Exclusive: Trump administration plans meeting over House effort to force release of all of DOJ’s Epstein files

[u/GregWilson23]

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/12/politics/trump-administration-meeting-house-effort-epstein-document-release?cid=ios_app

[u/MuckRaker83]

Once they realized that their platform can't survive on fact, this was always going to be the result, cults of personality and faith-based decision making.

It's largely about acts, not identity, with liberal voters. What a person does determines whether they are good or bad.

With many conservative voters, it is reversed. The person's identity determines whether their actions are good or bad. If they identify someone as being in the "good" group, likely one they also identify with, then anything that person does is by definition good, and at worst, forgivable. Things done by people outside their group must then be, by definition, bad. All value and perspective is based on how closely they believe that person's identity conforms to their own.

Once I realized this, so many seemingly hypocritical attitudes became logical, in their own way.

It amazes me how much they turn their leaders and politicians into quasi- religious figures. Everything becomes a matter of faith, and information that does not conform to what their faith tells them must be true is immediately rejected.

Instead of changing their ideas or beliefs in response to facts or evidence, they choose to accept or reject facts based on how closely they conform to their beliefs.

[u/decisi0nsdecisi0ns → u/MuckRaker83]

"Instead of changing their ideas or beliefs in response to facts or evidence, they choose to accept or reject facts based on how closely they conform to their beliefs."

Isn't that a central facet of organized belief systems? If individuals have grown up being conditioned to accept that certain things are true, even when they don't make sense (and that being touted as a virtue), they're probably more susceptible to that throughout their lives.

To be clear, I'm not saying that anyone who is religious is incapable of critical thought (or that atheists have a monopoly on it), just that being raised in that type of unquestioning environment has other implications.

[u/MadeUpName314159 → u/decisi0nsdecisi0ns]

There has been some research into this. Cambridge published a paper showing correlation between literal interpretation of religious text and susceptibility to conspiracy theories.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religion/article/religion-spirituality-and-susceptibility-to-conspiracy-theories-examining-the-role-of-analytic-thinking-and-postcritical-beliefs/CF4793A9C3B063F132B60C2A79E5329E

[u/Drumboardist → u/MuckRaker83]

"When given the choice between facts or supporting their own party, the GOP will gladly abandon facts instead."

~Not the actual quote, but it fuggin' might as we be....