Why People Keep Believing Stupid Things (Like Trump and RFK Jr Will Save Them)

The human brain is a shifty and stubborn little bastard.

As an Italian-Australian, it would be convenient for me to embrace the belief that people of Italian descent are inherently awesome, superior beings. Such a belief would allow me to feel special, and hey, we all love to feel special.

However, to maintain that belief, I'd have to perform extensive mental gymnastics.

I’d have to shape the evidence to suit my belief.

I'd have to ignore the numerous Italians I've encountered over the years who were low-quality people. Or I'd have to create rationalizations to explain away their poor character, like "oh, they must be only half Italian".

Which would require further rationalizations to explain away the folks I've met who only had one Italian parent and were great people.

And of course, I'd have to ignore all the non-Italians I've met over the years who proved themselves to be awesome folks.

If people asked me why most of the women I’ve dated were not Italian, or why a decent chunk of my social circle was comprised of non-Italians, I'd have to come up with some excuse like, "oh, they're exceptions. They're the good non-Italians!"

Or I'd insist these folks were okay because they’d all converted to Italianism during a ceremony in which they were bathed in a tub of San Pellegrino, anointed on the forehead with Galliano, and had the prancing horse logo tattooed on their butt while a priest made the sign of the cross and solemnly recited, "Nel nome del Padre, del Figlio, e Enzo Ferrari."

If someone confronted me with names like Mussolini, Fauci, Pelosi, Cuomo and Snooki, I’d uncomfortably squirm in my chair, before exclaiming, “Did someone say KFC?”

To intimidate critics of my supremacist beliefs, I would reflexively and most hypocritically pull the racism card. I'd shout down my critics as "Anti-Italianites", form an organization called the Anti-Diffamazione League, and complain about victimization and how my right to self-determination was being suppressed by terrorists.

If other Italians criticized my supremacist doctrine, I’d conveniently dismiss them as “self-loathing”.

As you can see, maintaining such a belief would require a lot of cognitive chicanery. On the surface, it would seem much easier and less time-consuming to simply acknowledge that every ethnicity or nationality has its mix of great, mediocre and awful people - including Italians. Because when you open your eyes and ears, and pay attention to what you actually see and hear, that’s what the evidence overwhelmingly tells you.

But humans are anything but straightforward.

The above supremacist scenario may sound ridiculous, but it reflects the mental evasions and contortions employed by racists and supremacists all around the world, every day.

But it’s not just racists/supremacists whose minds twist and contort to a degree that would make an Olympic gymnast look stiff.

People are Open to Confirming What they Already Believe

People love to talk about keeping an open mind, but the reality is most people are only open to evidence confirming what they already believe.

It's a scientifically-demonstrated fact that, when confronted with evidence refuting their tightly-held beliefs, people's brains go into overdrive in order to rationalize away the new information and instead maintain their ideological status quo.

During the 2004 US Presidential election, Emory University researchers used functional neuroimaging to study the neural responses of thirty committed partisans presented with negative information about both their preferred and opposition candidates.

The purpose of the study was to observe "how partisan brains reasoned" during the highly polarized 2004 election.

The answer?

They didn’t.

When presented with negative evidence about the opposition candidate, the brain circuitry of Democrats and Republicans remained calm.

However, when confronted with compelling negative evidence about their own candidate, the brains of Democrats and Republicans registered conflict and distress. Brain circuits charged with regulating emotion and dealing with conflict lit up the researchers’ computer screens "like the Fourth of July, firing rockets into reason until our partisans had arrived at emotionally comfortable conclusions.”

In other words, the participant’s brains had little problem handling negative information about the opposition party candidate, but started freaking out when faced with negative information about their favored candidate. Their brains didn’t return to a less frantic state until they'd found a way to distort and rationalize the negative information in a way that comfortably co-existed with their belief in the superiority of their own candidate.

Sound familiar, oh Trump and RFK Jr fans?

For those too young to know or remember, the 2004 election was contested by two highly deficient characters: Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry.

