Something In The Air

 Some years ago, I was having a lengthy discussion with my neurologist back in Portland and we discovered during the course of this discussion that we both had an autistic son. As we switched to sharing about that subject, the doctor expressed his suspicion that autism might arise from environmental factors--something in the air, something that affects and alters brain chemistry. 

Taking this idea up from there, I will suggest that something in the air has affected the brains of millions of people, twisting and scrambling intellectual processes to the point that people now believe that attacking the nation's capital, killing or injuring police officers, threatening the lives of government officials somehow constitute appropriate actions. How else to explain, for instance, the unshakeable belief that there was massive fraud in the presidential election when all the evidence in the world shows that there most definitely was not? How to explain the mistaking of terrorism for patriotism? How to explain the wild QAnon theory that evil Democrats are abducting, abusing, and murdering children? Oh, and then eating them.

The problem is not a difference of political viewpoints. The problem is mass insanity. 

I know from my own experience with my son that he could not be 'reasoned' out of his false reasonings. They were carved in stone, quite impregnable to analysis and correction. For lack of any better explanation, 'something in the air' had altered his mental processes irredeemably. One could talk himself blue in the face and make not a single dent in his faith, which unfortunately was invested in notions that were wholly without logical foundation.

In the same way, these Trump fanatics cannot be reasoned out of their delusions. For them, there is no truth that is not a lie, no proof that is not a hoax, no careful explanation that is not a waste of their time. And of course the irony is that every bit of what they are embracing is itself the lie, the hoax, the conspiracy. Indeed, at bottom it is not their fault. They have fallen prey to something in the air.