Matthew Sheffield, who was raised in a fundamentalist Mormon family and was once a right-wing Republican activist, explains why it's futile to try to reason with Trump's white Christian nationalist base, whose aim is to dominate and force us to dance to its theocratic tune, not to reason or to accept pluralistic democracy:
"Once the internet became completely pervasive within society, low-information religious fundamentalists finally became aware that their side had totally and completely lost all scientific and historical arguments."
"This has been extremely traumatizing psychologically because all of the authorities they have been conditioned to believe (pastors, the Bible, political leaders) proclaimed themselves to be infallible. Instead, they were completely defenseless against anthropologists, biologists, and historians.
But rather than admit they were wrong and adapt to modernity, religious fundamentalists have decided to attack it and to force the majority who disbelieve their ideas to genuflect before them."
"Having failed to convince people of their beliefs, they have decided to mandate them. In so doing, they are embracing their core epistemology, that knowledge comes from authority rather than from the scientific method. The Bible says it’s true, so therefore it is. I feel a warm fuzzy feeling when I watch my favorite pastor, so therefore what he says is true."
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