For the last five years, I’ve intermittently argued with a kind of Trump supporter who is not accurately represented by polls or empirical research on politics (in communication and political science). Call this person Chester.
Chester completely supports the current GOP, and everything it does or says. But he thinks of himself who is critically and rationally supporting GOP policies. I’ve watched him abandon positions in favor of new ones when the politically correct position of supporting GOP changes. And, each time he flips, he denies that he’s flipped. Every time he loyally adopts the new politically correct GOP position he insists that his adoption of this position is an independent choice.
He likes to think of himself as an independent and objective thinker who has mental reservations about the GOP but supports them regardless of what they do or say or support. In fact, he’s just intellectually lazy af.
He likes to think of himself as a person—objective, independent, rational—yet he never does any of the things that an objective, independent, rational thinker would do. He never looks at sources that might trouble his beliefs, and all of his information is second (or third) hand. He repeats claims he never tests. He engages with what he thinks of as “liberals” in a lazy trolling way. He never reads any of the links they provide. He just relies on what his in-group sources tell him, all the time thinking that repeating those talking points makes him an independent thinker because he isn’t a “liberal.”
For Chester, “critical” or “independent” thinking isn’t about some kind of process (e.g., we consider the best sources from various positions, look at their data and methods). It’s just loyally repeating the talking points from the position we’ve decided is objective. And we haven’t decided it’s objective because we’ve looked at a lot of research from various points of view and concluded that this source is reliable and rational (for instance, it represents alternative points of view fairly—something we can only rationally determine if we’ve read those other points of view). Chester is engaged in identity politics in a really ugly (and demagogic) way: we can decide that what this person is saying is true because they are loyal to the in-group.
People like that might be capable of tremendously hard scholarly work. Being able to succeed in school and being intellectually lazy aren’t mutually exclusive. There’s a lot of scholarship showing that some people are drawn to closure and feel threatened by ambiguity.
What I’m saying is that there are people who adopt an identity of an “independent” who aren’t in their actions or thinking, but only in their sense of themselves.
Here’s what they are. First, they are fully willing to post in threads on the pages of people who have politics they abhor, and that action makes them feel that they are being tolerant, and open to new ideas. Their version of disagreement is to repeat the talking points they’ve gotten from elsewhere. They refuse to read sources that might complicate their viewpoint. [1]
Second, they can’t defend their positions in rational argumentation, and, when that’s pointed out (such as by pointing out that they’re repeating debunked, irrational, internally contradictory, and/or incoherent claims), at that point, they retreat to the claim that they like trolling the libs, and they don’t really care if what they’re saying is true or not.
Let’s pay attention to that second part, since it’s the only aspect of them that is consistent. They just don’t really care if what they’re saying is true, accurate, or logical, if their policies hurt others, or even those policies will hurt them in the long run. They wander around repeating talking points because they like the image of themselves as someone who is engaged in politics, but they aren’t engaged enough to think about what they’re saying or care about the long-term consequences of what they’re supporting. They’re moral nihilists and, as I said, intellectually lazy af.
They’re energetic about posting talking points, but not about thinking about what those talking points are.
As far as their justifying what they do as “trolling the libs,” if you throw out a line with bait, and their “taking the bait” means pointing out that your argument is wrong in ways you refuse to admit, and providing sources you refuse to consider, then you haven’t really trolled the libs. You’ve repped supporting Trump as irrational, incoherent, and stupid. You’re just the Black Knight claiming you aren’t dead yet. With a hook you’ve swallowed so hard it’s in your small intestines.
[1] Here is a point where English is weird. I used to say “they won’t engage with any…” and I was heard as I’m advocating that someone has to engage with every. Nope. Just the best.