My mother read a book to me called "The Emperor Has No Cloths" when I was very young. The book is silly, but it stays with me to this day. Every time I hear my president repeat absurd, dangerous and divisive conspiracy theories, this book always comes to mind. Same goes for the supporters that defend him.
Public debate is fine, but we are watching a huge population of people absurdly follow this man in his birthday suit. People so easily "persuaded" deserve the (non violent) pushback they get.
Sorry, what I meant was this: after the child pointed it out, everyone acknowledged the truth.
What these disastrous last 5 years have proven is that people will refuse to acknowledge the obvious truth as long as there's a plausible lie they prefer.
To follow up: it was hard enough for the two parties to agree on policy when they couldn't agree on the impact of those policies. How do you predict the second and third order impact of a new law?
Now the parties, or at least their supporters, can't agree on the past and present truth of what's happening in the country.
When there's no common agreement on what basic truth is, you can't expect agree on policy to address the problems we face.
Public debate is fine, but we are watching a huge population of people absurdly follow this man in his birthday suit. People so easily "persuaded" deserve the (non violent) pushback they get.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes