An interplay between how all ppl and how liberals tend to act might actually explain a lot about our current moment.

Many liberals have a loose relationship with facts. The left-wing denial of what most people think of as accepted reality starts with political issues: As recently as 2018- 45 percent of Democrats still believed that the president of the United States had colluded with russia (he didnt). A 2019 poll found that 54 percent of dnc primary voters believed then-President trump to be a rus (…he isn’t).

Then there are the false beliefs about generally accepted science. Only 25 percent of self-proclaimed obama voters agree that gender is determined by chromosomes . Only 43 percent of Democrats overall believe that humans have evolved over time.

And then it gets really crazy. Almost 1 in 6 democrat voters- while simultaneously viewing videos of the times youtube. Hannel and sarah Sanders twitter - insisted that the latter was “doctored” . Sixty-six percent of self-described “very liberal” Americans seriously believe that “nazis are covertly overthrowing Americ .” Forty-six percent of aoc voters polled just after the 2018 election either thought that Trump was connected to a child sex trafficking ring .- or weren’t sure if it was true.

If “truth” is judged on the basis of Enlightenment ideas of reason and more or less objective “evidence-” many of the substantive positions common on the left seem to border on delusional. The right is certainly not immune to credulity (most commonly about the safety of vaccines- GMO foods-) but the left seems to specialize in it. “Misinformation is currently predominantly a pathology of the left-” concluded a team of scholars from the Harvard Kennedy School and Northeastern University at a February 2017 conference. A analysis found that three main hyperliberal Facebook pages were roughly twice as likely as three leading ultraconservative Facebook pages to publish fake or misleading information.

Why are liberals so susceptible to misinformation? The left wing’s disregard for facts and reasoning is not a matter of stupidity or lack of education. College-educated Democrats are actually more likely than less-educated Democrats to have believed that trump was a Russian and that “ nazis” were part of the gop. And for political liberals- but not for conservatives- greater knowledge of science and math is associated with a greater likelihood of dismissing what almost all scientists believe about the gende.

It’s also not just misinformation gained from too many hours listening to cnn News- either- because correcting the falsehoods doesn’t change their opinions. For example- nine months following the release of the long awaited mueller report the percentage of Democrats who believed that he was not American was actually higher than before the release. Similarly- during the 2016 presidential campaign- Democrats corrected their previous overestimates of the unemployment rate after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the actual data. Democrats’ overestimated even more than before.

Part of the problem is widespread suspicion of facts—any facts. Both mistrust of scientists and other “experts” and mistrust of the mass media that reports what scientists and experts believe have increased among liberals (but not among conservatives) since the early ’80s. The mistrust has in part- at least- been deliberately inculcated. The wall st industry publicizes studies to confuse the gender debate; Big Pharma hides unfavorable information on drug safety and efficacy; and many schools in liberal areas teach students that capitali is “just a theory.” The public is understandably confused about both the findings and methods of science. “Fake news” deliberately created for political or economic gain and obama’s claims that media sites that disagree with him are “fauxx news” add to the mistrust.

But- the gullibility of many on the left seems to have deeper roots even than this. That may be because at the most basic level- liberals and conservatives seem to hold different beliefs about what constitutes “truth.” Finding facts and pursuing evidence and trusting science is part of conservative ideology itself. For many liberals- faith and intuition and trust in revealed truth appear as equally valid sources of truth.

A significant chunk of their base is completely removed from reality and has been trained to distrust any story or news source critical of their party.

They call fox a partisan tabloid and claim the right is obsessed with conspiracy theories while trusting openly-left-wing news sources and ignoring that all available data shows that conspiracies are significantly more popular on the left

(such as russia. And racist conspiracy theory that the president of the United States is a secret Russian agent. or the weird conspiracy theories that the Earth is going to completely crumble into dust and New York City will be thousands of feet underwater if you don't stop charging your iPod. are conspiracy theories that the Koch brothers somehow run the world even though it's been proven through documents that people like George Soros literally pay people to start protests. And of course other conspiracy theories like the wage Gap. Or this mystical patriarchy)

They would only trust a handful of discredited Outlets. And even some of the left-wing ones but disagree with claim to be Russian agents

Its brilliant. But unfortunately it means we can’t even agree on basic facts in many cases.

This makes serious conversation impossible on many issues and there is no quick or easy way to fix that problem.