Bush was a semi-literate halfwit who, prior to his political escapades, ran a series of oil ventures into the ground while being propped up by investors who knew throwing money at the Bush name would later pay dividends. Thanks to his family connections, he successfully dodged the Vietnam war draft, yet as President had no qualms about sending other people’s kids off to participate in wars launched on false pretenses. The post-911 “War on Terror” he started led to an unprecedented reign of allied terror, and obscene profits for the military-industrial complex. An estimated $8 trillion was spent and over 900,000 people killed during the first 20 years of the war. Civilians bore the brunt of the devastation, suffering over 400,000 deaths.

Kerry, like Bush, was born into a life of wealth and privilege, and had little in common with the average schmuck voting for him. A textbook classic globalist puppet who preaches the fraudulent climate change gospel, he would later serve as Biden’s “special envoy for climate”. In 2014, Kerry parroted the one-sided narrative that holds Palestinians and Hamas as solely responsible for the Israel-Palestine conflict, and dismissed claims that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza as “rhetoric that we’ve heard many, many times.” In 2016, Kerry argued “forcefully” for US support of the Saudi Arabian-led military intervention in Yemen, which proceeded into a full-blown humanitarian disaster.

In other words, Bush and Kerry were awful human beings whose actions have caused untold misery to millions. Hardly the kind of people you would cognitively bend over backwards in order to defend.

Yet that’s exactly what hordes of people did. They vociferously argued why their preferred silver-spooned megalomaniac was better than the other, the equivalent of rabidly arguing why a bucket of puke is better than a tub of shit.

The most rational response to negative information about both of these cretins would’ve been:

“Hello?!? Of course they’re both lying muppets! What did you expect? No-one makes it to that level of politics by being an ethical, honest, decent human being. The whole two-party charade is a puppet show designed to distract, obfuscate and polarize.”

How voting really works.

People are tribal creatures. We are programmed to pick a side. Once we pick a tribe, or are born into one, we go along with the crowd in order to maintain our sense of belonging and security.

People also build up a system of beliefs that help them navigate what can often be a scary and confusing world. Most of these beliefs are adopted with little if any critical analysis, because humans have limited time to gather information. We can’t possibly research the validity behind everything we are told and every decision we make, because we simply wouldn’t have enough time.

That’s why we often trust the word of ‘experts’.

In the Stone Age, the experts were our tribal leaders and elders. When they told us not to eat a certain plant because it would make us sick, or to stay quiet and hidden when we spotted a predator with sharp claws and fangs, they were giving sound advice. Evolution favored the survival of those who listened to the experts.

What was a survival advantage in prehistoric times has now become a huge detriment to humanity. Nowadays, most prominent ‘experts’ are in fact no such thing. In reality, they are often dishonest, incompetent, financially conflicted, and harboring a hidden agenda.

Yet most people still listen to them. Because that’s what they’re programmed to do.

Comically, even the most brainwashed people think their beliefs were acquired as a result of their own cognizance. When those beliefs are challenged, a part of them will feel unsettled and threatened. No-one wants to feel like they’re not as smart as they thought they were. Reassessing tightly-held beliefs takes strength of character and effort; many people lack the former and avoid the latter wherever possible.

Learning that you may be wrong on something you previously took for granted is discomforting. In contrast, receiving information that supports what you already believe is comforting, provides welcome validation, and a soothing hit of dopamine.

Our tribal evolution and our reluctance to let go of preexisting beliefs, even in the face of compelling counterevidence, has resulted in a number of highly undesirable outcomes.

Where people once followed the elders and leaders of a tribe in a relatively simple world, they now look to authorities and ‘experts’ for guidance in an increasingly complex, confusing and chaotic world.

Humans are social creatures who once solved problems collectively. However, numerous factors - including intentional erosion of the nuclear family unit, feminism, the fanning of racial/political/gender division, the media/music industry glorification of self-absorbed hedonism - are destroying our social fabric and have greatly diminished our sense of community. The resultant masses of lonely, divided people are easier to control.

FACT: This erosion in our social fabric has continued steadily under both “liberal” and “conservative” rule.

FACT: The size of that wasteful, intrusive beast known as government has increased steadily under both “liberal” and “conservative” rule.

FACT: Despite the enviable advantage of possessing the world’s de facto trade currency, national debt in the United States of America has grown steadily under both “liberal” and “conservative” rule.

