There are few things in this world as resilient as good old-fashioned ignorance.
False beliefs about the invasion of Iraq and President Obama’s citizenship still flourish among Americans, according to the most recent national survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind. More than four-in-ten Americans say it is likely that U.S. forces found active weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, and nearly a fifth say that President Obama “probably” or “definitely” is not a citizen of the United States.
That is a new poll, meaning four in ten Americans in 2015 still think active WMD programs were discovered in Iraq. This is perhaps understandable, as there is an entire infrastructure now built around telling people whatever lies they want to hear.
The major split in these views seems to arise from partisanship, and the broadcast media divide on the issue bears this out. Respondents were asked about which news sources, in particular, they get their news from, as well as which television news they consider to be their primary source of information. Individuals who reported getting their news from Fox were more likely to say that the WMD program had been found, with 52 percent saying that it was “probably” or “definitely” true, and those who get their news from MSNBC were the least likely, with only 14 percent saying the same.
“It’s easier for people to maintain false beliefs when they avoid media sources that might refute them,” said Cassino. “So it’s no surprise that people who watch ideological media are better able to hold on to these sorts of beliefs.”it also has a lot to do with programming not the shows but the viewers, Rodger Ailes head of Fox back in the 70's sat down with republican Pres. Nixon and concocted a plan for Fox news to infiltrate your living rooms and sat about directing your political preferences toward the republican party, for those die hard Fox viewers it's easy to understand they are influenced by decades of red meat rhetoric being thrown at them or as G W Bush said it, "you can fool some of the people all of the time and those are the ones you want to concentrate on".
In other words—and I believe we have repeated this enough, to no effect, so we may have to in the future resort to etching it on the sides of buildings or putting it as bold-lettered warning on the boxes of all new television sets, surgeon general style—watching Fox News continues to make you stupid, because it intentionally continues to tell you things that Are Not True, and mind you this is an ostensible news network which makes the misinformation not merely an ideological giggle shared between drinking buddies, but a daily and well-heeled propaganda effort seeking to ensure that The Base receives an interpretation of "reality" that will render them sufficiently pliable when the bunglers that so badly fouled things the last time around come a-courting adherents again.
If the invasion of Iraq was not a bungled fiasco built on crooked propagandizing but a glorious effort that narrowly averted an Iraqi plan to launch a nuclear-tipped missile into Dallas, then Dick Cheney et. al can still be considered Statesmen and worth listening to. If The Base is not allowed in polite company to declare that President Barack Obama is an illegitimate president because he is a not white and all Americans who are not white are somehow illegitimate and "foreign" members of the American experience,
then perhaps he is an illegitimate president because of an elaborate and worldwide conspiracy to plant an actual false-paperworked foreigner there, and The Base loathes the current president not based on the still-raw racism that has been an ideological staple of conservatism throughout our modern political history but due to their brilliant and well-honed abilities in discovering actual plots against the fatherland, no matter how unlikely those plots may seem.this is that proverbial painting one's self into a corner Fox cannot admit the truth because their plan will be exposed and rebellion by some who still have an ounce of will power and can muster enough to except the truth of their being conned, but as Fox won't admit so will it's viewers no one wants to except that they are gullible enough to have fallen for everything they look back and see they rallied behind, in short it's embarrassing and probably why those who have broken through to daylight still haven't tried to save the rest.
http://gawker.com/5814150/roger-ailes-secret-nixon+era-blueprint-for-fox-news
