This quote may be outdated. I believe the majority of people today prefer to believe bad ideas, even if they are exposed to good ideas. Now with so many media outlets, bad ideas can actually provide an income stream in our boutique news environment. No matter what your political persuasion, there is a corporation custom designing pablum to feed you and create a demographic they can market to. Even the conspiracy theorists who don't quite fit the prevailing version of the left/right dichotomy have a cottage industry aimed at them. The problem is good ideas are usually free and can be pretty boring and appeal to a demographic difficult to define and sell to. Information has just become another capitalist marketplace. No better way to target advertising than directly to the exact demographic you can attract with specific content. Hence, after whatever this week's big fucking deal is, you will see the simplistic memes sprouting up like daisies after a Spring rain. Politics has just become another Netflix series, where we can pick and choose our own personal heroes and villains, then run to social media and show everybody how smart and virtuous we are in our beliefs.

I would be curious to know what Bertrand Russell would make of all this today. So many of Bert's quotes seemed to foreshadow these times. He made it to 1970, so he was no stranger to the power of the media shaping our lives. Now it is just on steroids.