Tell Me What You Want To Hear

Thank You to Time Magazine and reporters Alex Altman and Alex Rogers for the idea and some content.

Tell Me What You Want To Hear

When it comes to politics, believing is seeing. Partisan Republicans see Barack Obama as dishonest; partisan Democrats see Mitt Romney the same way. Voters see candidates they support as truth tellers; they regard candidates they oppose as shadier

Conservative friends of mine who believe the government is in a desperate, non-stop spiral into socialism, read material from authors who believe the same way. Similarly, most liberal friends believe our government is strictly a “board of directors” for corporate America, and they lean towards authors who consistently reinforce their views.

We are suffering from a national case of confirmation bias – the idea that we lend credence to information that confirms our opinions and ignore evidence that doesn’t – even in the face of facts.

The most disturbing truth here is not about the falsehoods of any one candidate, but the scientific studies showing that voters with more information are likely to be more biased than those who know less. That is worrisome in a country where government derives its’ powers from the consent of the governed.

Voters in the US have shown less and less interest in punishing candidates who deceive, because those who feel a deeper affinity for one side or another have developed a tendency to forgive the home team’s fibs. No matter their ideology, many voters increasingly inhabit information bubbles in which they are LESS likely to hear their view of the world contradicted.

With almost instant access to any information on the planet, why do we only seek out the information that reinforces our own belief system?

My paternal grandfather’s politics leaned a little left, but he read things from all over the spectrum. He said, “to make an intelligent decision you have to have perspective, and to have perspective, you have to know what EVERYONE is up to.” Not anymore.

We’ve become a country of people who choose our media based on its’ ability to reinforce our foundation of beliefs. We’ve stopped collecting news that informs us, and collecting only news that affirms us. It used to be that we disagreed on the solution but at least agreed on the problem. Now we don’t even agree on the problem.

All of this contributes to an environment in which voters simply filter out unwanted facts, and political discourse is reduced to screaming loudly at each other across the street.