party has become. You need to do some serious soul-searching, because your Party went down a very dark and disturbing road, and it's up to you to stop it from happening again in the future.