Why do many posters embrace such cartoonish partisan viewpoints?

Question

hmmm...only 5 responses. either this is a poor question or the partisan zealots aren't very introspective. i know which one i'm voting for...

Answer 1

Because there are plenty of hungry viewers who need to be reminded of who they hate...and why they are "good"

Answer 2

Because most people are really stupid -- and by choice, too. People love to use their mouths much more than their brains.

“Louise, people in this country aren’t interested in details. They don’t even trust details. The only thing they trust is headlines.” – Senator Kevin Keeley, Birdcage (1996).

Truer words have never been spoken. Here is the unavoidable, relentless axiom: ethos will always triumph over logos, and pathos will always triumph over both ethos and logos. The beautiful, elegant logos – persuasion through good-faith logical appeal – is an all-around loser; was, is, and always will be. Anyone who expects the public to put two and two together is forgetting just how many of us hate math. Anyone who hopes that the masses will weigh and analyze facts – hehe! – is in for a rude awakening. It is hard enough to make six-to-twelve people in a jury box grasp the difference between facts and opinions, much less to make them weigh and analyze either; to attempt do so on a societal scale is sheer madness. People like being righteous and brave, and they like to have a cause. What they don’t like to do is THINK. Thinking, unlike believing, is so boring. Besides, it always creates the risk of being proved wrong, and people hate that too. Therefore, anyone who asks people to think is asking the impossible. A good demagogue knows that. A good demagogue paints with a broad brush and in garish colors precisely because emotion is destined to trump common sense; black-and-white to obliterate the shades of gray; narcissism to stifle doubt; self-righteousness to overcome wisdom; pride to choke intellectual honesty to death.

Every once in a while, an idealist comes along who thinks he can change people, that he can awaken collective intelligence. Alas, the problem with collective intelligence is not that it is asleep, but that it simply does not exist. Moreover, there is no sense in distinguishing between different kinds of masses – the “knowledgeable and sophisticated” we-all-know-who versus the “ignorant and naïve” we-won’t-say-who-across-the-Atlantic. Both the “knowledgeable and sophisticated” masses and the “ignorant and naïve” masses are equally dumb by definition, regardless of their respective high school curricula and the relative numbers of PhD’s in their midst. I know, some readers may believe at this point that I am being snobbish. I am not: that people don’t like to think is merely a fact of life which we cannot change any more than we can colonize Alpha Centauri. This is not to say that prevailing opinions on this or that issue can never be altered; they just cannot be altered by informing or by appealing to logic.

That is why the public’s heart belongs to populists, not to philosopher-kings.

Answer 3

I don't know. Good question. I joke about conservatives, but my whole family is actually conservative and we are all good people. I think our country has become so polarized in their political beliefs that it is getting hard for people to see any good in the other side.

Answer 4

They have trouble thinking for themselves, so they are forced to simply regurgitate whichever party lines they hear most often. Those cookie-cutter ideologies are then magnified by the pressure of opposing views, eventually growing immune to logic.

It's a disease, really.

Answer 5

They are republicrats and demicans.

Answer 6

It beats thinkin'...