The Evil Black Muslim President

Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time there was a nation ruled by an autocratic black Muslim President. Being a socio-fascist, he took away all his citizens' freedoms and liberties. He raised their taxes. And took away their guns, so their couldn't even defend themselves. He forced them to pay for things they didn't want to pay. He was an open racist, looking down upon any not of his kind. He allowed and even supported the immoral and debauched to live freely in public. He compromised the military and openly conspired with dictators. Because his Muslim faith was frowned upon and even demonized in the nation he infiltrated, he took on a public religion much more amiable to the citizenry. In fact, he shouldn't even be President because he wasn't born in the nation he now rules. He hates women...

I could go on-and-on ad infinitum. But you get the idea. And I won't go on-and-on refuting the above things in which I think are bogus. Just to backtrack a little, in case you're very slow, or reading this fifty years in the future, when this man belongs in a history book (whatever a book will look like then) instead of the nightly news, the "evil black Muslim President" I'm referring to is Barack Obama. For this blog entry, I'm interested how someone can believe the above so readily when I can not. We have access to the same sources, the same world. True, the above hypothetical person would probably watch Fox News while I would watch MSNBC. And don't misunderstand me: I am NOT lumping all people who'd like a different president into believers of the above story. I'm sure a lot of people will think the above as comic hyperbole. But I am also confident that a non-zero percentage of people believe the above; that percentage might be larger than I'd like to guess. So what causes one person to believe one way, and another to believe another?

I think the root cause is bias. We all have it. My bias is not better than yours, nor is there a such thing as "unbiased" because we come to any situation preloaded with ideas and conceptions on how the world operates. We can mitigate bias by doing blind studies or dealing with "just the facts." But even dealing with "just the facts," there's interpretation bias. But I think one powerful tool to mitigating bias is to acknowledge we have it in the first place. The next time we react or jump to a conclusion, we can ask ourselves: "Did I do that because I already have a biased opinion?" Then we can step back and look at "just the facts," and come to a different conclusion.

Using the above first paragraph as an example, let's say our hypothetical person believes much, if not all about what kind of person Barack Obama is like. He looks at his biases and realizes he doesn't like people with big ears, as he had a few big-eared bullies when he was a child. He then realizes it's stupid to hate someone for having big ears, so he changes his opinion about Barack Obama. I personally think most of those who subscribe to the above narrative about the President aren't big-ear haters. I think many have some other bias against the President. Then again, that just might be my bias.