[Paleopsych] bias and categories

[Michael Christopher]

>>This is absolutely amazing!  Why would any 
audience reject someone who cannot plop into either
the liberal or conservative camp?<<

--Because people don't like to be fooled. And when
there is a huge amount of information to sift through
and all sources carry some bias, it reduces the work
involved significantly if one takes a side and views
the other side as biased, deliberately misleading, or
corrupt. One side's half-truths, distortions and out
of context interpretations of events can be swallowed
whole as long as the other side is seen as biased and
its perspective rejected out of hand. If we can
dismiss everything from liberal sources as sour
grapes, or everything from conservative sources as
power-mongering, it's a lot easier to feel certain and
secure in one's assessment of the political scene.

Much harder to stand between two groups that are
chronically suspicious and resentful of each other,
and take truth from whichever side has more of it at
the moment. Much harder to sift through all the
information, tracking sources and sorting half-truths
from distortion, putting everything in context, etc.
That's all painstaking work, and even most journalists
will categorize information simplistically in order to
stick with the two-party dichotomy. If people can't
categorize you, you're like the singer another poster
mentioned who tries to cross over into a different
style, alienating their original audience. It makes
ideas and people harder to categories, and that causes
uncertainty and even feelings of betrayal.

Michael




	
		
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