Well… yeah. I thonk it’s fairly self-evident that individuals have different threaholds for suspension of disbelief, and that the thresholds even vary between subjects with a given individual (for example, it’s harder to maintain suspension of disbelief relative to an area in which one has expertise).

But that’s not really relevant - I just included “acceptably” to be more precise and accurate.

The relevant part is the core idea that the mechanism by which at least some seemingly rational people support blitheringly insane and factually unsupportable political views is not really some combination of prejudices and biases by which they convince themselves of the nominal truth and correspondence to reality of their beliefs, but by engaging in suspension of disbelief - by entirely switching off the parts of their brain that measure truth and correspondence with reality, just as I do when I read a novel or watch a movie.

I certainly don’t know that to be the case, but it’s a fascinating possibility

…there might well be something to that.

Yes - exactly as you say, research needs to be done on suspension of disbelief.

And thanks for sharing that fascinating idea.

Not quite.

Suspension of disbelief refers to the act of essentially switching off the parts of ones mind that check for truth and reality, and simply following a narrative on its own terms, whatever they might be.

It’s not that truth or reality are unnecessary under suspension of disbelief - they aren’t even relevant.

I think this is a fascinating idea.

And I just tried to explain it to a friend and she didn’t get it, then I came back to the thread to find respondents who didn’t get it in the same way she didn’t.

She kept trying to warp it into something like confirmation bias, even though I kept trying to get her to see that the significant thing about suspension of disbelief is that truth and reality don’t even enter into it - they aren’t even meaningful concepts.

The only thing that’s necessary when disbelief is suspended is that the narrative remain acceptably internally consistent. Whether itt true or not or corresponds with reality or not is entirely irrelevant, since the entire process of expectng and testing for those qualities has been set aside.

Again, that’s a fascinating idea. I’ve long suspected that Trump is unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood, but that that was a consequence of his narcissism and egotism - that effectively the only measure he has for truth or falsehood is whether he believes something to be true or not - that the concept of consensual reality isn’t even coherent in his entirely self-absorbed internal reality.

But I’ve long wondered how the at least somewhat more sane people following him manage it. Something like confirmation bias would only work up to a point that Trump has long since gone beyond.

And I think you might be on to something - just as I do when I sit down to read a novel or watch a movie or a series, when they start engaging in politics, they switch the parts of their brains that track truth and reality entirely off and instead just follow along with the narrative, whatever it might be.

Let’s do a thought experiment here.

Pretend that the answer is no - they do not have that right.

Okay - now what? If they don’t have the right to do that, then that means… what exactly? Are they to be arrested if they try? Are you somehow granted the right to kill them if they try? Is there any reasonable method by which they can actually be denied that right?

Yes - all people have a right to feel however they feel and to voice their feelings. Or more precisely, nobody can possibly have the right to stop them.

The thing they don’t have a right to is your attention, concern, sympathy etc. You’re entirely free to grant or withhold those things as you prefer.

Republicans can’t win free and fair elections so they’re trying to eliminate free and fair elections.

Even stronger faith I’d say, since billionaires aren’t actively conspiring with politicians to keep you out of heaven.

It would almost be better of Trump was a conscious agent deliberately working for the benefit of China, but he’s just an angry, petulant, bigoted moron whose rage and greed and stupidity have pretty much guaranteed that China is going to lead the world in pretty much everything in the coming years while the US clings increasingly desperately to a mostly illusory past.

I think it’s mostly pavlovian.

It’s not that they follow some chain of reasoning to arrive at opposition to bike infrastructure, but that the mere idea triggers anger, and the position follows the mindless emotional response

See also: pretty much everything that they consider “woke.”

Seriously - how long are people going to keep pretending that Trump is sane?

In an administration stuffed to the gills with dangerous lunatics, Miller stands out on both counts.

He’s clearly a full-blown psychopath, and an existential threat to the US and the world. He doesn’t just need to be removed from power - he needs to be committed.

That makes more sense

Huh… so Russia is coming to the rescue of ICE…

He needs a 5150.

Reminder that the President of the United States is profoundly mentally ill

I’ll go one better - if the DNC hadn’t interfered and fucked us over, the people would have elected Sanders in 2016 and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

Actually, we got fascism by constantly moving towards it over a span of at least 60 years, with the only difference being that we sometimes moved more quickly towards it and sometimes more slowly.

We moved towards it under Biden too, and would’ve continued moving towards it under either him or Harris.

The only thing that’s notable about Trump as far as that goes is how much he moved us and how quickly. But this was always the destination.

The only way we could’ve moved away from fascism rather than towards it would’ve been to elect federal politicians who were actually good instead of just less bad. But we not only haven’t been given that choice, but have been indoctrinated into treating less bad as a virtue

No shit?

This, to me, is the most significant and most bizarre fact about the current era - the President of the United States is rather obviously deeply and profoundly mentally ill.

And what you just described is the exact process by which governments descend into tyranny.

The much better way to deal with the issue, if you actually do care about your fellow humans, is to refuse to support a toxic candidate even if they are somewhat less toxic than the alternative, and make sure at every single turn that the blame is placed squarely where it should be - on the foul, loathsome, corrupt and compromised scumbags who arranged for the nomination of a toxic piece of shit candidate in the first place.

Less bad is still bad. If you settle for less bad, the best you’ll ever get is that things woll potentially get worse somewhat more slowly than they would otherwise. They’ll still inevitably get worse.

If you want things to actually get better, then you have to hold the scumbags’ feet to the fire. You have to make sure that it’s widely understood that they and they alone are the reason that the best we can hope for is somewhat less bad and things getting worse somewhat more slowly. And you can’t do that by meekly going along with them.

I really think that, from Trump on down, they sincerely just don’t have the emotional maturity to act any differently.