What the Fuchs?

I don’t think Blair was a conservative, he was a centrist with many centre left policies that led to improvements in animal rights, democracy, workers rights and so on that the Tories would never have done, such as the minimum wage. However what made him different to other Labour leaders was that he was a pragmatist, and a highly competent one. He knew from watching Labour losing elections they shouldn’t have lost on paper he couldn’t achieve anything without getting key figures in business and the media on side; however the difference was these figures weren’t benefited by New Labour to the detriment of ordinary people, because if you look at all indicators the lot of average people improved drastically in those years, from public services, prosperity and education initiatives, NHS funding, ameliorative legislation etc. There seemed to be a kind of balance which suited everybody. This current government doesn’t have the same competence and air of not just acting for the super rich as those governments did, and no matter what people think of Blair I don’t think anyone could honestly say he wouldn’t have handled the issues we’ve faced in the past few years a lot better than they have been. I think it was @Sampsonwho made a really good point quite a while back that Labour leaders face a constant scrutiny directed largely by the right wing media that label them as too ‘far left’ or ‘red Tories’ or ‘champagne socialists’, that really imprints in the minds of voters that there is no sweet spot, that they’re inevitably repulsive to someone for different reasons, when there is no such scrutiny or judgement of Conservative politicians. Everyone expects them to be arseholes, so when Jacob Rees Mogg holds fox hunting meets at his mansion; multi millionaire landlords like Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax MP vote against making public housing fit for human habitation; and Christopher Chope MP blocking efforts to criminalise up skirting or FGM, or denying climate change despite being on the Environment Committee; no one says ‘they’re out of touch and I’m not voting for them’. The fact is most of the press have no interest i printing this stuff anyway, because their main goal is dissecting the Labour Party and attacking individuals with the sole purpose of getting readers to say “no matter how bad the Tories are, the alternative is worse”. No wonder every election they run nasty and negative campaigns - the last one 88% of online Tory advertising was found to be false or misleading. Personal attacks and inflammatory statements are the norm, right from Churchill saying Attlee would introduce a socialist Gestapo; headlines saying Ed Miliband’s dad ‘hated Britain’; and Tory MPs saying Corbyn sold state secrets to the USSR. This is how they have to operate to get poor people to vote for them, because if they knew who and what the Conservative party actually stood for, they wouldn’t for for them. Best to keep them ignorant and distract them with stories of commies, champagne socialists, immigrants and how big someone’s poppy or Union Jack is. Honestly everyone on here who considers voting Tory on Election Day, just google Christopher Chope and look at his Wikipedia page. Awful, bigoted man, just look at his Twitter account making fun of women who are victims of upskirting. This is the sort of man who wins re election every time as a Tory MP, with that voting record. He makes Rees Mogg look like a down to earth modern guy.

