The mental state of the American radical right: Is civil discourse possible any more?

“There's a kind of notion that everyone’s opinion is equally valid. My arse! A bloke who’s been a professor of dentistry for 40 years doesn’t have a debate with some eejit who removes his teeth with string and a door!” -- Dara Ó Briain, Irish comedian exemplifying the informal logic fallacy called the balance fallacy or in the context of journalism, false balancing

The balance fallacy is an informal logical fallacy that occurs when two sides of an argument are assumed to have equal or comparable value regardless of their respective merits, when in fact one side is invalid or false. Accepting the bad side as valid or at least debatable can lead to the conclusion that the answer to a problem is to be found between the two extremes. The latter is effectively an inverse false dilemma, discarding the two extremes, one of which is true or correct, rather than the middle or false extreme, neither of which is not true or correct. -- RationalWiki on the balance fallacy

Since the departure of Lyin’ Donnie (the ex-president), accumulating evidence indicates that most of America’s radical right has neither calmed down nor changed their minds about the major lies the movement is currently mostly based on. Most of them, about 66% of Republicans as of Aug. 4, 2021, still believe the 2020 election was stolen and ~4% of Americans, ~13 million, are willing to engage in violent protests to rectify the terrible injustice that Lyin’ Donnie suffered. By now it is clear that at most, very few of those deluded, manipulated minds are going to change. The moral outrage and seething anger is not going to go away.  

To a major extent, radical right outrage and anger are significantly focused on fighting against the falsehood that Democrats are evil socialist tyrants. Some, only a few I hope, also believe they are other bad things such as alien lizard people, pedophiles and/or Chinese agents. Most appear to believe that they are fighting for liberty and truth against socialist tyranny and persecution. In fact, they actually support a fascist Republican Party (FRP), which is a force that actually fights for tyranny and persecution and against liberty for outsiders and truth.

Unless one comes to have some understanding of the working of the human mind, this would see to be such a confounding state of affairs that it literally is not possible. Well, it literally is possible and it is influential right now in the minds of tens of millions of deluded Americans.

Sometimes, I get pushback here that I am too soft on people who come here and repeat what are known lies, including the stolen election whopper. Under current dire, anti-democracy circumstances, it is objectively wrong to leave blatant falsehoods insufficiently challenged. I tend to commit that logic error, called false balancing or bothsidesism, by merely leaving disagreement as something like, ‘well, we disagree on the facts’ and then walk away from it. 

However, that is in fact not a disagreement on the facts. It is a disagreement over (i) facts and true truths competing against misinformation and/or disinformation, and/or (2) sound reasoning competing against partisan motivated reasoning, which is often crackpot.

Misinformation vs disinformation: The distinction lies in the intent of the falsehood's speaker or spreader. Misinformation is false information that one spreads because they believe it to be true. Disinformation is false information that one spreads even though they know it to be false, but they are knowingly trying to deceive people. 

Motivated reasoning: Emotionally biased reasoning to produce justifications or make decisions that are most desired rather than those that accurately reflect the evidence, while still reducing cognitive dissonance. In other words, motivated reasoning is the “tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe.” It can lead to forming and clinging to false beliefs despite substantial evidence to the contrary. 

I got a nudge on this yesterday after I committed a false balance mistake with a commenter who was new here: “The crucial point is that if the GOP in its current form regains the Senate, and perhaps the House, all bets are off. BigC’s status as either gullible or mendacious matters little in the big picture. I only suggest that his/her comments be held to the same epistemic standards as any others here. By that standard his or her “evidence” (if you even call it that) is severely sub-par. That's all. .... The stakes are very, very high right now. It's far less important to “understand” each passing foot-soldier of the radical Right than to repel the fast-growing movement and the spread of conspiracy theory and pure falsehoods which draw new recruits to “the cause” every single day.”

One can’t argue with that.

I did not know the new person and out of caution wanted to extend respect by according them the benefit of my belief that their mindset was grounded in (i) misinformation, not disinformation and/or (ii) sound reasoning based on false belief instead of partisan motivated reasoning. One can see my mistake in that -- it jumps right out. There is no easy way of divining the speaker’s state of mind, and maybe no at all, easy or hard.

Given the stakes, and they truly are very high[1], the benefit of such doubts are not warranted any more. Arguably, they never were warranted. For the sake of truth, rationality, democracy and respect for other people, one really should not extend such benefits in the face of blatant falsehoods, regardless of the speaker’s intent or origin (dark free speech) of false beliefs. False information and beliefs should always be respectfully but firmly rebutted.

Question: Given that most radical right adherents react badly to being corrected when they cite false information or apply motivated reasoning, is civil discourse between the radical right and everyone else possible any more?

Footnote: 

1. The criticism I got yesterday was packaged with this point about the high stakes in a May 31, 2021 article published by The Hill:

Michael Flynn, former national security adviser in the Trump administration, appeared to call for a Myanmar-like coup to take place in the U.S. during a conference in Texas attended by many supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

MarketWatch reports that Flynn made the remarks while speaking at the conference in Dallas, which was called "For God & and Country Patriot Roundup." In a video shared online, someone from the audience asks Flynn, "I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?”

This question elicited a round of cheers from the audience.

Once the crowd quieted, Flynn responded, “No reason. I mean, it should happen here.”

Flynn is a fascist and a convicted felon that Lyin’ Donnie pardoned. Flynn openly called for a military coup and the audience loved it. That is how high the stakes are. The fascist threat to democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties could not be any clearer, short of the actual military coup that some significant minority (~30% of Republicans?) of the radical right would support. Since most Republicans believe there was corruption in the 2020 election and probably most anything Democrats want to do, many people appear to be open to a military coup right now.