In the science fiction movie The Abyss, a deep-sea drilling platform crew and U.S. Navy personnel are drawn into a mysterious underwater encounter.  The film follows their mission to recover a sunken nuclear submarine, during which they discover strange, unexplained phenomena in the ocean depths. As tensions rise, the crew comes into contact with a highly advanced, non-humanoid extraterrestrial presence living in the abyss. This encounter forces them to confront both the unknown and their own fears. The situation escalates when military tensions rise, partly due to misunderstandings about the alien presence. With the threat of nuclear catastrophe looming, the aliens ultimately intervene in a dramatic climax—using their extraordinary abilities to halt actions that could lead to war. In the end, the survivors are deeply affected by their encounters. Some come away with a renewed perspective on human conflict and the potential for peaceful coexistence with forces far beyond our understanding.

I recently travelled into my own abyss, and I came out of it with a renewed and troubling perspective on the human condition and the political climate in our country. My journey started harmlessly enough when an old high school classmate sent me a Friend request on Facebook. I had no reason not to accept the request, so I did.  Soon thereafter I started to receive numerous reposts from him from several MAGA Facebook Groups.   The posts were often factually incorrect and were blatant propaganda and disinformation intended to rile up the MAGA crowd.  And judging from the comments they ate this stuff up. I was fascinated by this because I have been studying how the mind works the last few years and have taught critically thinking at a major university. Being a curious person, I wanted to get inside this disinformation echo chamber to see what these people were thinking (or not). So, I followed two of the larger MAGA groups (each with over 1 million followers) and I dove into the political Facebook abyss.

To say it was dark and hateful is an understatement. It truly was like stepping into an alternate reality from some long-forgotten Twilight Zone episode. I could imagine Rod Serling narrating my experience, saying something like, “Imagine, if you will, a realm not governed by the predictable cadence of our everyday politics—a place where the fervor of belief twists reality into shapes both bizarre and extraordinary. In this alternate universe, a movement known to some by the rallying cry of “Make America Great Again” has transcended the mere realm of politics to become a living, breathing force of myth and might. Here, the adherents of this movement—passionate, unyielding, and steeped in their own singular vision—navigate a reality where the familiar landmarks of democracy are reimagined and reassembled into a landscape as surreal as it is divisive. Tonight’s tale takes us into a dimension where ideology becomes destiny and the echoes of slogans reverberate through the corridors of a shadowy, uncharted territory—beyond the boundaries of conventional wisdom, beyond the reach of logic, and squarely within the mysterious expanse of… the Twilight Zone.”

My imaginary Rod Serling introduction would turn out to be hauntingly accurate as I sank into the abyss and started reading these nonsensical posts. There were ones that were boastful but not accurate by any means, such as “I can confidentially say that this is the best month the United States has had in 4 years.” Typical with these posts there was no data or factual information to support these claims. There were ones like “I think I speak for all of us when I say thank god Barrack O’Bidens is gone.”  I guess Barrack O’Biden was some black Irishman they dislike. Or ones like “I really want to see Kash Patel has in store for Adam Schiff,” which I find troubling when they are hoping that the Director of the FBI goes after a sitting Senator. It reminds me of McCarthyism, and we know how that turned out.

After reading these types of posts for a few days I started to see several recurring themes. First, the MAGAs have a genuine and fervent hate for the federal government. In my blog Deep State, I point out that the federal government is just people.  Yes, people like me, people like you, millions of them, going to work doing various jobs serving our nation with dedication. They do things like provide oversight of healthcare, social services, transportation, food and drugs, financial and educational institutions. They provide food and housing assistance to the poor; they provide for the defense of our nation, and they ensure the rule of law is adhered to as needed in any civil society. And they all take an oath to support and defend the constitution (not the President), against all enemies, foreign AND domestic. Secondly, the MAGA crowd has a real hatred for Democrats and their woke philosophy. But they can’t seem to define wokism.  I even asked one how they defined it, and their answer was “Joe Biden.” I teased that naming a President is not a definition, but I got nothing.  In my view being woke simple means having empathy for others, which sounds very Christian-like to me.  Third, MAGAs can’t spell. I know anyone can occasionally fat finger a comment in Facebook but the spelling in these MAGA posts demonstrated how far our education system in America has fallen. They say that the average reading level among American adults is roughly the 7^th grade, and after reading MAGA posts for a few weeks I think that is being generous.