FACT: The two biggest attacks on civil liberties in recent history were the 9/11 and COVID psy-ops. Both occurred under “conservative” presidents. Despite this, the absurd myth that conservative parties favor individual liberties persists.

Because people have evolved to believe in authority, they have an extremely hard time accepting the above realities.

If, as you’re reading this, you’re already trying to explain away the above inconvenient facts … STOP.

You’re doing exactly what the hopelessly biased partisans in the Emory University study did.

You have a hopium problem, and it’s time you started dealing with it. Not like an unthinking tribalist, but a grown-ass adult who has unprecedented access to knowledge available at his/her fingertips.

It’s time to wean yourself off the repeatedly disproved notion that someone will come along to save you.

Decades of irrefutable evidence shows both sides of politics are hopelessly corrupt, compromised and controlled by higher forces.

Pull your head out of your posterior and acknowledge that irrefutable evidence.

In times gone by, people like Trump and RFK Jr would be readily identified as dirt bags. Even in modern times, if they weren’t born into lives of privilege and heavily marketed as freedom-loving mavericks, they’d be dismissed by many of their followers as degenerate assholes.

In a sane world, if you said…

“My ideal presidential candidate is someone who almost blew the vast real estate empire he inherited from his father; filed for corporate bankruptcy a whopping six times; was great friends with Jeffrey Epstein until they fell out over a real estate deal; gave a top Federal job to the same guy who gave Epstein a sweetheart deal after his first conviction; cheated on every wife he’s ever had; talks about his own daughter like he secretly wants to screw her; boasts to reporters about indecently assaulting women; made a big deal about ceasing funding for the WHO while simultaneously giving $1.6 billion of taxpayer money to Bill and Melinda Gates’ GAVI; launched a mass-murder campaign called Operation Warp Speed and still praises the deadly gene therapies to this day; and is clearly controlled by extremely wealthy people whose primary allegiance lies with a foreign country!”

…you’d be laughed out of town. Or maybe hospitalized and assessed for mental illness.

In a sane world, if you said…

“My ideal candidate to head the highest health office in the land would be a lying, philandering, two-faced sleaze! Someone who was a heroin addict and lured his brother into ultimately fatal drug addiction; who cheated on every wife he ever had, including his current one. I would want this guy to be the kind of self-absorbed, irresponsible turd who, despite her tenuous mental health, blamed one of his wives for his infidelity, until she committed suicide (at least that’s the official cause of death).

I would further like this guy to be the kind of spoiled psychopath that audaciously calls Palestinians “pampered”. I’d like him to be an ex-lawyer who blames innocent people for murder in order to shift blame from his own client. I’d like him to take over a non-profit organization, rename it, and turn it into a lucrative wealth-creation vehicle, under the guise of anti-vaccine activism. I’d like him to become known as an ‘anti-vaxxer,’ only to leave true health freedom fighters high and dry when he vigorously sings the praises of vaccines before and after his nomination is confirmed. This guy would prove beyond all doubt he is just another prostitute on a puppet string. Yep, that’s the kind of guy I’d like to see endowed with the job of Making America Healthy Again!”

…people would think you’re freaking nuts.

Sorry folks, but with characters like these, “wait and see” just doesn’t cut it.

There’s no need for waiting, because we’ve already seen. In 2020 - during his first term - Trump launched Operation Warp Speed, the single biggest mass-poisoning campaign in history.

RFK Jr has already made it clear he will abandon whatever anti-vaccine credentials he pretended to possess in order to be part of the Federal circus.

Controlled opposition and political gatekeeping ensure that every high-level political figure who gains traction is either vetted, neutralized, or co-opted to prevent any disruption to the larger power structure. The presidency is not simply an office won through votes; it is a managed position within a broader apparatus that demands compliance.

True outsiders never reach the top; if they do, they are either compromised or swiftly removed. RFK Jr. is being carefully managed to appeal to a specific audience: disillusioned voters who are skeptical of mainstream narratives but must still be guided back into the system. This is the Pied Piper effect in action.

Quoted from:

The Illusion of Choice: How Modern Democracy Ensures No Real Political Change

The ongoing global shitshow will never end until people abandon their idols, flush the two party paradigm down the crapper, and realize that it’s US versus THEM.

We, the people, versus they, the parasites.