Context
At least as long as human civilizations have existed, politics has been significantly or mostly a battle for influencing enough of what minds perceive and how they think about it to get what proponents want. For example, shooting wars are usually preceded by collecting enough minds to willingly or grudgingly support a war. Wars with bullets, bombs and drones need minds sufficiently willing to be both fighters and the public supporters needed to sustain the fighting. Leaders who want to engage in wars, usually also engage in tactics to influence public perceptions of reality and threats. Such influencing includes creating false realities and threats to build public support for war.
Modern cognitive and social science make clear that when we are engaging with politics, unconscious bias, prejudices, tribe and group loyalties or identities, self-identity, self-esteem, moral values, and ideological belief are usually dominant in our perceptions of reality and thinking about it. When they are inconvenient or identity-threatening, facts, robust truths, and good faith sound reasoning are usually downplayed, denied or distorted by most people to some non-trivial extent. Our mostly unconscious minds and their traits tends to render what is inconvenient or threatening less so, often a lot less so. Our minds evolved to protect our identities and loyalties, even when it means denying reality or distorting into something it isn't.
That doesn't apply to just war. It applies to almost everything else where politics is involved, i.e., almost everything if not literally everything. People do not evaluate political information as detached reasoners. They unconsciously apply reality- and reason-distorting filters such as motivated reasoning, biases, and defense of identity. That generally strongly influences what evidence people accept and how they interpret it.
The clear mind
As used here, a clear mind for politics or clear-minded politics refers to a state of mind that humans can achieve to some extent. That state of mind can be called anti-biasing and anti-ideology. A clear mind does not refer to perfection in reasoning or perceptions of reality. It does not assert any universal moral values. No human can be completely free of their biases, moral values, self-identity, etc. That is not possible. Humans are not the Borg, Vulcans or computers. But what people can do to some variable extent is consciously try to be more influenced by facts, robust truths, and good faith sound reasoning, especially when they are inconvenient.
Where much, probably most, political irrationality, ill-will, oppression, cruelty, war and other bad outcomes arise is from the unconscious mind's fast but subtle battle to make what is real but inconvenient or threatening either (1) less inconvenient or threatening, or (2) not inconvenient or threatening at all, e.g., by denying reality or sound reasoning. Bending unruly reality and sound reason to fit with what is psychologically or socially comfortable is a major breeding ground for war, hate, bigotry, unwarranted distrust, crackpottery, lies, slanders, and irrational emotional manipulation. Arguably, that's the most important breeding ground.
In short, clear-minded politics is not about attaining perfect neutrality, perception, or rationality. The concept is just a humble effort to at least noticeably subject one’s own preferred conclusions to evidence and criticism, especially when doing so is uncomfortable. None of this is to state or imply that unconscious bias or irrationality is unique to one side or bad outcomes. It's everywhere, in everyone. No one can make the irrationality and messiness completely go away, but everyone can try to deal with it honestly in good faith.
The concept of clear-minded politics is not new. But the label "clear mind" or "clear-minded" appears to be possibly new. For example, Magnus Vinding's 2022 book Reasoned Politics points squarely at clear mind politics, but he doesn't use that label. Philip Tetlock's 2015 book, Superforecasting: The Art and science of Prediction, does two things. First, he documents the power of unconscious biases and identity to degenerate politics into irrationality. Second, he discovered a way to find the few people in a population who are naturally talented in doing clear-minded politics. He called those people superforecasters.
Tetlock's research identified key mental traits that allowed people to be clear-minded by tamping down their own biases, prejudices, identities, ideology, etc. -- superforecasters relied more heavily on facts, robust truths and sound reasoning than average people. In other words, clear-minded politics is possible to at least some extent. It is not a utopian fantasy.
How to put clear-minded politics into practice
As an example, my core political moral values are centered on defending and fighting for secular democracy, the secular rule of law, civil liberties and honest, transparent, pro-public interest government. Engaging with in that in a clear-minded way means laying out facts, robust truths and good faith sound reasoning. Providing at least some links to at least some of the main facts, true truths and sound reasoning relied on increases transparency by allowing anyone to easily assess asserted facts and reasoning. Anyone willing to read and consider what is written is then free to completely or partly accept or reject anything written or asserted.
Once people are in possession of clear mind politics content, they are completely free to not only assess and accept or reject some or all of the facts and reasoning for themselves, they will naturally assess, and accept or reject on the basis of their moral values, biases, social loyalties, self-identity, etc. There is always be disagreements. But with clear-minded politics mindsets, disagreements will be at least somewhat more influenced and constrained by the facts, truths, and reasoning than disagreements where other mindsets dominate. Other mindsets include liberalism, conservatism, capitalist, secular, White Supremacist (racist), populist, fascist, socialist, kleptocratic, autocratic, oligarchic, and theocratic, e.g., Christian nationalist theocratic.
Q1: Does evidence- and reason-based clear mind politics (with links to info sources) help create mental freedom for people to choose and decide for themselves what they believe, disbelieve or are unsure about, or is it better for people to let ideology, self-identity, tribe loyalty, etc. mostly shape perceptions of reality and reasoning by downplaying facts, truths, and sound reasoning?
Q2: About what % of Americans who engage in politics at least a little will claim that they do not base their politics mostly on facts, robust truths and sound reasoning, and instead they claim their politics is based mostly on lies, deceit, crackpottery, and/or irrational emotional manipulation, ~2%? More? Less?
Some info sources:
National Archives: Powers of Persuasion
Propaganda and the American Public
Motivated Reasoning in Political Judgment
Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts
, definitely supports lots more secrecy)
