You are correct. It already sank! Destroyed by its own in 2005.




Some would argue that America's own are hell bent on self destruction too. Others are clueless.
Count me among the former.

BTW, Time's cover story this week about Blue Truth, Red Truth

........"Human beings are simply more willing to believe falsehoods that confirm their worldview. In July, 17% of voters told pollsters for the Pew Research Center that Obama is a Muslim, an increase from just 12% in October 2008. Within the GOP, this fiction was believed by 30%, up from 16% in 2008, and the increase was more pronounced among those with college educations than among those without. The President is a Christian. There is no credible information to suggest otherwise. But for many caught up in the passions of politics, the facts are not conclusive.

Instead the public increasingly takes issue with those who deliver the facts. Gallup recently recorded the highest levels of distrust in the media since it began measuring this sentiment in 1998. Only 40% of the country, including just 26% of Republicans and 31% of independents, express a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. “In the past, the press effectively played the role of umpire,” explains Chris Lehane, a Democratic campaign consultant who served as press secretary of Al Gore’s 2000 campaign. “Now they are effectively in the bleachers.”

The result is a landscape where accuracy is largely in the eye of the beholder. If you ask voters which candidate is fooling the public, the answers vary by political disposition. A recent poll by the Washington Post and ABC News found that 76% of Romney voters believe Obama is “intentionally misleading” voters. As it happened, the exact same share of Obama supporters believe Romney is “intentionally misleading.” Only 17% of Romney voters and 12% of Obama voters were willing to say their own man had deceived.

........."To see just how easy it is to be fooled, one need only visit the controlled confines of the university laboratory. In the spring of 2006, Nyhan and his research partner Jason Reifler of Georgia State University gathered conservative and liberal students to test their resistance to factual information. They asked the group to read an article that included President George W. Bush’s claim that his tax cuts had increased revenue for the U.S. Treasury, which was provably false. Then they added a factual correction: the Bush tax cuts led to a three-year decline in tax revenue, from $2 trillion in 2000 to $1.8 trillion in 2003.

The correction worked among liberals, but among conservatives it produced a curious backfire effect: conservatives were nearly twice as likely to say the Bush tax cuts increased revenue after they had been told this was not true. Such distortions are not limited to the conservative mind. The researchers presented an article showing John Kerry’s claim from 2004 that he would “lift the ban on stem-cell research” imposed by Bush, followed by corrective information: Bush never actually banned stem-cell research; he prevented federal money from funding research on a subset of embryos. The true information had a corrective effect for conservatives and moderates but no impact on liberals. Once again, personal views had intervened. “The more we care about politics and the more it becomes central to our worldview, the more threatening it becomes to admit that we are wrong or our side is wrong,” Nyhan concludes. The studies show that facts that contradict our biases actually have the effect of reinforcing them.

Read more: Fact-Checking Obama, Romney Ahead of Debates: Blue Truth, Red Truth | Swampland | TIME.com