Bernie Sanders just easily won the New Hampshire primary. It's a remarkable achievement.

[Hortensis]

23. It is both, and belief or faith

Is not involved. Turns out MRI scanning can fairly reliably identify most people as conservative or liberal. Like muscles, areas of the brain that are used more are more developed. In cons they tend to see larger amygdalas, an emotion center, and iberals larger anterior consulate cortices, which evaluate uncertainty and conflict. Cons send info for emotional reaction first, while libs "think" about it a bit before running it through the amygdala.

I hope you are right that people are less easily fooled now. After forty years of seeing many people become more committed to being fooled, I am not so sure. I had expected our con friends to get smart for all those years and was very mistaken. Being smart and competent in evaluating your own small world is not the same as being wise about the world "out there.". Wising up would not only require setting aside beliefs built up and acted on over decades but accepting that one had been very foolish and wrong. And that is without considering that different types of people are wired to see moral issues and man's place in the world very differently. There are people who see authoritarian government as necessary for a moral and well run society, for instance, just that it be their kind, " their" people's.