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October 20, 2014

So, why don’t people remember the facts?

I can think of plenty of reasons. They reject facts that don’t conform with their political viewpoints.
And/or they probably didn’t follow the details closely in the first place: BOR-ING. Or, if they did follow them closely at the time, they don’t remember much, like the content of a course they took years ago. Maybe they even crammed for the final, but they forgot almost all of it when the final was over and they didn’t need to know it anymore. And then, ever since that final, imagine that they’ve also been crammed full of information that contradicted what they originally had learned for the test. Then they would be even less likely to remember correctly. In fact, the later information would probably crowd out the earlier.
neo-neocon Correcting the record on the Iraq War: why it's preaching to the choir

Posted by gerardvanderleun at October 20, 2014 8:42 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

If people remembered what passed, we wouldn't need term limits.

Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 21, 2014 5:44 AM

If time didn’t go by so fast I wouldn’t dwell so much in the past. — Zippy

Posted by: chasmatic [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 21, 2014 9:55 AM

I always arrive to work late, so I make up for it by leaving early.

Posted by: ghostsniper [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 21, 2014 2:42 PM

My uncle Louie Lozko, we all called him "Letsgo Lozko", he raised bantam chickens. He never forgot anything in all the years I knew him.

"The cheapest ink is better than the finest memory" he told me.

Posted by: chasmatic [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 21, 2014 10:02 PM

The entire Iraq War episode was the perfect demonstration of what Hitler relied upon for the big lie.

Its a psychological thing that human beings suffer from; they can be swayed from something they know objectively and factually to be certainly true by screaming hard and long enough at them.

There were so many voices from so many places so loudly and angrily insisting upon the lies that people started to think "well, they can't all be lying, can they? They wouldn't be so very upset and insistent upon it if there wasn't some truth to this, despite what I know."

The lies even infected the right, who began backtracking on things they knew to be true. And today, the myths of the Iraq war have become an entrenched part of American consciousness like so many things in our past: Kitty Genovese, the Reagan Homeless, and Nelson Mandela as hero, etc etc.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 22, 2014 8:34 AM

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