I agree that Blair was involved in some dodgy deals and schmoozing the rich and powerful, but we all know he was not an ordinary Labour leader - moulded by Thatcherism and 18 years of the Tories gaining power by schmoozing these very same people, their natural ally. But let’s not pretend that Labour and Conservative parties are in any way similar in their history of involvement and supporting of billionaire interests: the Tories’ raison d’etre throughout history has been to protect the interests of the wealthy, to prevent land and wealth distribution that would harm the financial interests of its donors in any way possible, whether that’s denying voting rights, or neglecting improving the lives of workers. What we have now is a government ran by the obscenely rich and powerful elite, for the rich and powerful elite - it’s no coincidence that these billionaires secretly meet with Johnson and Sunak every month, and the government seek to address economic troubles by raising national insurance contributions to harm ordinary people and prioritise cutting Universal Credit, instead of going after the billionaires and corporations paying little or no tax here, many of whom happen to be Tory donors. Sunak was asked if he was ashamed that London is now the capital for money laundering, and he essentially said no. This is Tory and Brexit Britain - our government relishes deregulation and tax avoidance so much it is not shameful to cosy up to the interests of the elite as long as they fund their media disinformation campaigns to keep the ordinary people being harmed by the their duplicity on side. (Brexit just allows more of this deregulation) No wonder their supporters stick to whataboutery even when confronted with the starkest evidence that this government, never mind the Tories in the past, are for the interests of their billionaire donors, not you, me or anyone on this forum. The scandal not long ago where Richard Desmond got a corrupt backroom deal with Robert Jenrick at a Tory fundraiser was met by the Tories with the claim: ‘everyone has the same access to ministers as Desmond’. So basically you want a favour, a tax break, inside tips? Pay a fortune to go to a Tory party fundraiser, maybe pay millions for a tennis match with Johnson - or just donate a few million and you can pretty much dictate government policy behind closed doors; the choice is yours. This is what makes me sick every time I’m up north and see my neighbours reading the Express or the Mail - papers like these and others are literally the voice of these same people in the Pandora Papers, filtered in ways to manipulate readers who really have nothing in common with their interests into believing they do.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58711151 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/04/tory-party-top-female-donor-lubov-chernukhin-vast-offshore-empire-husband What a dystopian reality we live in, shady multi millionaires and billionaires queuing up to give obscene amounts of dodgy money to the Conservative party. Wonder why they do that? It’s not like the Tories are the party of the elite and super rich is it? All these billionaires paying to meet de Pffefel and Sunak every month behind closed doors, in between all those regular meetings with the Murdochs of the world…wonder what they discuss? 🤔 Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not ‘levelling up’. Welcome to Britain for the oligarchs. A reminder to the Tory voters here who are not one of the 1%: Johnson et al have more desire to please the likes of those revealed in the Pandora and Paradise Papers than anything else. They always have and always will. Culture wars, flagshagging and tabloid smears are just their way of making the ordinary man acquiesce, inadvertently to their detriment.

Binge watching The Sopranos for the first time, almost finished series 4 already. Utterly amazing show, one of the best of all time for sure. Love the cultural references too, Tony watching Dean Martin while eating ice cream has got me looking for somewhere to watch Rio Bravo! I highly recommend The Many Saints of Newark in cinemas, the prequel to the TV show, gives an insight into the world and characters Tony grew up around.

Good thing the country’s been so well run over the past 11 years then. Relative poverty, food bank use and homelessness all up; public services and wealth inequality worsened; corruption, cronyism, incompetence and barefaced lying to the public normalised; bills being prepared or being passed by the government attacking freedoms and democratic principles we’ve taken for granted; criminally botched response to covid which caused many thousands of needless deaths; and now perennial empty shelves and petrol stations. But why fix something when it ain’t broke, eh? Isn’t that the Tory motto that has brought us so many transformational societal and democratic improvements over the centuries? Oh wait, they were against all of those…🥵

What Carl is pointing out in a tongue in cheek way (which people have read too much into), is the irony that Strokes is claiming not to want to vote for a party because it implies he is “pro something that I’m fundamentally against”, when by this logic voting Tory makes him implicitly pro some things I would like to think he is fundamentally against. Like the government’s sketchy climate record; tolerance of bigots and climate change deniers such as Christopher Chope on parliamentary committees; less than impressive commitment to animal welfare and hunting laws, with supposedly illegal fox hunts tacitly and practically supported by that man of the people Jacob Rees-Mogg; rampant corruption and backroom deals with Tory donors, and the normalisation of it through the likes of one of the worst offenders Robert Jenrick; similar lowering of public standards with lying and abuse of public money openly tolerated by the government because the prime minister is one of the worst culprits; anti democratic measures pushed by the government such as a bill to make UK soldiers exempt from human rights abuses prosecutions, erosion of the Freedom of Information Act, the ability of the public to challenge the government in court, the dystopian new police bill and the removal of proportional voting systems in favour of the undemocratic FPTP among many other bills; and finally the sheer incompetence and desire to avoid scrutiny we have seen from the government over the past 2 years. I could write a lot more and probably will at some point, but I’m just trying to make clear what Carl was getting at - maybe some on here are fine with corruption, incompetence and a government on a mission to erode the ability of the public to hold them to account in the media, by protesting, or in the polls, and maybe some on here would defend the government’s desire to put Michael Gove in charge of the independent electoral commission, so the government is fully in charge of the process it uses to seek re-election. I’m sure that’s totally normal and they wouldn’t see any problem with it if a Labour government had done such a thing. So while Strokes is perfectly correct to have the principle that he would not vote for a party which stands for something he fundamentally disagrees with, I hope he and others on here would think it fair to apply that when they consider voting for the Tories as well. Some may agree with everything they do, some - I would guess most - either are not aware of the full scope of the questionable actions they support or have stood for historically, or maybe do not care - but ask yourself if your principles chime with a Tory party that not long ago voted against a bill to ensure that all rented accommodation in this country is ‘fit for human habitation’. The fact that this party contains more millionaires and landlords than any other epitomises that in many respects, their target market of those the party is intended to benefit mostly do not reside on football forums.

