The one belief that predicted Trump voters with scary accuracy

Donald Trump campaigned against consensual reality and won. Every plank of his platform – from the economy to immigration to abortion – was based on easily provable lies.

Despite Trump’s bombastic assertions to the contrary, inflation is down, growth is up, illegal border crossings are down, crime is down, and vaccines work great. Tariffs are taxes on imports and American companies say they’re planning to raise prices.

None of that mattered at the polls because Trump created a conspiracist permission structure to ignore the facts and focus on hate.

Delusion strongly predicted a vote for Trump. An Ipsos poll in the final weeks of the campaign found that voters who falsely believed that we are living through a record-breaking violent crime wave favored Trump by 26 points, while those who knew the truth broke for Harris by 65 points. Those who knew that the inflation rate is back to the historic average favored Harris by 53 points. Respondents who knew that illegal border crossings are down favored Harris by 59 points.

Part of the problem is the media. Certainly, the mainstream media is shy about stating the truth and the rightwing media-influencer complex is dedicated to disseminating lies. Social media barons use algorithms to maximize their profits at the expense of our edification.

But the problem goes deeper than that: You also have to look at the conspiracist mindset that says the mainstream media is the enemy of the people, the government is controlled by the Deep State, and scientists are on the take, because it’s what makes people turn away from consensual reality.

CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl once asked Donald Trump why he constantly attacked the press. “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you,” Trump replied.

Trump also discredits the government as a source of information. When the latest statistics showed that crime was down, Trump accused the FBI of making them up. When the jobs report was revised, Trump accused Harris of faking it.

The conspiracist mindset allowed Trump’s followers to reinterpret his 34 felony convictions as evidence of the plot against him, rather than evidence of his terrible behavior.

Once you adopt a conspiracist mindset where you can dismiss any evidence that clashes with your prejudices as part of the conspiracy, you are free to create your own reality. Since it’s a worldview that scapegoats your fellow citizens as diabolical deceivers, that reality is bound to be ugly. Worse still, your willingness to discount mainstream sources of evidence in favor of the outlandish claims of demagogues becomes a badge of ideological purity. You welcome the lies.

This is why social scientists have been warning about the link between conspiracism and totalitarianism for a century. There was never any evidence that the Jews secretly controlled the world – but it didn't matter because lack of evidence was proof that the Jews controlled the press, and the universities, and science and the arts. Jews in pre-war Germany didn't control any of those things – but no evidence to the contrary could penetrate the conspiracy theory. And the complete absence of evidence for their hegemony was just proof of their total domination.

Another reason why conspiracism and totalitarianism are closely connected is that conspiracy theories take away our ability to have good-faith debates. If everything you don't like becomes evidence of your opponent's plot to destroy you, you can't discuss anything rationally. Human-caused climate change is a fact. But conspiracism takes the debate out of the realm of evidence and into the realm of character assassination of scientists and their supporters. It paints us as hoaxers and saboteurs. Vaccines have saved hundreds of millions of lives, but instead of debating their merits based on evidence, anti-vaxers portray their opponents as agents of a nefarious coverup to kill children. And it's completely irrefutable within their conceptual framework. When scientists or the government or journalists come forward with evidence that vaccines save millions of lives and prevent untold suffering, the conspiracist answer is: Well, that's what conspirators to kill our children would say.

There’s a much-needed movement afoot to fix our media ecosystem, but we can’t do that until we address the conspiracist mindset that predisposes people to believe Trump’s lies.

And just in the nick of time: Josh Hawley plans a 'religious revival in America'

Conservative H.W. Crocker III is concerned that America has lost sight of its "Christian moral compass" and become "too secular." And, according to the Kansas City Star, he's helping Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) push a "socially conservative political message driven by religion — particularly Christianity."

Hired as a "communications consultant for Sen. Josh Hawley’s Senate campaign," according to the report, it's "unclear how large a role Crocker played in" in Hawley's reelection campaign, but the Missouri senator's campaign team "paid Crocker $55,000 for communications consulting between May and November, according to campaign finance records."

