There is an old saw that if you place a frog in a pot of water and slowly raise the temperature, the frog will boil to death because it won't notice the slow increase in temperature.
James Fallows conclusively proved this old saw is bullshit.
But it perseveres, because it feels true.
Leonard Pitts makes a very interesting point about Fox News today. He notes that we have become inured to a network that routinely lies and willfully distorts the truth, and it took Europeans - namely the French and David Cameron - to call them out in such a way as to force Fox to apologize repeatedly for the lies about Muslim "no-go" zones in Europe.
But Fox doesn't care. The lie is out there, and the "27%" will cling to it even in the face of a retraction. We are learning that we would rather cling to our prejudices than accept evidence that contradicts those prejudices.
This is why American Sniper is the number one movie in America right now. It tells us a lie about Iraq that we really want to hear. It tells us Muslims are "savages" and we are noble. We would rather be lied to than face uncomfortable truths.
This isn't anything new, I guess. But it's a sad knowledge nonetheless.
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