Spelling aside, my previous study of how the mind works and my teaching on critical thinking led me to a few more observations. First, MAGAs thinking is hampered by biases. To be honest, we all have implicit and often explicit biases inherent in how our minds work, but the level of biases in the MAGA posts were off the charts.  Most evident was a frequent display of the Dunning-Kruger effect, when people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers, or to put simply, the less you know the more confident you’re likely to be. There were lots of comments about the government that were blatantly wrong, as well as comments about taxes and federal government spending. One post said, “We need to stop taxes until we find where all the is money going.” I pointed out to the poster that all federal spending is available on usa.spending.gov.  I also saw blatant examples of the Belief bias, which as the name indicates is when a person’s existing beliefs or opinions influence their evaluation of the validity of an argument or statement. Or to put it simply, their beliefs outweigh any facts that you present to them.  There is a psychological effect in play here when you try to change the mind of someone whose world is founded in beliefs, they feel like they are being attacked personally, so their natural response is to reject that argument outright, regardless of what the facts say. This is why simply arguing facts with many people is a pointless exercise in futility and leads to angry and non-productive exchanges. The third bias I saw frequently is confirmation bias, which is the tendency to seek out and prefer information that supports your preexisting beliefs. As a result, we tend to ignore any information that contradicts those beliefs. We are all guilty of this bias to some degree but for MAGAs it is amplified by where they receive their information; Fox News, One America News Network (OANN), Newsmax, podcasts like Joe Rogan, and of course social media like X, Truth Social, and MAGA Facebook groups, that all make money by exciting their followers. All Americans have created some degree of echo chambers, but the MAGA echo chamber is especially dense and dark, and driven by fear and perceived grievances.  

In my critical thinking class, I teach a few techniques to counter biases and the first is to recognize when your mind has a bias. This is difficult (see Dunning-Kruger Effect) and requires a level of awareness and humility. Which I think if often lacking in the MAGA crowd.  Secondly, you must slow down your thinking.  In the famous book, “Thinking Fast and Slow”, the authors explain how you mind is constantly bombarded with information and over time has created heuristics to make automatic and very fast decisions. This typer of thinking, sometimes referred to as System 1, is the automatic, intuitive, fast, emotional and often unconscious way of thinking we use to make everyday decisions about tame/well-structured problems. It relies on use of heuristics or “rules of thumb.” Systems 2 on the other hand, is the slow, effortful, logical, calculating, and conscious (deliberate) form of thinking we use infrequently to make decisions about ill-defined/ill-structured problems.  For complex social and political issues System 2 thinking is needed to analyze them and develop sound judgments. My third technique to counter biases is to gather additional factual data, information, and statistics. It’s really easy to take one bit of information and run with it, but if we want to have informed and sound arguments you need multiple sources and you need to check the veracity of the information. You can’t rely on a single Facebook post or what your co-worker told you as a basis for your judgments. And finally, you must actively listen and gain the perspectives of others outside of your comfort zone. Listening to others broadens your perspective and helps you break out of your own echo chamber. It’s hard to do, but if you have the intellectual courage to do so, it will improve the quality of your thinking.

