This from OnlySky website. . .

[Collimator]

. . . It's not completely new, but it articulates the issue clearly and succinctly.

For the Trump faithful, it comes down to plot armor.

The writer talks about being engaged with the "reality-based community" (RBC) versus those who put their focus into creating their own realities.

When you’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure out the real world around you, despite your own weaknesses and biases, it’s natural to assume that others are doing the same thing, just really badly.

That’s not what’s happening.

One of the defining features of the human mind is the continuous creation of what research psychologist Dan McAdams calls “narrative identity”—a coherent story into which we can comfortably embed ourselves. That process is inherently subjective. As much as we’d like to think of our senses and minds as faithful recorders of reality, it is never true. Every perception and data point passes through a subjective filter, and our identity emerges from that.

His discussion on "plot armor" really streamlined my grasp of what's at work in some people's minds.

Plot armor is present when you know an important character in a drama will survive a dangerous situation because they are needed for the plot to continue.

My son discovered this phenomenon at age nine, watching a lightsaber duel in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. “I hate these fights,” he said. “You know the good guy is going to win.” Maybe it’ll be magic, or luck, or the sudden appearance of the cavalry, or a bending of the laws of physics. One way or another, the necessary good guy will live.

That’s plot armor.

From the reality-based POV, it is beyond bizarre that 80% of white Evangelicals support Trump. But once you grasp narrative identity, it makes perfect sense. They are a people born and bred on the creation of preferred narratives that disregard inconvenient realities, narratives in which they are the good guys and they win. The reason Jesus couldn’t stay dead is the same reason Trump’s support will never drop below a certain floor: both are needed on set for the plot to continue to the cathartic fourth act.

Happy to recommend this article.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. This guy is worth reading.

[erronis]

2. Thanks for the link. It seems also a bit of the frogs in boiling water syndrome.

While the first acceptance of someone like trump and his ridiculous persona was a bit "out there", the more deranged he became the more the followers needed to accept his persona.

I'm sure that happened with many other cults in the past. Jonesville, the Crusades, Waco, holy wars between same groups.

[fpublic]

3. Nomination: This should be a Greatest Thread

The linked article explains so much of how the reality based community has missed/refuses to see the point.

Here is the point: [This is the crucial realization: Trump supporters are not trying to get it right. … They are trying to finish a story in which they are the good guys and they win.]

When we see the truth of this, we can stop wasting our time on DU posts listing clever arguments to make with MAGA. Instead, we have to act in concert to make sure that the Republican Party is utterly destroyed by the vote.

[Earth-shine]

4. We're not going to be able to destroy or convert them. We must simply outnumber them.

They were there before Trump, and they will be there long after he's gone.

MAGA is morphing into other things like militias and Q-anon. They are only temporarily attached to Trump.

[OldBaldy1701E]

5. In other words, they are delusional. (n/t)