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Ideas
The Motivated Ignorance of Trump Supporters

They canAt claim they didnAt know.
By Peter Wehner

On the morning of August 8, 2022, 30 FBI agents and two federal prosecutors conducted a court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago, Donald TrumpAs Palm
Beach, Florida, estate. The reason for the search, according to a 38-count indictment, was that after leaving office Trump mishandled classified documents, including some involving sensitive nuclear programs, and then obstructed the governmentAs efforts to reclaim them.
On the day before the FBI obtained the search warrant, one of the agents on the case sent an email to his bosses, according to The New York Times. oThe F.B.I. intends for the execution of the warrant to be handled in a professional, low key manner,o he wrote, oand to be mindful of the optics
of the search.o It was, and they were.
Over the course of 10 hours, the Times reported, othere was little drama as [agents] hauled away a trove of boxes containing highly sensitive state secrets in three vans and a rented Ryder box truck.o
On the day of the search, Trump was out of the state. The club at Mar-a-
Lago was closed. Agents alerted one of TrumpAs lawyers in advance of the search. And before the search, the FBI communicated with the Secret Service oto make sure we could get into Mar-a-Lago with no issues,o according to
the testimony of former Assistant FBI Director Steven DAAntuono. It wasnAt
a oshow of force,o he said. oI was adamant about that, and that was
something we all agreed on.o
The search warrant itself included a standard statement from the Department
of JusticeAs policy on the use of deadly force. There was nothing
exceptional about it. But that didnAt prevent Trump or his supporters from claiming that President Joe Biden and federal law-enforcement agents had
been involved in a plot to assassinate the former president.
In a fundraising appeal, Trump wrote,
BIDENAS DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME! ItAs just been revealed that
BidenAs DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in Mar-a-Lago. You know theyAre just itching to do the unthinkable a Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.
On May 23, Trump publicly claimed that the Department of Justice
oauthorized the use of adeadly forceA in their Illegal, UnConstitutional,
and Un-American RAID of Mar-a-Lago, and that would include against our
Great Secret Service, who they thought might be ain the line of fire.Ao
Read: The two-time Trump voters who have had enough
Trump supporters echoed those claims, as he knew they would. Steve Bannon,
one of the architects of the MAGA movement, said, oThis was an attempted assassination attempt on Donald John Trump or people associated with him.
They wanted a gunfight.o Right-wing radio hosts stoked one anotherAs fury, claiming that thereAs nothing Trump critics wonAt do to stop him, up to and including attempting to assassinate him and putting the lives of his Secret Service detail in danger.
The statement by Trump went beyond inflaming his supporters; it created a mindset that moved them closer to violence, the very same mindset that led thousands of them to attack the Capitol on January 6 and threaten to hang
Vice President Mike Pence. Which is why Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a motion asking the judge overseeing TrumpAs classified-documents case to
block him from making public statements that could put law enforcement in danger. oThose deceptive and inflammatory assertions irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the FBI agents involved in this case, as Trump well knows,o he wrote.
Motivated ignorance refers to willfully blinding oneself to facts. ItAs choosing not to know. In many cases, for many people, knowing the truth is simply too costly, too psychologically painful, too threatening to their
core identity. Nescience is therefore incentivized; people actively decide
to remain in a state of ignorance. If they are presented with strong
arguments against a position they hold, or compelling evidence that
disproves the narrative they embrace, they will reject them. Doing so fends off the psychological distress of the realization that theyAve been lying
to themselves and to others.
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Motivated ignorance is a widespread phenomenon; most people, to one degree
or another, employ it. What matters is the degree to which one embraces it, and the consequences of doing so. In the case of MAGA world, the lies that Trump supporters believe, or say they believe, are obviously untrue and obviously destructive. Since 2016 thereAs been a ratchet effect, each conspiracy theory getting more preposterous and more malicious. Things that Trump supporters wouldnAt believe or accept in the past have since become loyalty tests. Election denialism is one example. The claim that Trump is
the target of olawfare,o victim to the weaponization of the justice system,
is another.
I have struggled to understand how to view individuals who have not just
voted for Trump but who celebrate him, who donAt merely tolerate him but
who constantly defend his lawlessness and undisguised cruelty. How should I think about people who, in other domains of their lives, are admirable
human beings and yet provide oxygen to his malicious movement? How
complicit are people who live in an epistemic hall of mirrors and have sincerelyuor half-sincerelyuconvinced themselves they are on the side of
the angels?
Throughout my career IAve tried to resist the temptation to make
unwarranted judgments about the character of people based on their
political views. For one thing, itAs quite possible my views on politics
are misguided or distorted, so I exercise a degree of humility in assessing the views of others. For another, I know full well that politics forms only
a part of our lives, and not the most important part. People can be
personally upstanding and still be wrong on politics.
But something has changed for me in the Trump era. I struggle more than I
once did to wall off a personAs character from their politics when their politics is binding them to an unusuallyuand I would say undeniablyudestructive person. The lies that MAGA world parrots are so manifestly untrue, and the Trump ethic is so manifestly cruel, that they
are difficult to set aside.
If a person insists, despite the overwhelming evidence, that Trump was the target of an assassination plot hatched by Biden and carried out by the
FBI, this is more than an intellectual failure; it is a moral failure, and
a serious one at that. ItAs only reasonable to conclude that such Trump supporters have not made a good-faith effort to understand what is really
and truly happening. They are choosing to live within the lie, to invoke
the words of the former Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel.
One of the criteria that need to be taken into account in assessing the
moral culpability of people is how absurd the lies are that they are espousing; a second is how intentionally they are avoiding evidence that exposes the lies because they are deeply invested in the lie; and a third
is is how consequential the lie is.
ItAs one thing to embrace a conspiracy theory that is relevant only to you
and your tiny corner of the world. ItAs an entirely different matter if the falsehood youAre embracing and promoting is venomous, harming others, and eroding cherished principles, promoting violence and subverting American democracy.
In his book The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy, J. Russell Hawkins tells the story of a June 1963 gathering of more than 200 religious leaders in the White House. President John F. Kennedy was trying to rally their support for civil-rights legislation.
Among those in attendance was Albert Garner, a Baptist minister from
Florida, who told Kennedy that many southern white Christians held ostrong moral convictionso on racial integration. It was, according to Garner, oagainst the will of their Creator.o
oSegregation is a principle of the Old Testament,o Garner said, adding,
oPrior to this century neither Christianity nor any denomination of it ever accepted the integration philosophy.o
Two months later, in Hanahan, South Carolina, members of a Southern Baptist churchuthey described themselves as oChrist centeredo and oBible believingo uvoted to take a firm stand against civil-rights legislation.
oThe Hanahan Baptists were not alone,o according to Hawkins. oAcross the South, white Christians thought the president was flaunting Christian orthodoxy in pursuing his civil rights agenda.o Kennedy osimply could not comprehend the truth Garner was communicating: based on their religious beliefs, southern white Christians thought integration was evil.o
A decade earlier, the Reverend Carey Daniel, pastor of First Baptist Church
in West Dallas, Texas, had delivered a sermon titled oGod the Original Segregationist,o in response to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. It became influential within pro-segregationist
southern states. Daniel later became president of the Central Texas
Division of the Citizens Council of America for Segregation, which asked
for a boycott of all businesses, lunch counters included, that served Black patrons. In 1960, Daniel attacked those otrying to destroy the white South
by breaking the color line, thus giving aid and comfort to our Communist enemies.o
Now ask yourself this: Did the fierce advocacy on behalf of segregation,
and the dehumanization of Black Americans, reflect in any meaningful way on the character of those who advanced such views, even if, say, they
volunteered once a month at a homeless shelter and wrote a popular
commentary on the Book of Romans?

