Republican Derangement Syndrome

It was Peterson at his most raw, but also at his most incoherent. His metaphors collided mid-sentence. His ideas seemed to spiral. It wasn’t clear whether he was offering a roadmap or mythologizing his own self-pity. […]

What we’re witnessing is, to use Peterson-like language, the fall of a hero, a tragic story about the irony of fate. Not because external forces destroyed him, but because he crumbled under the weight of his own convictions. His view of masculinity was rooted in control, discipline, and responsibility. But what happens when a man who preaches stoicism becomes emotionally unhinged, and when the prophet of order loses the plot?

The cracks begin to show not just in his demeanour, but in his philosophical message. Nowhere is this more evident than in his refusal to answer whether or not he believes in God. That’s not a “gotcha” question. It’s a foundational one. If one has spent years creating multi-hour YouTube lectures on Genesis, Revelation, and Biblical symbolism, the question of belief is a fair one to ask, and one should be able to answer it. Yet, when asked directly, Peterson dodged it, insisting that he acts “as if God exists. That’s what I say”. It sounds clever, but it feels unfulfilling. It’s akin to claiming to live as if love is real, without having ever loved anyone. For many listeners, especially those of faith, it felt shallow and evasive. That sentiment reveals a deeper issue at play. Peterson no longer seems certain of what he believes, and there’s a reason for it.

He became the embodiment of a man trapped inside his own mythology, a teacher who has become his own cautionary tale. An example of how fate will test the courage of your convictions. He once warned about the dangers of becoming lost, irresponsible, and erratic. But today, his public persona feels just the same. He’s no longer the anchor; the boat is sailing without a destination.

Populists in the 1890s attacked globalization, particularly international finance. Populists today are equally anti-globalist. As president, Trump launched tariff wars against America’s foreign competitors, and as a candidate again, he has promised more of the same. The 1890s attack hardly slowed the growth of international trade. Today’s attack has been equally unsuccessful. After a covid dip, world trade resumed its steady growth of around five percent per year. It’s more than twice as large as it was when the 1999 Battle of Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization kicked off the current anti-globalist campaign.

Populism is as much a mood as it is an agenda. Sometimes parts of the agenda stick. The mood always passes.

For instance, in debates about the safety of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, opponents will often claim that “the science is new.” This is demonstrably false. The science is not new, and abundant data now show that mRNA vaccines are not only highly effective in preventing hospitalization and death from COVID-19, but that these vaccines are also very safe. Nevertheless, while “the science is new” is a stupid argument against vaccination, it requires mature and advanced cognitive skills.

First, the vaccine skeptic displays awareness that their decision not to get vaccinated needs to be defended at all. If the question were “Why don’t you get a dog?”, an expression of preference—such as “I don’t like dogs”—would be sufficient to end the discussion. There is, after all, no social pressure to own a dog. Vaccination campaigns, on the other hand, produce clear societal benefits, including protection of the elderly and the otherwise vulnerable from potentially fatal infection, slowing and containing the spread of disease, preventing the overloading of medical facilities, and so on. Skeptics, therefore, realize that the refusal to get vaccinated demands justification. This requires a level of social intelligence that would be very challenging to achieve for people with genuine cognitive limitations.

Second, the claim that “the science is new” appeals to a chain of four inferential assumptions, each of which requires complex reasoning skills:

Invocations of “the science” in these discussions are invariably vague, but the skeptic appeals to a common understanding of the term—“the scientific research that underlies the development and testing of mRNA vaccines”—so they can be confident that its meaning is intelligible to opponents. This requires reflexive reasoning and taking an interlocutor’s perspective into account.

The skeptic assumes that new or inadequately tested medical science may be unreliable, which requires some knowledge of how such science works.

If the science that underlies the development and testing of the new vaccine is unreliable, the vaccine might harm the recipient.

If it is potentially dangerous to take the vaccine, this is a legitimate reason for refusing to get vaccinated, on the grounds that it is reasonable to avoid doing things that might cause harm to oneself.

So, even though “the science is new” is a stupid argument, employing it to defend one’s refusal to get vaccinated requires mature and sophisticated cognitive skills. Other anti-vax arguments follow the same pattern. A conspiracy theorist who believes that Big Pharma wants to subdue the human population by putting microchips in their blood would need to make use of the same sophisticated cognitive skills. That arguments like these are often provided by and copied from opinion leaders (bloggers, podcasters, and social-media influencers) does not substantially alter this analysis. Most of us get most of our arguments from others, but we must still judge whether, when, and how they can be used to defend our own beliefs.

Generally, the ability to recognize how and why a certain argument threatens (or supports) one’s belief, and to choose the most effective and energy-efficient way to counter (or employ) it, requires highly developed cognitive skills. Any Artificial Intelligence researcher attempting to implement these reasoning skills in an artificial agent would emphatically agree. Individuals with true cognitive limitations would not be able to chain these inferences together and come up with the counterargument “the science is new” in this context.

So, the claim that people who employ stupid arguments “can’t help it” because of their limited intelligence is not only condescending, it is also inaccurate.

Experts have questioned the claims about the size of the group’s membership, and individual members have been exposed as sex offenders and acolytes of the Proud Boys. Then, last month, Moms for Liberty cofounder Bridget Ziegler admitted in a police interview to being in a relationship with her husband and another woman. The interview was conducted after the woman in question alleged that Ziegler’s husband, Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler, had raped her.

Ziegler’s husband has denied the allegations and refused to resign from his position as GOP chair, despite calls from Florida governor Ron DeSantis and other state Republicans to do so. Ziegler is also a member of the Sarasota County School Board, and has been instrumental in ushering in Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill, pushing a Christian agenda in public schools, and banning the teaching of critical race theory. On Tuesday night, the board voted 4–1 in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for her to resign, marking a rapid fall from grace for Ziegler and a potential fatal blow to Moms for Liberty.

Special counsel Jack Smith on Saturday sharply rejected Donald Trump’s contention that foreign governments may have changed votes in the 2020 election, laying bare new details about his team’s extensive probe of the matter and its access to a vast array of senior intelligence officials in Trump’s administration.

In a 45-page filing, Smith’s team describes interviewing more than a dozen of the top intelligence officials in Trump’s administration — from his director of national intelligence to the administrator of the NSA to Trump’s personal intelligence briefer — about any evidence that foreign governments had penetrated systems that counted votes in 2020.

“The answer from every single official was no,” senior assistant special counsel Thomas Windom writes in the filing.