Practical considerations are also the self-interest of a certain class with caste dynamics. Let's at least have the honesty of acknowledging self-interested politics is not so much an innocent ignorance but a cultivated ignorance. Ignorance as its own epistemology, etc. https://twitter.com/nuts2406/status/1300683647729635328

And I don't ever buy this "stories are fed to them." I don't buy simplistic media effects arguments -- nobody is a passive recipient of media messages. There are active caste/race, class, gender consciousnesses that enable certain kinds of engagement with the media.

If you think I'm mistaken look up the debunking of the magic bullet/hypodermic needle hypothesis (the actual name, lol). Media effects research for political messaging is a vast body of work that time & again proves people's responses to politicians are messy & complex.

From just the Wiki page on the magic bullet model.

Basically, don't be so quick to absolve our parents of their ignorance or justify their ignorance as media propaganda. There are a number of ways the Brahmin-savarna middle class operates to keep itself ignorant. We have to do the work, undoubtedly. But so do they.