I also think a lot of it boils down to a religious mindset. Once you’ve convinced yourself the Earth was created four thousand years ago, you can convince yourself of pretty much anything.

I think it’s little short of a political miracle that he’s managed to convince so many voters that it’s neither constructive nor even possible to hold the party that’s governed America for eight years accountable for what it’s done.

This is, in large part, due to the persecution/Alamo narrative that social conservatives created and studiously tended for decades. The idea that conservatives in general and Republicans in particular are constantly under siege by radicals who wish to tear things down was compelling in the 1960s, when domestic riots and bombings were part of the normal news cycle.

The key though has been to maintain the siege mentality, and to continuously use the language of the harried underdog even when one is in power. It’s resulted in a carefully cultivated sense of grievance as powerful as any “identity politics” liberal’s. My in-laws explained carefully that things were in such a mess now because Democrats were in power. More information isn’t going to change that: it’s a fundamental view of the universe that reality is filtered through, and a percentage of the population will always hold to it.