Impossible Beliefs
I have had two past blog posts making claims that readers could check at first hand, in each case claims that someone on one side of an argument was saying something he knew was untrue. As best I could tell, very nearly nobody on the same side was prepared either to agree with the claim or to offer a rebuttal that I thought a neutral party would have taken seriously.
That people on one side or another of a politically loaded dispute are sometimes willing to lie in support of their side is not surprising. What I found surprising was how unwilling people were to concede that, in this particular case, someone supporting their side was doing so. It was an issue not of consistent beliefs but of loyalty; recognizing that someone on his side had lied did not require any change in his underlying beliefs.
It was the orthodox side of the climate argument that my claims offended. I am now looking for one or more similar cases from the other side, cases where someone arguing for the red tribe/Republican/right wing side of some issue closely linked to tribal identity, not necessarily climate change, said something that could be shown to be false with evidence directly observable by ordinary people and almost nobody on his side was willing to admit it.
The obvious candidate is the claim by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen. The problem with that case is that the evidence that it is false is second hand, primarily through the mass media, so someone sufficiently distrustful of the media can reject it. Are there better examples?
For the curious, here are my posts, including the comment threads:
A Climate Falsehood You Can Check for Yourself
Global Sea-ice, Deceptive Reporting, and Truthful Lies
There were multiple posts on each issue, but I think those two are sufficient to demonstrate the argument and the responses of those who did not wish to believe it.
I am not interested in rearguing those cases here; I already know there are people who reject my arguments. What I am looking for, for something I am currently writing, are new cases on the other side of the current political divide.