My article focuses on the Trumpian opponents to the vaccine. There may be some anti-vaxxers whose decision is based in good faith and who aren't just trolling. Those who are only asking questions aren't the anti-vaxxers, but the vaccine hesitant. Those are separate groups, as the research shows. The majority of anti-vaxxers are the Trump supporters and the white evangelicals. We can safely say that their decision to be vehement anti-vaxxers is a trolling tactic to further their tribal agenda.

Just ask yourself whether these Trump supporters could be expected to be properly skeptical about anything. Trumpians as skeptics? I think not. That's like saying black is white or up is down. There are no skeptics in the Trump camp, and if you say there are, you're redefining "skeptical" in a nonstandard way.

Of course, I agree that big pharma, the CDC, and the NIAID aren't to be trusted. Indeed, American epidemiologists under Fauci and co likely had a hand in funding the dangerous research in China that caused the pandemic, and then they covered up their involvement. That's a genuine conspiracy, and it's not at all crazy to think it's real.

But that's a far cry from saying that vaccines don't work or that libertarians have the liberty to endanger their country's health.

Trumpians are conspiracy theorists in the pejorative sense, not in the sane, rational one. They "think" the election was stolen from Trump by massive voter fraud. They "believe" all the crazy things Trump ever said, not to mention the craziness inherent in Evangelical Christianity. And they believe that not because they understand the principles of critical thinking, but because that's how they demonstrate their allegiance to an off-putting tribe. Their main goal isn't to discharge their rational obligations, but to troll their enemies, that is, to infuriate and to punish normie liberals for winning the culture war.

Giving Trumpians the benefit of the doubt or assuming their political choices are made in good faith would be both perfectly asinine in 2021 and a symptom of effeminate decadence in Democratic circles. After four years of Trump as president, the Trumpians voted for him again and in droves. They didn't do so because they care about reason and evidence.

Let's not pretend there's no such thing as a cult. You don't reason with a cultist. You capture the cultist and you deprogram him, or you quarantine the cult and treat it like a zoo, letting the members practice their lunacy to amuse everyone else. Or you let the cultists kill each other off to provide a warning to grown-up society, to show us why it's better to be at least half-way civilized and rational.