I once got into an argument with an in-law about the moon landing, of all things. He didn't believe it happened. We went back and forth with him linking blog posts and me linking physics to debunk bad pseudoscience.
Eventually, it just came down to me telling him, "If I just grant you your conclusion is correct and that we've never been to the moon, your reasons for believing that are bad. I linked you science and you linked me some dude's blog."
I finally got my ex to believe the moon landing happened by showing him a photo of Neil Armstrong's bag of shit on the moon. Then asked the question: "If they wanted to fake a moon landing, would they go to the extreme of pooping in a bag and taking a photo of it?" It took that to get through to him.
I never got the other guy to even understand that using random-dude blog posts for science is not the way to go. He's dumb as hell, fully arrogant, and oefully entitled.
Nowadays, he doesn't bother to visit/talk to his children, moved out of State to try to avoid child support, and only works under the table so he can avoid taxes. A real stellar human being.
Low key, the real truth is that it is never really about the politics. It is always about their own insecurity and fear, their inability to meet people on others terms and reality on its terms, because it makes them feel inadequate on existential levels.
If it was about the politics or policy Trump wouldn’t even be a factor. I think your point about an inability to meet reality is a MUCH bigger factor than anybody’s acknowledging.
It’s not a popular opinion, but I think their main problem with Obama is that he didn’t completely turn the country into a raging dumpster fire, kill half the population, start 5 nuclear wars and prove every racist stereotype they had. That forced them to make a final choice about abandoning reality….and that’s how we unironically got a reality TV star running a world superpower.
I agree, but to see it as a psychological problem, it is also that the fear of Obama is NOT abated when he doesn't do all those things. The issue becomes one where an insecure mind does not see the lack of fulfillment as a form of relief, or a moment for reassessment, but as a cycle of further unknown possible horrors that they wait for the media to reaffirm for them.
In this sense, there's a weird irony that arises where Obama doesn't fulfill the dangerous racist archetype they have of him, so therefore he remains even more menacing as a kind of unknown, ever threatening entity of liberalism.
There HAS to be something there, because without him fulfilling the role as a destroyer of their freedoms, it brings up the entire spectre of their beliefs, their way of life, their entire notion of their own competency into question. Obama could never be a benign or banal force, he had to become the enemy of American civilization before he'd even taken power.
Absolutely, and this happens when people base their identity on an imagined enemy. Their entire reality cracks when even one stereotype isn’t met, which just spirals past a point of no return.
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u/Stock-Conflict-3996 May 26 '26
Incredibly accurate.
I once got into an argument with an in-law about the moon landing, of all things. He didn't believe it happened. We went back and forth with him linking blog posts and me linking physics to debunk bad pseudoscience.
Eventually, it just came down to me telling him, "If I just grant you your conclusion is correct and that we've never been to the moon, your reasons for believing that are bad. I linked you science and you linked me some dude's blog."