[clairity]

everyone supports things they don’t necessarily believe is ‘truth’. it’s why political discussions are often tiresome and distracting. they posit that one side believes a falsehood (like the election was stolen, masks will save the world, or qanon anything) and then argues about that incessantly, rather than understanding the underlying emotions and motivations and then having conversations based on those understandings.

for instance people insist the election was stolen, not because they literally know it to be true, but rather because the outcome, that democrats control national politics, is somehow unacceptable. a productive discussion would start here, with why that’s unacceptable, not quibbling over whether the election was actually stolen or not (it wasn’t).

[amanaplanacanal]

My sense is that there are a lot of people who literally believe the election was stolen. I don’t know how we could tell if people believe what they are saying.

[clairity]

then you may want to talk to those people more intimately rather than simply accepting projected puffery. part of the deception is baiting you into an unwinnable (because you’re beyond reason at that point) non-sequitur rather than exposing their soft underbelly of emotional vulnerability. the vast majority of people are neither evil geniuses nor naive morons, but people trying to get by and getting a fair shake at that.

also, those false projections are 99.9% of the content on twitter, facebook, etc.