I deleted my reply to ERIN after reading "no more politics" message from Eulalia afterward. So I won't try to continue that discussion, but instead I'll just write down my opinion on the political debates in general.
In such a political atmosphere as we can see in the U.S. nowadays, it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stay away from the deluge of exaggerations, misguiding facts, skewed statistics, half-truths, downright lies, or conspiracy theories which the both sides have been producing on a daily basis.
It doesn't matter how intelligent or well-educated you are because we can't be an expert in every topic, and more importantly, most of us have a very strong tendency to actively seek out only such informations that conform to our existing system of belief so that we can use them as patches to further reinforce what we already regard as 'facts'.
I believe that we are witnessing the demise of the representative democracy, and I'm strongly convinced that it is the very system itself which is the true cause of the problem. The current political system we have in such countries like the U.S. was what was deemed ideal in the late 18 century. While I have my utmost respect for the authors of this age old system which has given us such a degree of political liberty and governmental efficiency that no other alternative managed to achieve, I think it has outlived its usefulness and starting to become a problem itself rather than a method to solve one.
The human mind, generally speaking, is so weak that it cannot withstand the notion of being unjust and immoral. Even primates understand the concept of 'injustice' so, it's simply a part of our natural instincts as a species. As such, only a very small number of people can admit they are fundamentally 'evil' when they act out of their selfish motives. Ordinary people, in comparison, they try to find a justification for their actions, so even such people like Hitler or Stalin had their own version of 'justice' which would make their mind free of the burden which would otherwise have crushed them under its weight.
And here's the interesting part: the politics is an art which deals with social justice, and in a form of the representational government found in such countries like the U.S., we effectively have only a single method to achieve that which is casting our vote on an election day. Can you see the trouble here?
In another words, in the current system, we are forced into reducing all our definition of justice into an act of choosing between a few options every 4 or 5 years. And in the case of the U.S., it's a matter of choosing between the two, as all the other political factions don't even have the remotest chance of attaining the political power.
It's a question inherently impossible to answer correctly. For example, can you determine which is more 'just' between lessening of racial discrimination and that of poverty, for example? Or what about that between declaring a war on a foreign nation and protecting the freedom of speech?
Needless to say, those are invalid questions as all such topics deal with values which are largely tangential to each other. But what if we keep asking such impossible questions to people, and plan to determine what the course the country will take for the next 4 or 5 years depending the most popular answers to them?
That is basically how our current political system works in principle, unfortunately.
And as the politics deals with the notion of justice, if we list all the questions which ask to choose between two alternative answers, we will roughly become 50% 'unjust' in case we pick them randomly.
And if you don't believe every single person who supoprts a certain party is inherently evil, you will inevitably endorse some of those 'unjust' options, when you cast your vote to either of the parties. There is no middle ground and you can express things like "I think the Democrats are more reasonable in this matter while the Republicans have the right answer in that one". Instead, you are forced into reducing your judgement on every social issues into a matter of choosing between A and B.
Remember how ordinary people can't stand the notion of being unjust or evil? That is why we have to justify our action here, since we apparently had to endorse certain portion of unjust options because of the voting system.
The solution is simple, which is deceiving ourselves into believing that everything in the side that we didn't choose is somehow evil. Even if we don't say it aloud, most of us at least try to see it as we are choosing the "lesser evil" between them, which means we need a constant supply of convenient "facts" and "proofs" that would ensure us that the side we did not choose was indeed more unjust than "our" side.
That is why we have such a gigantic political machination working tirelessly fabricating half truths, skewed statistics, or conspiracy theories from the both sides, making us feel comfortable of the political stance we made, so that we can pat ourselves on the back for choosing the "right" side.
So, it's not just uneducated, or less intelligent people who are falling for such lies. We all have a very strong instinct to draw the image of ourselves as a moral and just person. As such, once we establish the core of our belief system (which is often determined by the environment than any conscious mental efforts) we all actively seek to find only those pieces of the information which looks suitable to reinforce the existing core.
And once we build that belief system sufficiently strong by constantly patching them like that, we'll be able to assert such claims which must appear the most outrageous and stupidiest to those who have built it in the opposing shape. We can't see how absurd our claim may look like to those people, since it would be backed by the so many other interwoven "facts" which constitutes our own belief system that we accepts as undubitable truth.
I believe the best course of action would be replacing the fundamental principles that our current form of government entails with something entirely new. I even have vague ideas of what they may look like. However, as I don't want to make this already very long post to such an absurd length, I'll just say that it's better as an individual to understand our defect on such matters.
If we become aware of our susceptibility to accept only such information that conforms to our existing beliefs when it comes such topics dealt with in political debates, we may still have a chance of detecting some of the more obvious sorts of misinformation and rejecting them. However, if we become over confident in our ability to discern what is right and wrong, or what is truth and what is not, you will inadvertently fall into the same trap that the vast majority of those vocal about political issues on the internet, so you will start saying the same things as them, like how the Trump supporters are like this or the damn leftists are like that, and so on.
en.wikipedia.org
