You Literally Can't Fix Stupid

A couple of months ago, I read this Atlantic article on "The Big Lie" about how you literally can't convince Trump supporters the election isn't rigged.  Because the more you try to explain it, the harder they'll resist.  And sadly they resist the truth based on nothing except personal feelings and what their fuhrer and propaganda network tell them.  Even after millions of dollars and months of "audits" in red states, sponsored and conducted by Republicans even, there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could have changed the election.  And yet most of these people won't budge from thinking it was "rigged."

Unfortunately, this kind of pigheaded gullibility isn't anything new.  During the A to Z Challenge, I read this blog about various conspiracy theories.  You see a lot of the same stuff as "the Big Lie":  the overly complicated stories, the weak evidence that can easily be explained away, the elaborate and utterly impractical coverups necessary, and a stubborn clinging to these lies no matter what.  This applies to "flat Earthers," "the moon landing was fake," various "Oswald didn't kill JFK" theories, and various UFO/alien-related theories.

The worst part is that you simply can NOT get through to these people that it's not true.  Like with "the Big Lie," the more you explain it to them, the more tightly they cling to it.  Which usually isn't a big deal.  I mean, those other theories are mostly harmless.  But the problem is when you get something like January 6th, where a whole bunch of these people try to overthrow the government because of this lie.  Or all the lies about Covid that have caused thousands of people to die, most of them avoidably.

Recent interactions with Tony Laplume have been similar to this.  He airs some grievance and I say I didn't realize that was a problem and apologize.  And then after weeks of silence I get back that he doesn't believe me and I'm only apologizing to get on his good side.  Sigh.  And then he brings up other grievances I don't ever remember happening and of course won't explain when or where they did happen.  Another sigh.  It's really frustrating dealing with people like that because there just seems no way to win.

You can deprogram people who have been part of a cult, but it's a very tricky, time-consuming proposition.  And the problem is it's not really something you can do with thousands of people at a time.  Though they'd probably be gullible enough to believe the government has some secret mass hypnosis ray that can make 81 million of us vote against Trump.  Because it couldn't possibly be that he's terrible, right? [eye roll]

And like with racists saying, "No, you're racist!" these people (many of whom are also probably racists) will say, "I'm not gullible, you're gullible!"  The irony is the "fuck your feelings" crowd clings to these ideas almost entirely because of feelings.  "That election didn't smell right to me."  And I suppose the basic narcissism that there's no way over 80 million people could disagree with you and your god-king Trump.  

Reading about some of these other theories, you can see the lengths people will go to justify their irrational beliefs.  People basically twist their brains into pretzels because for whatever reason this belief becomes like a religion to them.  It's often the opposite of Occam's Razor, where the simplest explanation is usually the right one; for these people the most convoluted explanation is the right one.

I wish I had a conspiracy theory to explain all the conspiracy theories, but I really don't.  Why are some people so susceptible to these?  Why can't they let go of these theories?

You can provide your own theories in the comments if you wish.