This is a fascinating thread from @AmandaMarcotte which asks the question "Does anyone really believe Acosta did something wrong?" And I have to admit after all this time I still don't understand the psychology of MAGA world to answer with any confidence.
Everything Amanda says in that thread has been my standard opinion on the subject for quite a while: That everyone in American politics is to some extent a bad TV trial lawyer, willing to argue anything with fake sincerity to score points for their side. Now I'm not so sure.
Maybe there is something psychological happening in which a lot of people are internalizing the bullshit. Or maybe in a culture with no tether to objective truth, in which it is difficult to separate reality from its own image, a nation of wrestling fans stopped valuing truth.
Or maybe better to say they stopped valuing non-fiction over fiction...That without any confidence over what is "real," in a bewildering landscape of contradictions, the only reliable meanings are those which can be extracted from narratives. We become a nation of fairy tales.
And you can't fight a fairy tale with an encyclopedia.
