The dissonance we see in the American social landscape - mostly (but not uniquely) among those many label “wingnuts” but I prefer “the hate right” - where claims don’t appear to align with what most of us call “facts” is frustrating but I continue to believe this arises out of an unwillingness/inability of some people to accept the 21st century.

Here’s a story which provides an example of the 21st century:

Hospital stops gene from being inherited

A 31-year-old woman suffering from a hereditary kidney disease made history last week when she gave birth to a completely healthy baby girl, Changzheng Hospital announced yesterday.

It was made possible by a new genetic technology that prevents the disease from being passed on to the next generation.

[…]

To help ARPKD patients have healthy children, the hospital launched a reimplantation genetic diagnosis program, which involves carrying out genetic testing on the embryo before it is implanted.

Doctors took six embryos from Shen, identified one that was normal and implanted it.

[…]

Which means the doctors destroyed, or will destroy, the other 5 embryos.

Some people in this country would want to charge those doctors for murder. There are politicians in US states who would very much like to pass laws along these lines. A non-trivial fraction of the American population want to label those embryos as “people”.

So the 21st century causes existential angst for these people.

The inability, or unwillingness, to accept reality is hardly special - we can all suffer from it. Yet I do think we are seeing en masse too large a fraction of the American population rejecting the reality, and that is why they are doing political cosplay with the likes of Drumpfskind.