I hang out in Quora. This question was asked there, and I thought this answer was inciteful.
https://qr.ae/pNUZEd
This does sound rather much like Trump’s core support, doesn’t it?
I try to recognize when facts prove my beliefs wrong, and admit it, and change my beliefs to conform. It’s not always easy, and I’m not always gracious in admitting my error, so I understand how some people would rather double-down than change. But the notion that some might actually be worried about losing friends over that change — the feeling of being rejected by a close group — wasn’t something I’d ever thought of.
It doesn’t bode well for my country, sigh. Hard to see how we can unite against, say, a pandemic, or income inequality, when we don’t all believe our elections are valid?
https://qr.ae/pNUZEd
Quora said:There’s a very poignant scene in the documentary about the Flat Earth community, “Behind the Curve”.
The documentarians at one point ask the Flat Earthers what they would do if it turned out that the earth wasn’t flat, or if they came to believe that the Earth wasn’t flat. I can’t remember which, but either way, their responses are extremely telling, because they don’t simply dismiss the notion out of hand. They don’t laugh and say “yeah, right, as if”.
What they do is, they mention how they would lose all their friends.
This happens in the film with two different individuals independently.
This is particularly poignant because earlier in the documentary, the Flat Earthers mention how a lot of them lost all their friends when they became involved in the Flat Earth community. (They then made new Flat Earth friends.)
Why did they lose their first set of friends? What was it about their beliefs that was incompatible with maintaining friendships?
Well, it’s not actually about the shape of the earth. Just look at what the Flat Earth community actually believes. The core tenet of the Flat Earth worldview is that people are not just wrong about the shape of the earth, but that there is in fact a malicious cabal attempting to suppress the truth.
Without that belief in a shadowy malicious cabal, the whole worldview falls apart.
Vast chunks of Donald Trump’s base are exactly the same way. Their worldview is founded on the belief in a shadowy malicious cabal, whom they expect to oppose them. The belief in the cabal comes first, and everything else, the Trump support, etc., comes second.
There is no person who could, from the top down, tell Trump’s base to stop believing in this malicious cabal of shadow-people, because any attempt to do so would only confirm their belief that the cabal is trying to stop them from believing in it, so that it can stay in the shadows and do its dirty work.
If Donald Trump conceded the election like a normal person, said he trusted the results, said there was no fraud, it's all legit, and he lost fair and square, his base would treat this as a sign that Donald Trump has been swayed by the malicious shadow-cabal. That would, in their view, be a tragedy.
But they would not take it as a sign that their whole worldview has always been wrong.
This does sound rather much like Trump’s core support, doesn’t it?
I try to recognize when facts prove my beliefs wrong, and admit it, and change my beliefs to conform. It’s not always easy, and I’m not always gracious in admitting my error, so I understand how some people would rather double-down than change. But the notion that some might actually be worried about losing friends over that change — the feeling of being rejected by a close group — wasn’t something I’d ever thought of.
It doesn’t bode well for my country, sigh. Hard to see how we can unite against, say, a pandemic, or income inequality, when we don’t all believe our elections are valid?