i agree, but it still goes deeper than that. i used the liberal/maga divide because liberals seem to place a higher premium on critical thinking than maga supporters do and also as a basis to show that critical thinking alone often isn’t enough – based on the rabbit holes I’ve followed:

i’ll keep using north korea as an example, since it’s the clearest case I can think of right now. The us gov’t has already admitted to manufacturing propaganda and this fact has been public domain knowledge for decades at this point, yet much of that propaganda is still widely believed to be true nonetheless. wikipedia and american history books probably repeat this narrative more often than others, portraying north korea as a hermit kingdom with despotic rulers. If you approach this with critical thinking, you’d naturally conclude those portrayals are accurate based on the information that’s readily available to you on wikipedia and history books. But if you dig deeper into the references that these sources used in wikipedia and those history books, you’ll find that nearly all – if not all – are either directly or indirectly funded by the U.S. government. ie usaid, national endowment for democracy, radio free asia, etc.

so even if you follow this one tenet of critical thinking – keeping your identity separate from your beliefs – you’ll still end up believing the propaganda, because the seemingly objective evidence already aligns with what you likely believed in the first place and is repeated from all sources that are fostered by the american gov’t. it’s only sources not elevated by the american gov’t that either have a neutral or favorable characterization of north korea, but they’re so few in number and presence that it takes additional effort to find them – just like the freedom of information act revelations.