Confusing Fiction For Fact
Politicians say one thing and do something else. But what they do speaks so loudly, we can’t hear what they are saying.
Fact, truth, objectivity, and reason are fundamentally different from opinion, prejudice, subjectivity, and irrationality. Not acknowledging that difference obstructs or delays political progress and interferes with political action.
Because democracy is supposed to rely on talk and discourse instead of force or money, it works only when we agree on the distinction between knowledge and opinion in our discourse. Today money talks; the role of money overwhelms the role of knowledge. The trouble with the dominance of money is that money doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction. And doesn’t care.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair
I have spent my entire professional career studying and discussing the human process of decision making. There is nothing more significant in making personal decisions than both knowledge and opinion. I am assuming that political decision making is a human process. A major hindrance in both personal and political decision making is a confusion or misuse of knowledge and opinion, fact and fiction.
So I am not surprised about the political hindrance, but I am not optimistic about its resolution. In personal decision making, the strategies for overcoming this hindrance include self-reflection, self-awareness, open-mindedness and changing one’s mind. I am beginning to believe these strategies may not ever work with politicians.
It is difficult to get a politician to change their opinion when keeping their job depends on not changing their opinion.
Positive Uncertainty 
Yes !!! The clarity of high mountain thinking is wonderful. Even when your only anticipating it !! Thanks H
Gene
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The last sentence of this post tells what we should always remember. How can we expect a politician to change his/her opinion when her job depends on staying on the tract on which he was elected. However, I think it should be a work in progress that each of us, as you say, try to keep an open mind and change if we learn facts that point to a different truth. I for one have a very hard time doing that so why would I think a politician can do that with or without the threat of the loss of a job being involved. I like your new approach to your posts.