Australians care if politicians tell lies, but people in the US don’t
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https://www.newscientist.com/article/2189545-australians-care-if-politicians-tell-lies-but-people-in-the-us-dont/
The US may have entered a “post-truth” era, but Australia has not. Researchers who asked people in the US their views on politicians who frequently bend the truth found that fact-checking had little impact, whereas for Australians it did change their political opinions.
The findings in Australia are positive and encouraging, says team member Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Bristol in the UK. They suggest fact-checking is a genuine counter to politicians who regularly make false statements.
“People like a politician less if they find out they have been lied to a lot,” says Lewandowsky. “It’s a reasonably large effect.”
But when the team did a follow-up study in the US, the size of the effect was ten times smaller. “We have a lot of information now suggesting American voters don’t really care about facts, in the sense that if you tell them a politician is dishonest it doesn’t really seem to matter,” says Lewandowsky.
The team did not investigate the reasons for this difference, but they speculate that it has to do with the far more polarised nature of political culture in the US.
In Australia, voting is compulsory and there is a preferential voting system. “There are buffers against extremism in the Australian system that don’t exist in the US,” says Lewandowsky.
Because 40% of the population of the United States is part of the Fox cult.
That's mostly because we've been lied to so much we're used to it by now. The runnin' joke of 'politician says sky is blue, gotta factcheck it' is older than I am, after all.
"everybody knows all politicians lie."
I don't know how many times I've talked to a coworker who excuses everything with this logical fallacy
US politics is just so bizarre for many of us in Australia. Eg one of the most notable differences is that everyone in America likes to label themselves and everyone else: ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’ (those two aren’t even mutually exclusive lol), ‘Democrat’, ‘Republican’, etc. So of course, if you support a politician who aligns with your ‘label’, you’ll tend to conveniently disregard any evidence which harms that politician.
But here in Australia, perhaps aside from ‘greenies’ (a term used exclusively by bogans) we really don’t do much of that labelling business at all. The least-preferred major party at any given moment is often whichever party has the biggest dickhead - explains why everyone hated Tony Abbott, but everyone in Australia gave Malcolm Turnbull a chance. Then ScoMo took over and we hate him; we’d rather have Bill Shorten.
Of course it’s more complicated than that, but for fuck’s sake America, stop putting labels on each other, and stop hating and dividing yourselves. Fuck
It's bizarre to those of us in the US too. For a country that pretends to be "the leader of the free world" we aren't very good.
A lot of it comes down to the fact that a lot of Americans are proud of their ignorance per say. A few'll say that "America is the freest country in the world!" "Europe is a commie shithole!" They speak of Europe, Asia and Africa in monolithic entities because your education system sucks dick.
Everyone knows Africa's just a small country anyways.
Yilmaz for President of the United States 2020.
We care. It just doesn't matter that we care
Lol while the US system is kind of set up in a way that kills average voices, the biggest factor in fighting corrupt politics is a voter base that actually holds them accountable. Places like Australia, Germany and Canada do actually give a fuck about their politicians acting horifically but a lot of that behavior is kind of diefied or brushed under the rug. You can pretend this "Average joe american" believes in being a good ciitizen and gosh darnit wants all these good things but for some mistifying reason votes republican, but it's a myth. Theoretically all these scumbags can be voted out at any time regardless of any gerrymandering or rigging of systems if people actually cared about holding them accountable, but they just aren't. It's like that George Carlin skit: Garbage in, Garbage out.
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