Inspired by this edited PizzaCake comic:
I ask repeatedly what sources Trumpsters will accept.
There aren't any.
The data does not exist that can change their minds. They did not logic themselves into these positions and few of them have the mental or emotional resilience to logic themselves out.
This does create an automatic respect deficit for me, because I was able to logic myself out of the cult I was indoctrinated into as a child, which held me with the threat that my beloved late mother would see me burning in hell, yet would still be ecstatically happy in heaven, without the capability to shed a tear for me.
I do not have such a high opinion of my own intelligence or resiliency that I think doing that required anything more than a fundamental commitment to honesty - I do not think I am uniquely special for being able to break cult programming forced upon me from toddlerhood. I honestly believe most human beings are capable of doing the same if they value logic, curiosity, research, and honesty. I have never been able to shake my conviction that anyone intellectually capable of learning can be persuaded by verifiable, consensus-reached facts even at the expense of their own emotional comfort.
Trump and Musk have strained that conviction almost to the breaking point. But I guess logicking out of a cult that one did not decide to join is fundamentally different from logicking out of a con. Realizing you were lied to and acted based on lies may produce a lesser psychic wound that realizing you were swindled or tricked and acted based on a swindle. The emotional stakes of "Someone lied to me before I had the cognitive abilities to tell lies from truth" may be lower than "Someone lied to me as a cognitively normal adult and I went along with their lies instead of trying to figure out if they were lying."
