Why are we Americans so fucking stupid???
What do I mean by empirical foundations? I am talking about hard, non bias peer reviewed evidence that is repeatable. Evidence that makes you take other perspectives into consideration if their is sound evidence to support those notions. Even if those notions are contrary to your own.
I don't care if you are on the right side of the political spectrum or the left. Nuance is shunned by both sides. People live in these echo chambers and circles of confirmation bias that completely negates their ability to think critically about a problem.
Take Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign for example. People keep painting him as a socialist but he has clearly stated that he is a Democratic Socialist. That qualification gets lost on a lot of people and they fail to even want to listen to what the actual differences are
between the two political ideologies.
In an upcoming interview for 60 minutes Senator Sanders faces some questions about comments he made in the 1980's about Fidel Castro. Sanders praised some of the social programs that Castro implemented. Like Universal health care and federal Literacy programs.
Make no Mistake Castro was a cruel dictator. But those programs where not negative. and it is not inappropriate to say as much. Again it is about nuance and the average American does not want to operate with nuance. Everything is always black and white to us. When in reality the truth always falls in the middle.
Until we as Americans make the fundamental decision to do the hard work of actually trying to understand an issue BEFORE we make a judgement about it. We will continue to be followers on the world stage.
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