First, let's acknowledge that while Ethan's post didn't call any person or group in particular, it was written about the abject foolishness most often exhibited by the political right. Second, while you may not believe this when you read what follows, I am not a Democrat or a liberal, unless of course, that is a label applied to anyone who insists of facts in order to make decisions.I have no political ax to grind.
Politics in particular is dominated by the Dunning-Kruger effect as political pundits opine from the peak of mount stupid. People with little real expertise form strongly held opinions based on the propaganda extolled by powerful financial interests manipulating their cadre. They even form self-reinforcing circles of nonsense supported by dubious website claims or the equally uninformed opinions of their buddies.
And while the political left with its online PC lynch mobs are little better, the political right is more prone to this effect because such a high percentage of them are religious. Religious faith is a fervent wish for something to be true. People are willing to believe in the absence of evidence because they want to believe. They feel free to believe whatever they want, and learn to accept whatever they are told. While this works in religion where the beliefs are rooted in desire and not contradicted by actual evidence, it is a complete fail in politics where facts and evidence matter.
People who believe whatever they want to believe, coupled with the assurance of an ignorant echo chamber, provides them a certainty that is unwarranted. Worse yet, they are often certain about issues where they are completely mistaken and actually causing harm, with the resistance to deal with global warming mentioned in this post being a classic example.
As another example of how bad this has become on the political right, they criticize Facebook and Twitter for putting disclaimers on their posts when they are in fact, nonsense. The political right abandoned spinning facts and embraced simply making it up, often completely counter to actual facts. Now they are flocking to Parler where they can expound their non-stop bullshit without anyone pointing out the fact that they are spouting nonsense. The desire to believe what they want to believe is very strong.
Further, I see no evidence this is changing. If anything, people are hardening their views due to peer pressure from others in their cadre. Now that the political right is completely unmoored by fact, they can convince the faithful whatever they want. It used to be that the two political parties shared a common set of facts and debated over what to do about it. Now, we don't even share the same facts because the right has done away with the need for facts altogether.
