Many conservatives have a loose relationship with facts. The right-wing denial of what most people think of as accepted reality starts with political issues: As recently as 2016, 45 percent of Republicans still believed that the Affordable Care Act included “death panels” (it doesn’t). A 2015 poll found that 54 percent of GOP primary voters believed then-President Obama to be a Muslim (…he isn’t).
Why are conservatives so susceptible to misinformation? The right wing’s disregard for facts and reasoning is not a matter of stupidity or lack of education. College-educated Republicans are actually more likely than less-educated Republicans to have believed that Barack Obama was a Muslim and that “death panels” were part of the ACA. And for political conservatives, but not for liberals, greater knowledge of science and math is associated with a greater likelihood of dismissing what almost all scientists believe about the human causation of global warming.___
As you get closer to understanding the truth, the more depressing reality feels because you realize how stuck on rails your life really is, how much of your conscious experience is just an elaborate illusion, a rich, chunky stew of assumptions, of super-imposed visuals and perceptions, of stories and rationalizations that you’re wired to believe. Even the idea that we can choose what we’re thinking about is barely, BARELY accurate.
If we as a species have any free will at all, it’s a tiny kernel, a tiny little seed that few people even attempt to nurture.