Keller @ Large: Willfully Ignorant People Don't Want The Truth

BOSTON (CBS) - Here's an interesting question to ask yourself – do you want to know the truth?

If you ask that question about your personal life, surely the answer would be yes, you want to know the truth about your family, your friends, your health, your job security, and so on.

The alternative – living a lie and being kept in the dark - seems flat-out unacceptable, right?

But what about politics?

I've sat through countless political speeches and party conventions over the years where folks whoop and holler with delight as they are fed transparent falsehoods.

But it feels as if willful ignorance – defined as "the state and practice of ignoring any sensory input that appears to contradict one's inner model of reality" – is spreading like black ice on a winter morning.

Exhibit A is the absurd reaction to a fact-check by anchorman Shepard Smith of Fox News of the so-called Hillary Clinton uranium scandal, a story being flogged these days by willful ignorance specialists like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.

The gist of it is that Clinton, when she was Secretary of State, approved the sale of a huge chunk of America's uranium stockpile to Russia at the behest of donors to the Clinton Foundation.

As Smith put it, "the accusation is predicated on the charge that…Clinton approved the sale. She did not…and none of the uranium was exported to Russia."

Never mind, right?

Wrong.

The willfully ignorant are livid at Smith and want him fired.

You can easily find comparable examples on the left-wing side of the fence.

Because the mental dysfunction of willful ignorance apparently knows no boundaries.