Slop.

My questioning angers them because liberalism is a big part of their ego, so to criticize their beliefs is to criticize their person.

I know this too. I had friends this year distance themselves from me for the same reason.

I was told "don't be a stranger" which is ironic because these people had only been a stranger to me for several years. It was always up to me to check in and be included, rarely the other way around.

c'est la vie

And not sure how it came off like that.

Second person callouts when talking about a third party are still read as second person callouts.

"Information is out there" is really missing the point of like, the entire system surrounding how people find and learn information. How the fuck are they going to know what's Real information and what's just made up bullshit?

Part of why everything is so turbo fucked is because there is no authority, there is no "factual" information, and everybody is on some level aware of that but the best they can do is seek out information sources that sound factual, even if they're not, and generally as a result just find new ways to reinforce their pre existing biases

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

It's not impossible for me though because i'm just built different

Lol. Not at all. And not sure how it came off like that.

Ok good, , I think it was just the usage of "you" heh, my brain wasn't reading it as a broader usage of "you".

But I agree. I don't think our institutions do anything to instill continued learning or an instinct to do more in-depth investigations in people. They also set the bar so fucking low that I'm sure many people wouldn't even know what to look up because they lack the vocabulary to do so. Total lack of any real civics courses that don't simply have you perform rote memorization of the structures of the US federal government. That's all by design, though, and that's not some conspiracy either. Quoting Roger A. Freeman, former adviser to President Nixon and then adviser to Ronald Reagan as Governor of California:

We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That's dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow to go through [the higher education system.] If not we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people. That's what happened in Germany. I saw it happen.

An educated working class, is a dangerous working class.