Faith Over Evidence

Paul Campos writes a good piece explaining how the Federalist Society works to recruit and "train" young lawyers.  As he explains, it starts by appealing to a certain ambition in young lawyers - an already ambitious group as a rule. You appeal to some high-minded ideals about law and its proper role in society. You define liberal jurisprudence as inherently outside your definition about what is "good law." It's Cleek's Law again. You don't rush right to "libtards bad, conservatives good." You work your ways towards it,

At some point, motivated reasoning takes hold. "I couldn't possibly have been duped into believing that the Federalist Society is just a bunch of amoral hypocrites in the service of great wealth and forced birth. Therefore they don't believe that and liberal justices are trying to undermine the rule of law." Once you've taken up residence in that headspace, it's remarkably hard to exit.

This phenomenon is true for most movements, and yes, it exists left of center, too. The further you move from the center, the more extreme your positions, the most you rely on this motivated reasoning to justify your positions. This is how you get people on the far Left saying it's OK that Ginsburg died, because neoliberal hacks are the same, no matter what their role on gender issues or other issues. The difference between Ginsburg and whoever Trump picks to replace her is marginal when seen from the vantage of true believers. Similarly, on the Right people really do believe QAnon and the Biden will confiscate your guns and kill God and make you gay marry and force you into re-education camps. Whether they really, really believe that or simply accept that it's true because it justifies voting for a manifestly awful human being isn't really relevant.  Some ARE true believers, others are simply pot-committed to this increasingly extreme and deranged political movement currently operating at the Republican Party.

People marvel that self-proclaimed evangelicals are supporting a manifestly un-Christian, immoral cretin, but that's not how they define it. They are committed to the idea that Democrats will make you abort all the white babies so that black and brown babies will take over the country and lesbian school teachers will make the few white babies left hate God. It's an article of faith for them. The fact that they or their kids went to school under Bill Clinton or Barack Obama isn't important. Evidence isn't important. All they need is anecdotes that don't even need to be true.

I think it's pretty clear that 40% of the American people are lost to reason as they seek to justify to themselves the fact that they voted for a conman four years ago. His manifest unfitness for office is simply a lie that their faith cannot admit.

I hope Joe Biden gets this. I'm pretty sure Kamala Harris gets it. Most likely result of November is a Biden win a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate. They will need to add Supreme Court justices if Trump is able to fill Ginsburg's seat. That will be very contentious and tough to read what Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema will do in that situation. There is no reaching across the aisle when the other side of the aisle thinks your outstretched hand has the blood of trafficked children on it. Internalize that.