Not too sure about the energy crisis and who is to blame (though it is now the government’s responsibility to sort out), but supply chain issues it could be argued are certainly not being ameliorated by the Tories’ obstinate refusal to grant emergency visas to haulage workers to meet the current shortfall, which they were told would be a potential consequence of their shoddy and ill thought out Brexit deal. They won’t do anything to solve, probably blame France and that’ll get the gammons onside lol. My mental gymnast Tory family are now defending the empty shelves by saying “we had too much choice anyway” 😂

Halal slaughter of animals without stunning causes unnecessary pain and suffering to animals and should be banned. Don’t know how unpopular this is as it seems the RSPCA agree with me

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/brexit-raw-sewerage-water-treatment-b1915765.html%3famp Government give the go ahead for dangerous sewage to be dumped into rivers because of chemicals delayed by Brexit.

I don’t live in Leicester any more but I was pretty upset that the Hakamou bar closed down in the city centre. Don’t know if anyone else used to go there but I’ve been trying to recreate one of their cocktails but I just don’t know the ingredients cos they didn’t put them on the menu 😖 No one on here happened to have worked there I presume….I’d pay for the recipe 😁

Superhero films and franchises, one of my pet hates. Literally the easiest way for film studios to churn out money: ‘Bad guy looks like he’s gonna defeat the good guy for most of the film, but right at the end the good guy wins because of some convenient superpower’. I’m pretty sure it was in one of the avengers things that they literally at the end said “oh it’s alright guys, we can just go back in time and change everything that you’ve just wasted your lives watching for the past god knows how many hours”. Great, so now why can’t they do that at the end of every superhero movie 😂

I agree cannabis should be legalised and it’d be better regulated and provide some tax revenue, but if they do it should only be allowed in private residences IMO - the stuff smells like actual dog 💩 to me (no offence to any users 😂)

In fact it’s very likely the queen did approve the removal of the legitimately elected Whitlam. Buckingham Palace claims the queen was not aware, but the release of letters that the queen spent so long trying to stop (I wonder why 🤔) suggest otherwise. The letters show the Governor General “discussed the legal validity of dismissing Whitlam for months with the Queen’s private secretary”, right up to the event itself. Correspondence between the queen’s household and Kerr was so huge that there are 116 letters in a time period where there would usually be 12. Kerr was in direct contact with the monarch, who was not a neutral, ignorant bystander as they have claimed to be. This is only a small example of the insidious influence and power the unelected, intrinsically corrupt monarchy is capable of exercising, with literally no checks and balances or accountability - or indeed awareness from most of the public who are subjected to media coverage of the royal family as just celebrities with a twist of jingoism. And why does Australia need a ‘Governor General’ anyway, the British Empire and 19th century colonialism are long gone. It’s embarrassing that a representative of a foreign monarch should even have the power to remove a legitimately elected Australian government. It’s time we did away with the undemocratic, morally indefensible and inequality celebrating social structures that anachronisms like the monarchy are at the centre of. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theweek.co.uk/107519/gough-whitlam-did-the-queen-dismiss-australias-prime-minister%3famp

It was 1964 I think, in Smethwick. I think it may have led Malcolm X to visit the area if I remember correctly. And of course not long after that you had Enoch Powell and the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech

Loads of very perceptive points in this post, are you sure you’re not a political journalist? 👏 I think the bottom line is if you’re in control of the political narrative as the Tories currently are and are naturally better placed to do through media institutions, then you’re able to more easily manipulate explicitly or implicitly public consciousness about things to your advantage. Labour have to find a way to gain a more even playing field to stop the acceptable political spectrum - the Overton Window - shifting continuously to the right. One way like I suggested before was an Ofcom style regulator to prevent misleading media propagandising, at least in ‘newspapers’, but I suppose any stated intention by Labour to act on that would be demonised by the same hostile press as being an attack on press freedom. It’s sad that the only way to get anything done in this country is to suck up to the likes of Rupert Murdoch.

