This short video is the third in a series of videos about how Americans react to obvious, provable deception, lies, and gaslighting by politicians. The quotation attributed to the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan was “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” This belief might have been false in 1973, but until recently, I believed most Americans believed that facts could be proven true, false, or flagged for more scrutiny.
This video introduces a sneaky psychological phenomenon called cognitive dissonance. This condition is not just an intellectual problem; it is largely a self-protection problem. It explains why intelligent people publicly embrace disinformation and align themselves with those who engineer false information.
This is a direct link to the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MTYD7–ziGo
It gets back to tRUMP’s and his former assistant’s (Kelly Anne Conway) assertion; they have their own “alternative facts”. Claiming their “facts” aren’t really wrong, as a matter of record, it’s their interpretation that theirs are the ones that are correct. If they and right wing media repeat them often and convincingly enough, they might even become mainstream facts. Since they never admit to telling lies or even exaggerating, their sycophants soon have no reason to question the “new” altered “facts” to fit their story.