People have assumptions concerning the intentions and motivations of politicians; and it is in the light of these assumptions that people evaluate what the politicians do, what actions they take, the facts of their policies.
The shaping effect of assumptions is so great - so absolute - that it matters very little what actually happens. There is always a way of interpreting events so as to conform-with, and confirm, what has previously been decided about the politician.
The big and unasked questions relate to our actual but unconscious assumptions:
What exactly and explicitly are our assumptions about the nature, intentions, motivations etc. of any particular politician?
Why have we, personally, adopted these assumptions?
And, do we regarding it as valid that we have done so?
This can be seen in psychiatry, where people may develop persecutory delusions focused upon a particular person or group; and once the patient had made the assumption has been made that this person/group had malign intent towards the patient - then everything that happened (or could happen) was interpreted as evidence of their malignity.
Alternatively, a man might begin to assume his wife is having an affair, and from then any and all her activities can be understood as further evidence of her infidelity.
And what is visible so starkly and strangely in psychiatry, is a normal and unavoidable part of human thinking.
It can be seen in the baddies and goodies of political discourse. The baddies are regarded as malign in the same way as happens in persecutory delusions.
But the political goodies, in contrast, are assumed (for whatever reason) to have begin and positive intentions towards ourselves; assumed to share our personal values - so that everything they say and do is regarded as evidence of their rightness. their actions either being straightforwardly right and approved of, upfront; or else approved-of on the basis of indirectly aiming-at the right outcomes; but unable to do good directly because constrained by matters of possibility and pragmatism...
Consequently; a lifetime of personal experience, political transformation, variation in persona and policies, U-turns and betrayals... typically make zero difference to political affiliations; or indeed to faith in the potential power of politics to do good.
This explains why, although we expend so much time and energy generating, seeking, sifting, and arguing over "facts" and "evidence" - none of this matters; because the real differences lie at a conceptual level from-which the facts get their meaning and are interpreted.
The implication is that we ought to be focusing on our assumptions, and whether these are reasonable -- whether, indeed, we really choose to endorse and believe-in our own assumptions - once these assumptions have been isolated and exposed to the light of awareness.
Without such self-awareness and self-examination of their own underlying conceptual assumptions, people can easily and permanently be manipulated - even against their will.
Because false and evil assumptions may be (and are) implanted unconsciously; so as to shape a person's whole outlook, whole way of understanding the world - in ways of which he is unaware. And because unaware, unable to evaluate or change.
The fact is that we choose our assumptions - but the choice is not arbitrary, because assumptions are values, and as values they can and should be evaluated. yet assumptions cannot be chosen until they are known. And assumptions cannot be known unless each individual desires to know his own assumptions.
That is the big blockage - that people do not want to know their own assumptions, and strenuously resist and deny such knowledge.
And, in a world so permeated by the powers of evil; such an attitude is spiritually fatal.
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