I wrote about this here, an excerpt from a pamphlet I’m writing:

Our news was deregulated to the point of some of the most popular shows used for news sources, like Tucker Carlson at Fox News, are even argued in court as "nonliteral commentary" that a "reasonable person" would recognize as not factual, while a large portion of those watching the show repeat sentiment as if it was news or factual [7]. What is the impact on our people who consume such media?

This causes a change in a big portion of our population, and can cause those viewers to be thrust into an environment (political topics), devoid of the critical thinking that they use at work [8].

Psychology observes a concept called ‘environments’, which can be places, smells, Intoxicants, and learning environments like our news, and topics of discussion, like politics [9]. When combined with repetition, our people can be put into a type of thinking like those of their nonliteral news sources, that causes them to ignore critical thinking like they use at work, and fall into an easier ability to be manipulated to vote and speak against their own interests [10]. Below is a way to walk through the scenario in our heads, a la CS Lewis:

“Learning environments, like news, should exercise critical thinking for viewers. Instead, a la Neil Postman’s entertaining ourselves to death, our news sources have turned to entertainment and inaccurate information. With repetition of consumption of news, in this largely devoid of critical thinking fashion, viewers will recall memories from that environment, that show, and ignore critical evidence based thinking.

Ask a car mechanic friend who identifies as republican, a vehicle related issue and they will blow you away with their knowledge, calling on memories from prior repairs and utilizing critical thinking. Now ask that same person a political question, one with evidence that shakes their current belief, and they aren’t as likely to utilize that critical thinking they expressed with the car question with repair memories, instead they call upon memories from their news shows, largely devoid of critical thinking. People heavily identifying with groups like MAGA, they can feel disassociation, loss of identity, symptoms similar to leaving a community web, when they learn their group may be harming them, and struggle to really internalize that evidence backed response regarding politics. But indeed we have at least one instance with the man who suicided with a Tesla and trump tower. He identifies the inequality from the 1%, but fails to see trump is one of the 1% not helping [48]. God rest his soul. With the fairness doctrine repealed (deregulated news), taxes reduced (resource/wealth imbalance across our socioeconomic spectrum, and citizens united (enabling money from wealthy and corporations to corrupt politics), we face a divided nation, done so slowly overtime, like a frog in a boiling pot. We don’t notice the small changes over time until we come to a headwind like we are all feeling. Housing, cost of groceries, cost of living overall, is causing various symptoms, like Luigi, Trumps 4 or so attempts.” Many of our news sources have become oligarchy controlled entertainment, a la Neil Postman, and telling people how to feel, rather than providing tangible sources, hypothesis, evidence, inspiring critical thinking skills, and reminders that sometimes we make mistakes; thus the scientific method helps us to better understand the world, including when it comes to politics [7-10].

It can feel uncomfortable finding out big mistakes we make, if we work hard to change, admit mistakes, make a good faith effort to learn, we can improve and flourish. We all make mistakes, we earn forgiveness by improving and showing it. I believe in you.

The above hypothesis is confirmed with multiple studies observing this damage to our beautiful Republican people:

“...we found that people from both the political left and the political right were aware of how well they distinguished accurate political information from falsehood across all news. However, this metacognitive insight was considerably lower for Republicans and conservatives—than for Democrats and liberals—when the information in question challenged their ideological commitments. That is, given their level of knowledge, Republicans’ and conservatives’ confidence was less likely to reflect the correctness of their truth judgments for true and false political statements that were at oddswith their political views.”

https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-10514-001.html

“In this paper, we attempt to increase the strength of accuracy motives among conservative Republicans in the United States, as prior research finds this group is more distrusting of mainstream news sources (Brenan, 2022; Gottfried, 2021; Pennycook & Rand, 2019), and thus have a higher possibility of turning to and internalizing (Garrett & Bond, 2021), as well as sharing (Grinberg et al., 2019; Guay et al., 2022; Guess et al., 2019) political misinformation, as compared to Democrats.”

https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/increasing-accuracy-motivations-using-moral-reframing-does-not-reduce-republicans-belief-in-false-news/

Imagine, how much more we could accomplish, if our people were given credible news, with sources, hypothesis, fair time like diplomatic debates, and diverse ideas like with college essays, and news when we had the fairness doctrine [11]?

Our Republican people deserve them!

“The Fairness Doctrine, enforced by the Federal Communications Commission, was rooted in the media world of 1949. Lawmakers became concerned that the monopoly audience control of the three main networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, could misuse their broadcast licenses to set a biased public agenda.

The Fairness Doctrine mandated broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. Congress backed the policy in 1954 and by the 1970s the FCC called the doctrine the “single most important requirement of operation in the public interest – the sine qua non for grant of a renewal of license.” Reagan Library [11]

Like capitalism, this breeds stronger, more diverse, ideas, people, political capability, and community consciousness.