Not really so much a "how" so much as a "90% of people here are just regurgitating what the right or left wing media tells you to think".

Honestly, have you looked at these political topics? One side spews "Obama has no experience, he's the antichrist, go worship your rockstar messiah!" or the other side "McCain is just bush Jr., republicans ruined the economy, we need change!". It's like clockwork. Now what part of these arguments did you think up of your own originality? And what part of these did you see on Fox news, CNN, or whatever is your media outlet of choice? Just admit it, 95% of you here have no idea what the hell you're talking about. And if it wasn't for some conglamerate giving you talking points, and statistics you'd have nothing to say. And yet both sides accuse each other of this exact same thing. Buying into the propaganda, and assuming some aspect of the media is trying to assassinate your candidate.

It's mind boggling, I'm trying to rap my head around it but I can't. I read the political topics here but for entertianment purposes mostly, I have no intention of voting. And out of all of the topics I've seen one, maybe possibly two people that actually seem to know something beyond what the TV shouts at them. There isn't really a point to this topic aside from the faint hope of some conciousness raising and maybe somebody will actually go out and do independent research on something rather than just spewing talking points that the candidates and the media feed you. And before you say "I did do research!!", I reply "No you didn't."

Not surprising in the least.

intelligent political debate? You fool, there's no such thing. Only left vs. right. Haven't you ever seen Crossfire?

Welcome to the 21st century.

A free press has to much power.

In terms of how the U.S. media breaks everything in to a left/right dichotomy, I don't think it's a case of power as much as it is being lazy. It's just too easy to bring on a "strategist" for both parties and have them yell talking points. Why risk losing your audience with complex, nuanced opinion pieces or risk getting in trouble with painstaking investigative reporting when you can just repeat what the people in each party are saying.

Also, it seems like an inevitable conclusion of a two party system.

In one topic somebody just proved the rule of the internet that states if a discussion goes on long enough somebody will be compared to a nazi. Barack Obama is now both the antichrist and Adolph Hitler apparently. It's insane. people just eat it up, puke it out, and then the media sees that it was eaten, scoops it up, and feeds it back to them.

Has anybody read the book "the more you watch the less you know"? It's a bit old now, but that actually gives it more of a prophetic feeling if anything. Written in the 90s it was about the direction the media was moving in towards how they will avoid complexity, or nuanced reporting in favor of infotainment. Essentially any news that's entertaining will be the order of the day. But it leads to the dumbing down of america because people just regurgitate stupid partisan talking points, and non news and figure they must know what what's going on because it's on the news.

It's just gotten worse in the past decade or so sense the book was written. The pinacle was the debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous where they didn't actually ask questions so much as grill them on stupid news scandals they themselves (the media, not the two of them personally) created. A self feeding cycle of ignorance.

I agree, although I read political books & read political articles not on Yahoo, so I have decent knowledge for a 14-year-old...

Be wary of political books, if you're reading something from some one who cares about politics you're probably being mislead in one direction or another.