As the GOP leader remains in the US Senate, the report notes Hawley "has a key ally in the White House, Vice President-elect JD Vance, who can help push" his "agenda, particularly when it comes to promoting social and economic policies aimed at the working-class voters who make up the Republican Party’s base."

H.W. Crocker III thinks Western civilization is in trouble.

He supports conservative Christian moral values and has decried the rise of a new, secular America where a growing number of people answer “none” to surveys asking which religion they practice. He’s lauded the Confederacy and its soldiers and generals in books like the “Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War” and “Robert E. Lee on Leadership.”

Hawley’s campaign paid Crocker $55,000 for communications consulting between May and November, according to campaign finance records.

In August 2023, amid a national conversation about American masculinity and the struggles young men appear to be facing, Crocker offered up a solution: Young men should follow the example of Confederate soldiers.

His essay, which referenced his book “Robert E. Lee on Leadership,” focused heavily on the religion of Confederate soldiers, framing the debate over whether to take down statues memorializing the Confederacy as an effort to remove tributes to Christian men.

“The torn-down statues celebrated Christian men: men who put duty above self, who prayed, who believed in self-sacrifice, righteousness, service, and heroism (and recognized it in others), who trusted in God and relished life as a gift,” Crocker wrote, saying they stood in contrast with young men and women who he deemed “the most anxious, depressed, shallow, irreligious, unpatriotic, and immoral generation in American history.”

His portrayal of Confederate soldiers dates back to the Civil War, when white Southerners claimed their army was a Christian army, while the Union was composed of atheists, socialists and immigrants, despite the fact that many Christians fought for the Union and pushed for the abolition of slavery.

That narrative particularly took hold after the Civil War, as the “Lost Cause” — the myth that the war was not about slavery, but was instead about preserving the Southern way of life as Southern Democrats maintained a commitment to white supremacy — spread across the country.

Crocker began working on Hawley’s campaign in May, according to campaign finance records. That means he was on the campaign’s payroll when Hawley gave a speech embracing Christian nationalism at the National Conservatism Conference in July.

“The Left’s primary purpose is to attack our spiritual unity, our common loves. They want to destroy the affections that link us one to another and substitute a set of altogether different ideals,” Hawley said in the speech.

“The Left preaches its own gospel, a creed of intersectionality, of deliverance from tradition, from family, from biological sex — and of course, from God. They regard the faith of our fathers as a fetter to be broken. They deem our common moral inheritance as cause for repentance.”

Crocker made a similar argument in an essay about the importance of faith in The Catholic Thing in May 2024, arguing that the political left has sought to promote selfishness instead of working toward the common good.

“Such liberalism has, of course, brought us the ‘Nones’ – the rising tide of young people who profess no religion because they accept no reference points outside themselves,” Crocker wrote. “To them, faith and reason, history and philosophy, tradition and gratitude, are all irrelevant. All that matters is ‘me.’”

Both men oppose abortion, but Hawley has said he doesn’t support banning abortion in the case of rape or incest. Crocker has argued abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. He once compared abortion to child sacrifice, saying that modern society has become so fixated on self-identity that it’s willing to allow people to sacrifice children in order to preserve their sense of self.

“Child sacrifice is hardly a new thing. Sacrificing children to idols is typical of pagan societies. Today’s idolatry of choice is making idols of ourselves,” he wrote. “Christianity abolished child sacrifice and the old idolatry. If we are to abolish child sacrifice again, we will need Christianity to triumph over the new idolatry.”

W. Fitzhugh Brundage, a professor at the University of North Carolina who studies the Civil War and American South, said the Lost Cause still holds an appeal for a wide swath of Americans, particularly people who are skeptical of a strong federal government. He said it can be seen as one of the final moments before the federal government took on more significant power, allowing the Confederacy to be portrayed as a road that wasn’t taken.