XPost: alt.atheism.satire   
   From: X@Y.com   
      
   Ideas   
   The Motivated Ignorance of Trump Supporters   
      
   They can’t claim they didn’t know.   
   By Peter Wehner   
      
   On the morning of August 8, 2022, 30 FBI agents and two federal prosecutors   
   conducted a court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Palm   
   Beach, Florida, estate. The reason for the search, according to a 38-count   
   indictment, was that after leaving office Trump mishandled classified   
   documents, including some involving sensitive nuclear programs, and then   
   obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim them.   
   On the day before the FBI obtained the search warrant, one of the agents on   
   the case sent an email to his bosses, according to The New York Times. “The   
   F.B.I. intends for the execution of the warrant to be handled in a   
   professional, low key manner,” he wrote, “and to be mindful of the optics   
   of the search.” It was, and they were.   
   Over the course of 10 hours, the Times reported, “there was little drama as   
   [agents] hauled away a trove of boxes containing highly sensitive state   
   secrets in three vans and a rented Ryder box truck.”   
   On the day of the search, Trump was out of the state. The club at Mar-a-   
   Lago was closed. Agents alerted one of Trump’s lawyers in advance of the   
   search. And before the search, the FBI communicated with the Secret Service   
   “to make sure we could get into Mar-a-Lago with no issues,” according to   
   the testimony of former Assistant FBI Director Steven D’Antuono. It wasn’t   
   a “show of force,” he said. “I was adamant about that, and that was   
   something we all agreed on.”   
   The search warrant itself included a standard statement from the Department   
   of Justice’s policy on the use of deadly force. There was nothing   
   exceptional about it. But that didn’t prevent Trump or his supporters from   
   claiming that President Joe Biden and federal law-enforcement agents had   
   been involved in a plot to assassinate the former president.   
   In a fundraising appeal, Trump wrote,   
   BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME! It’s just been revealed that   
   Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in   
   Mar-a-Lago. You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden   
   was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.   
   On May 23, Trump publicly claimed that the Department of Justice   
   “authorized the use of ‘deadly force’ in their Illegal, UnConstitutional,   
   and Un-American RAID of Mar-a-Lago, and that would include against our   
   Great Secret Service, who they thought might be ‘in the line of fire.’”   
   Read: The two-time Trump voters who have had enough   
   Trump supporters echoed those claims, as he knew they would. Steve Bannon,   
   one of the architects of the MAGA movement, said, “This was an attempted   
   assassination attempt on Donald John Trump or people associated with him.   
   They wanted a gunfight.” Right-wing radio hosts stoked one another’s fury,   
   claiming that there’s nothing Trump critics won’t do to stop him, up to and   
   including attempting to assassinate him and putting the lives of his Secret   
   Service detail in danger.   
   The statement by Trump went beyond inflaming his supporters; it created a   
   mindset that moved them closer to violence, the very same mindset that led   
   thousands of them to attack the Capitol on January 6 and threaten to hang   
   Vice President Mike Pence. Which is why Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a   
   motion asking the judge overseeing Trump’s classified-documents case to   
   block him from making public statements that could put law enforcement in   
   danger. “Those deceptive and inflammatory assertions irresponsibly put a   
   target on the backs of the FBI agents involved in this case, as Trump well   
   knows,” he wrote.   
   Motivated ignorance refers to willfully blinding oneself to facts. It’s   
   choosing not to know. In many cases, for many people, knowing the truth is   
   simply too costly, too psychologically painful, too threatening to their   
   core identity. Nescience is therefore incentivized; people actively decide   
   to remain in a state of ignorance. If they are presented with strong   
   arguments against a position they hold, or compelling evidence that   
   disproves the narrative they embrace, they will reject them. Doing so fends   
   off the psychological distress of the realization that they’ve been lying   
   to themselves and to others.   
   Recommended Reading   
      
       A man and a woman carrying a box together.   
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   man's mother, who is wearing a dramatic mask   
   Dear Therapist: My Boyfriend’s Mother Is Narcissistic and Mean   
   Lori Gottlieb   
   Motivated ignorance is a widespread phenomenon; most people, to one degree   
   or another, employ it. What matters is the degree to which one embraces it,   
   and the consequences of doing so. In the case of MAGA world, the lies that   
   Trump supporters believe, or say they believe, are obviously untrue and   
   obviously destructive. Since 2016 there’s been a ratchet effect, each   
   conspiracy theory getting more preposterous and more malicious. Things that   
   Trump supporters wouldn’t believe or accept in the past have since become   
   loyalty tests. Election denialism is one example. The claim that Trump is   
   the target of “lawfare,” victim to the weaponization of the justice system,   
   is another.   
   I have struggled to understand how to view individuals who have not just   
   voted for Trump but who celebrate him, who don’t merely tolerate him but   
   who constantly defend his lawlessness and undisguised cruelty. How should I   
   think about people who, in other domains of their lives, are admirable   
   human beings and yet provide oxygen to his malicious movement? How   
   complicit are people who live in an epistemic hall of mirrors and have   
   sincerely—or half-sincerely—convinced themselves they are on the side of   
   the angels?   
   Throughout my career I’ve tried to resist the temptation to make   
   unwarranted judgments about the character of people based on their   
   political views. For one thing, it’s quite possible my views on politics   
   are misguided or distorted, so I exercise a degree of humility in assessing   
   the views of others. For another, I know full well that politics forms only   
   a part of our lives, and not the most important part. People can be   
   personally upstanding and still be wrong on politics.   
   But something has changed for me in the Trump era. I struggle more than I   
   once did to wall off a person’s character from their politics when their   
   politics is binding them to an unusually—and I would say   
   undeniably—destructive person. The lies that MAGA world parrots are so   
   manifestly untrue, and the Trump ethic is so manifestly cruel, that they   
   are difficult to set aside.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)