I know for a fact we would agree on more things than not mate - it’s just unfortunate for you all that living in the south east ‘blue wall’ means I have to vent my frustrations on a football forum 😂 For what it’s worth I think both Corbyn and Johnson were/are incompetent in their own ways. I believe Corbyn’s heart was in the right place and he had a genuine desire to help people, but he was not cut out for frontline politics, not prepared to fight fire with fire, not media savvy enough to defend himself (though the attacks on him were pretty unprecedented). Johnson on the other hand, he uses his natural incompetence to his advantage, to play the lovable buffoon, an act he’s played for decades and one I pointed out to my family to some disbelief as being a dangerous one years ago while he was still mayor of London. The problem is his heart’s never been in the right place, always prepared to lie, cheat, ignore the rules, change his position on any issue wherever it benefits him throughout his life. Media savvy, yes. Principled and genuine, not in the slightest. Only ever concerned with what’s best for him. I disliked Cameron and May, but I respected them to a degree and didn’t feel the country was necessarily in bad or unfit hands, but I’ve never actually been scared for the future of the country as I am these days.

Not that it really matters, but it seems obvious to me where you derive your opinions from (you should check out our discussion of media reform above). You shouldn’t make assertions that you cannot back up with undeniable evidence rather than Sun headlines. Or you should at least be aware of your own hypocrisy when the current prime minister has made more documented racist, sexist and homophobic statements and actions than any modern politician. Polls suggest all forms of racism tend to be more tolerated by right wing voters (not really surprising when you look at right wing parties throughout history), and racism including antisemitism and Islamophobia is and has historically been an endemic problem within the Conservative Party, but just one that the majority of the press has little political incentive to report. The Conservative Party are also not, and have never been, expected by anyone to have a squeaky clean moral compass and commitment to social and racial equality - that is expected of left wing parties - so no one is surprised or shocked when they don’t meet standards. No one batted an eyelid when the Tories aligned themselves with Orban’s awful far right racist regime in Hungary; when Thatcher backed Apartheid South Africa and Tories condemned Mandela as just a terrorist; when Johnson wrote about “picanninies with watermelon smiles”. Just question critically every news source you consume. How reliable is this news source? What purpose does the author have? What is the style of the article? What has the article omitted to mention? What evidence have they used to satisfactorily support their arguments? Questions like these will make you see the world in a more nuanced way and enrich you for it. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/the-conservative-party-anti-semitism-crisis-nobody-talks-about-169874/%3famp https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/tories-exploiting-jewish-fears-antisemitism/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_UK_Conservative_Party

Can’t be that hard work if you can do it at 95 👀 Maybe she should retire and we can have interviews to see who’s best for the job of head of state? Who are you gonna vote for, Charles, Charles or Charles? 🤔

Is she a legend though? Not only does she abuse tax payers money, but she also keeps a lot of her wealth in tax havens, because woe betide a billionaire receiving taxpayers’ money having to pay tax on it. She says she pays tax, but funnily enough not only is it ‘voluntary’ but her and the royal family’s affairs are completely closed to public scrutiny despite people describing them as ‘public servants’. In fact even their archives are completely closed to the public. Not only is the monarchy a corrupt institution but it is also morally unjustifiable, anti democratic, anti equality and anachronistic. Everything the queen (and the royal family) does is PR - essentially getting good press coverage so people don’t realise how pointless and wasteful they are. In the late 60s the queen was told by advisers that she needed to boost her popularity otherwise the monarchy might be abolished in the future, so she agreed to have a film crew document life in Buckingham Palace for some good propaganda, I mean PR. But she thought the result made the royal family appear too normal, and she thought that if people thought they were normal they wouldn’t support the continuance of the monarchy. So she banned it from ever being shown. Perception and self preservation is all they care about. Furthermore not only has she regularly intervened in political affairs - without checks and balances - historically (despite what people say about her not having any political influence), such as when she dismissed a democratically elected government in Australia in 1975, and the multiple times she has influenced legislation in this country that she believed affected her interest, it was revealed recently that for years she refused to hire ethnic minorities. She is also the prime defender of legal inequality as she and her family are literally above the law (like Prince Andrew); the key component in the outdated class and aristocratic system that makes us a laughing stock elsewhere; and she and her family are also hypocrites, such as when William made a speech about how we should protect animals and then the next day went hunting. So yeah the monarchy is a corrupt institution, wrong in practice and wrong in principle - just a bunch of privileged billionaire layabouts who thrive on inequality and oligarchy over democracy. And the queen is at the centre of it. If only Oliver Cromwell wasn’t a total killjoy things could have been a different, or if the British population wasn’t so historically placid, unlike the French. This is supposed to be a lighthearted thread isn’t it? 🤨😂

