re: #35 Killgore Trout

I’m sure there are a lot of reasons depending on the individual. For a lot of people having a political identity acts as a short cut. They don’t have to understand economics, research history, or ponder the diplomatic/political impact of legislation for themselves. That takes a lot of work. It’s much easier to form an opinion from buzzwords and talking points from Fox news or MSNBC. This also serves a social function as well, people can easily identify each other’s political affiliations just from a few sentences or catch phrases. Sarah Palin made an entire career out of this.
There’s also a certain degree of self delusion. Facts that don’t match a desired narrative can be ignored, explained away or just pretending reality is different.
I’m reminded of the famous “Downing Street Memo”. Even smart lefties looked at that rather boring mundane memo and imagined a giant conspiracy. There’s no real basis for it but even smart lefties would read it and all see the same imaginary narrative.
I guess it’s just human nature.

You just reminded me of a conversation I had with my fiance very recently. A while back, A&E had a thing where the top most influential people of the last 1000 years were listed.

A&E had set up a committee of historical fuddy duddy Ph.D. types to compose the list, but, they also left average people vote on it via the web.

Elizabeth I, was near the bottom of the list. She was beat out by Lady Dianna and Elvis. Louis14, Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria, Kublai Khan, Pope Urban II, Tokugawa, Bismark, Timurlane, Cromwell, Saladin, Henry II, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robespierre and Desrali, to name a few, of many who should have been there, were not even on the list.

The Beatles and Louis Armstrong were.

The people who watch A&E biography are already a pretty self selected bunch of Americans who are vastly better educated than average… and this still happened. It is simply not possible to have a functioning democracy when our educational and intellectual standards are so shockingly low.