Today I saw a dirty pickup truck with a huge TRUMP: Make America Great Again flag flying in the truckbed. I laughed, and my first thought was that this was a guy who doubling down on stupidity. I know that there are some honest Trump supporters out there, who genuinely believe he is standing up for America or bringing back some kind of greatness, who voted for him with a real hope that things would change (or more likely, return to what they imagined the past to be).
But what happens when you continue to believe in something, long after it's been shown to be a lie? There's something within our human nature that even as the evidence comes out, some people won't believe it. The old joke about how Trump could kill somebody on 5th Avenue and his supporters would still back him is becoming more and more true. We tend to confirm what it is that we believe, even when it is certainly not true.
Many years ago I served on a jury in which a man was charged with aggravated assault. It became clear early on in the trial that the prosecution had nothing;. The story was basically denied by the initial accuser, the prosecutor didn't really press things, and most of us went into the jury room convinced that there was nothing there. But one juror, a woman, was absolutely convinced he was guilty. Maybe it was because the defendant was black and the jury was all white, but she wanted him guilty. It took us awhile, but finally she changed her vote, if not her mind. What was obvious to the rest of us was almost impossible to convince her of.
I remember seeing that Nixon still had a 25% approval rating even as he was resigning. There are some diehards who could walk on the moon and think that the moon landing was a fake. And some will believe that 'no, really, h'e's a good person, I know it!' even as a guy is going back to jail for the 9th time. We double down on our delusions more than our stupidity, I guess. Hopefully it won't destroy us in the end.