Fajitas with lots of lemon/lime, and extra guacamole 😵‍💫

Can’t stand the royal family. Harry’s the only one I have a modicum of respect for cos he’s actually trying to earn some money himself. The rest of them I couldn’t care less if there was a gas leak when the rest of them are at one of their 25 tax funded palaces this Christmas

Is this an age thing cos I have no idea who that is 😂

I watched it for a while and got really into it, but it got a little too far fetched for my liking, kind of ruined the alternate history vibe with the sci of type stuff, without wishing to ruin any plot lines for anyone. Might have to carry on with it and give it another chance at some stage though

I’d suggest you take a look at these articles that probably convey what I’m saying more eloquently https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/five-reasons-why-we-don-t-have-free-and-independent-press-in-uk-and-what-we-can-do-about/ https://www.mediareform.org.uk/media-ownership/who-owns-the-uk-media http://www.humantruth.info/uk_newspapers_comparison.html The fact is there is undoubtedly a massive political imbalance in UK print media - it’s undeniable. I don’t think I said 90% of publications are pro Tory, I think I said 90% are owned by the same Tory donors (of which the majority of their publications unsurprisingly tend to be largely pro Tory). But even so the vast majority of newspapers/tabloids that skew to be right often have the highest readership and the lowest objective quality when it comes to balanced reporting and libellous material. (See pic) The reason their readership is higher than the only two serious left leaning publications - The Guardian and The Independent (both of which are not owned by billionaires by the way) - I would argue is because people don’t buy tabloids to sufficiently inform themselves, they buy them for entertainment and reinforcing their held biases. Much of what you read in these tabloids wouldn’t be swallowed unquestioningly by anyone with an ounce of educated, critical thinking. I can go into statistics and elucidate points I’ve already made about editorial ‘mistakes’, biased reporting, government influence and links within the BBC etc if you like. The stated intention of the government to curb shows critical of the government is concerning because comedy especially should be aimed upwards. The government whether you like it or not is certainly more ripe for comedy than many others in the past as well. You say Channel 4 is anti-Tory. I doubt many people would agree with you - I’ve certainly seen hostile interviews taken on there when Labour figures weren’t given a word in edgeways. I would agree with you that social media tends to be anti Tory, but this is because of its demographic. Most users of social media tend to be of younger generations who surprisingly enough do not like the Tories or Brexit. Though you do see your fair share of right wing bots on there, like when that picture circulated before the election of a kid having to lie on the floor of a hospital because there weren’t enough beds. Hundreds of accounts spammed identical messages along the lines of “my sister works there and this is fake”. And despite the fact the hospital itself confirmed it was genuine, many Tories like my dad are so preconditioned to support their ‘team’ no matter what, they believed it. However the subject of social media is irrelevant to the subject of print media, as you cannot censor people’s views online outside of a totalitarian state. What is viable is an Ofcom style regulator for print media to ensure that mass produced papers are not simply used as methods of propagandising, but are required to be truthful when reporting on subjects they are currently inflammatory and scarce on facts about. I’ve often thought that tabloids that consistently print gossip and simply ‘opinion’ pieces with no attempt at impartiality or at least fact based and comparative arguments shouldn’t be allowed the title of ‘newspaper’. Its nonsense to say simply that the influence of widely circulated Tory newspapers is beneficial to the Tories politically because their content ‘resonates more’. Part of the role of the press is to hold the government to account, and because the section of the press interested in doing that is so small comparatively, the government are less accountable and are able to get away with the corruption and sleaze we’ve seen over the past 18 months with little impact, from Jennifer Arcuri and contracts for mates, to Robert Jenrick and his backroom deals with Tory billionaires, and listing his own affluent constituency as ‘deprived’ so he could blackmail his constituents by promising this funding only if he was elected. Many things the government do which may hurt them electorally are simply not published by papers like the Sun, Mail and Express, because it’s not in their interests to do so. I remember when Dominic Cummings was coming out with all these revelations about Johnson’s conduct, and the Mail’s response was along the lines “Sorry Dom, we’ve got bigger fish to fry”. Too many also journalists see the government as a source they cannot anger if they want to continue receiving their ‘scoops’, even if these scoops tend to be whatever message the government want to release in their interest. Laura ‘a Labour activist assaulted Matt Hancock’ Kuenssberg is a prime example of this. I am not giving an ‘excuse’ for Labour or Corbyn, as I specifically alluded to the fact that Corbyn was naive in not combating a libellously hostile press, even more so than is normal for Labour figures. Much of the media undoubtedly misled and propagandised against him from the very start (I read a very good thesis on this which I can also link to if you like), but it was his naivety in not also descending into the gutter that was his undoing. If he had sued the worst perpetrators for slander at the start, then recent political history might have played out differently as the tabloids may have been less emboldened to print whatever they wanted to assassinate his character. You say people don’t vote Labour because they don’t want to. While that’s true for the vast majority of non Labour voters, you have to wonder that given the political imbalance within the UK’s media just over the past 10 or so years whether the Labour Party really have the same platform available to them as the Tories do to present themselves. The truth is they don’t within traditional media, social media is perhaps the only way they do but is is debatable over what impact this has, not a significant one if recent elections and referenda are to go by.

