The notion that you're personally always going to be able to see past propaganda is not giving enough credit to people who are good at propaganda. Everybody who falls for propaganda thinks they're smarter than that. Sure, they can spot the stuff that was meant to take other sorts of people in, but everybody has weaknesses.

But even assuming you could, you really can't do the research on everything. The world's too big. No matter what the topic, we all need filtering heuristics. And you give a really good one:

> Can I understand why they reached a different conclusion than me?

Often the answer is, "Because they were paid to." Or, "Because somebody was paid to amplify wacky outliers." For advertising, PR, and propaganda, all of the actual material can be taken with a grain of salt and the conclusions can be ignored, because the conclusions were foreordained.

As an example, take something you aren't personally well-disposed toward. Say, Q. How much time do you spend reading their ever-metastasizing set of theories and beliefs? How much have you personally refined your beliefs based what you read of theirs?

I'd hope the answer here is approximately zero, because a) it isn't worth your time, and b) there is a non-zero chance that it turns any given reader, yourself included, into a believer. That's the point of most propaganda, after all.