Readers can decide whether MAGA supporters are better or worse than Albert Garner and Carey Daniel. My point is that all of us believe thereAs some
place on the continuum in which the political choices we make reflect on
our character. Some movements are overt and malignant enough that to
willingly be a part of them becomes ethically problematic.
Read: The voters who donAt really know Trump
This doesnAt mean those in MAGA world canAt be impressive people in other domains of life, just like critics of Trump may act reprehensibly in their personal lives and at their jobs. IAve never argued, and I wouldnAt argue today, that politics tells us the most important things about a personAs
life. Trump supporters and Trump critics alike can brighten the lives of others, encourage those who are suffering, and demonstrate moments of
kindness and grandeur.
I understand, too, if their moral convictions keep them from voting for Joe Biden.
But it would be an affectation for me, at least, to pretend that in this particular circumstance otherwise good people, in joining the MAGA
movement, in actively advocating on its behalf, and in planning to cast a
vote for Trump, havenAtugiven all we knowudone something grievously wrong.
Some of them are cynical and know better; others are blind to the cultlike world to which they belong. Still others have convinced themselves that
Trump, although flawed, is the best of bad options. ItAs a obinary choice,o they say, and so they have talked themselves into supporting arguably the
most comprehensively corrupt man in the history of American politics, certainly in presidential politics.
Whichever justification applies, they are giving not just their vote but
their allegiance to a man and movement that have done great harm to our country and its ideals, and which seek to inflict even deeper wounds in the years ahead. Many of them are self-proclaimed evangelicals and fundamentalists, and they are also doing inestimable damage to the
Christian faith they claim is central to their lives. That collaboration
needs to be named. A generation from now, and probably sooner, it will be obvious to everyone that Trump supporters canAt claim they didnAt know.

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