Do people have the ability to think for themselves?

If you are of an optimist, you may say yes.  Otherwise, it is no.

Just answering the question with data from my own experience, I am starting to trend towards pessimism.  I thought that I had arrived when I was in college.  But many years later, Iearned otherwise.  Limbaugh once advised people to think for themselves.  I noted with disgust that I had not.  Why had I not really learned?  Natural laziness.  It is hard work to think, so I would rather not bother.

But it isn't just me.  The naural tendency is for people not to think for themselves, as Limbaugh implied.

So people hear a thing, and they accept it as true.  That is the case especially if it comes from an authority.  This gives authorities a powerful incentive to lie, and the proceed to do just that.

Now the prevailing wisdom is that the GOP shut down the government and almost cost us a catastrophic default.  I see that this little prevarication keeps getting repeated over and over again.  Yet, if you were to just observe that the GOP tried to fund everything but ObamaCare, how can you blame the GOP alone for the shut down?  It takes two to fight, and the Democrats were doing their share.  Even worse, if there had been a true default, this kind of thinking would give you the prevailing wisdom that it was because of the GOP.  This is absurd.

How can refusing credit cause a default?  If you were trying to pay your bills by applying for more credit, and were refused, would this be the cause of your subsequent default?  Of course not.  So, why should the government be any different when it fails to live within its means?  All the GOP did was to quarrel with the Democrats over one item in the budget, and somehow this quarrel causes a default?  That's like saying a refusal to buy an expensive item leading to a family quarrel caused a delay in raising their credit card limit.

The credit card being maxxed out did not cause the default in that hypothetical situation.  No, the failure to live within ones means did the trick.  How does that get to be the GOP's fault?  It wouldn't if people thought for themselves.  They hear that it was the GOP and then accept that as gospel.

Is it because the lies are coming from authorities?  Can people actually think this out for themselves?  I am getting more pessimistic all the time.