Firstly you seem to have missed out referring to the vast majority of media outlets which are overtly supportive of the Tories. Around 90% of the print media in this country is owned by the same handful of Tory donor tax exile billionaires, like Rothermere, Barclay and Murdoch - and the BBC have a less than stellar record over the past few years when it comes to editorial ‘mistakes’, unbalanced coverage (and sometimes neglecting to cover certain stories at all) and statistical preference for ‘right wing’ commentators on their programmes. Not to mention that over the last 10 years the BBC has become an employment pool for figures going to work for the government or going to work for the BBC from the government; the BBC board and chairman also now has an open Tory bias with their stated intention to curb comedy shows critical of the government, and their attempting to deny jobs to a new board member who has been critical of the government in the past. And less said about the likes of GB News the better. All this is unsurprising as the BBC tends historically to show bias towards the government of the day, particularly when that government shows hostility towards them and threatens their funding as the Tories have done multiple times even in the past few years. Eden even pressured them into setting up a propaganda station for him because he threatened their funding over what he saw as disloyalty over the Suez Crisis. So politicisation of the BBC isn’t new. The media system we have currently isn’t really fit for purpose. At the minute we have a system whereby newspapers basically regulate themselves. This leads essentially to the media being grossly propagandised, especially at election time. Lies, smears and selective reporting are the norm in the tabloids particularly as there is no obligation to provide readers with accurate information. Instead papers like the Sun print what they like, relying on the ‘unspoken rule’ that politicians will not take legal action against them. (They do however retain vast amounts of money to defend lawsuits, as they know they’ll be challenged due to the inflammatory nature of their reporting). It makes you wonder how things might have been different if Corbyn had nipped things in the bud and actually litigated against these papers for defamation of character, like when they said he sold secrets to the Soviets in the 80s. Instead the lack of accountability for the press emboldens them, and we end up with a more unsavoury political atmosphere, and uninformed and angry sections of the population (which - having seen Murdoch’s other work at Fox - is probably the idea). Press regulation is a bit of a taboo subject because when it’s mentioned the like of the Sun and Express kick off saying it’s an assault on ‘press freedom’. But the fact is the press isn’t free; like I said the majority of it is run by the same handful of people, whom former editors have claimed personally influence their output. If Ofcom is accepted as being an arbiter of accuracy in television media, it begs the question why we can’t expect to at least aspire to a degree of objectivity in the print media. Perhaps we all like confirming our biases too much to think, or even care if we’re being misled or not.