Although the headline that a quarter of Republicans (or about 10% of the adult US population) believe QAnon nonsense is worrisome, because of the implicit threat of violence, it is not unexpected. In any group (even highly educated, ostensibly intelligent groups like physicians, PhDs or Ivy League graduates), there will be a substantial percentage (10-30%) that will believe utterly ridiculous things--that aliens have visited the earth, that angels and devils are real, the earth is flat, Trump won the 2020 election, etc. We need to learn to flip these statistics on their heads. While it is, as I said, worrisome, it is more important to engage and work with the 60-70% of Americans (including perhaps 25% of avowed Republicans) who are capable and interested in rational, fact-based decision-making and governance. We are the majority, and we win by working with others to protect democracy and rational discourse, not by fearing the lunatic minority.
Although the headline that a quarter of Republicans (or about 10% of the adult US population) believe QAnon nonsense is worrisome, because of the implicit threat of violence, it is not unexpected. In any group (even highly educated, ostensibly intelligent groups like physicians, PhDs or Ivy League graduates), there will be a substantial percentage (10-30%) that will believe utterly ridiculous things--that aliens have visited the earth, that angels and devils are real, the earth is flat, Trump won the 2020 election, etc. We need to learn to flip these statistics on their heads. While it is, as I said, worrisome, it is more important to engage and work with the 60-70% of Americans (including perhaps 25% of avowed Republicans) who are capable and interested in rational, fact-based decision-making and governance. We are the majority, and we win by working with others to protect democracy and rational discourse, not by fearing the lunatic minority.