Critical thinking techniques aside, as I thought about these echo chambers we all live in I recalled the book “How to Have Impossible Conversations” which as the name implies is about how to talk with people who have vastly different viewpoints than your own.  It talks about these echo chambers and how if you can begin to sow doubt in people’s minds about their sources of information, they may gradually see the light. Note, this takes time and effort. With that thought in mind I decided to move past reading these nonsensical posts and counter them with factual information and credible sources. I know that one post wasn’t going to break people from the MAGA fever, but maybe over time it would begin to sow doubt in the minds of some of the more moderate ones.

So, my first tact was when there was some non-factual post I would simply comment “Sources please.” Or at times I would provide a link to factual information. Recognizing that MAGAs think that all major new outlets (expect those listed above), were fake news, I stuck to non-partisan news sources such as USAFacts.org. At times I provided links to actual Executive Orders on the Whitehouse.gov such as when a poster talked about cleaning up the government, I highlighted that President Trump actually issued an Executive Order called “Pausing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Enforcement” thus permitting U.S companies to bribe foreign officials. When I posted information like this, I rarely received comments. I thought maybe they just ignored them, or maybe people weren’t reading the comments in the post. But I kept it up for a week or so naively hoping that maybe I was planting some seeds of doubt in this MAGA echo chamber. And then one day my Facebook feed exploded.

It began when I saw a post on the MAGA Facebook Group called Patriot News Headquarters (of course), which has 1.1 million followers, which pronounced “After four years of being SOLD OUT, America is finally getting the RESPECT it deserves!” After chuckling to myself I was a bit of troll and posted the following comment, “We are the laughingstock of the world right now thanks to DJT.” Soon thereafter my Facebook feed exploded. Within a few days I had 48,115 reactions on Facebook to my comment. Interestingly over 35,000 were thumbs up, around 10,000 were laughter emojis, 1,100 were heart emojis, and 692 people posted angry face emojis. These numbers made me wonder a bit about the makeup of the followers of this page. Maybe to use a critical thinking term, I had to “Adjust my priors”, which means to reform some of your beliefs based on new information.

Even more fascinating is that 20,081 people actually replied to my comment.  With much trepidation I dove into the abyss of the comments to see what these people were saying, and well it was as you might expect.  There were the straightforward comments like “What world are u living in” and the more comical like “We have people, who are worthy, of respect, in charge !!!” or “and you sir need to stop listening to the wokes.” It goes without saying the current cabinet appointees are the most unqualified ever in the history of the United States but apparently being a Fox News host makes you qualified to run the largest agencies in the world. There were a few comments that I didn’t understand such as “You trans don’t full us” and “Becoming Africans man whiteman sure could change Lol.”  And then there was the nasty comments such as “He never left ma and dad’s basement” and “This jerk is leaving in Dumbchitville.”  Or “idiot…open your eyes…President Trump has already done way more for We the People in just one month than chi-com did in 50 years of screwing over We the People for his family enrichment.”  Talking about the pot calling the kettle black I thought, and who exactly is chi-com? A few people took it upon themselves to send me IMs with endearing comments like, “You are dumbass democrat,”  “You’re a libtard faggot,” “You look like a Woke Demon-crate” or “FUCK YOU….YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT LIBTARD….FUCK YOU !!!!”  or my favorite “You shit-Eatin’ dog.” Believe it not, there were some that were even worse, but are too nasty for me to repeat.  One over achiever took it upon themselves to go to my Facebook feed and post an Angry face emoji reaction to my posts going all the way back to 2017 (not kidding).  The funny part is that I don’t do political posts on Facebook, rather I typically post pictures of flowers from my garden, or nature pictures from when I am kayaking or cross-country skiing. So, it was kind of amusing to see an Angry face emoji posted to a picture of a Dahlia. Do they not like Dahlias?  There were a few comments that just made me laugh, like the one that referred to Kamala Harris as “Word Salad Harris.” Has this person ever seen Trump speak once, he gives a master class in word salad speak every time he opens his mouth. There were a few that I felt sorry for, such as Larry who commented, “Amen, not until we the people get our taxpayer dollars back.” I was tempted to remind Larry that he gets his tax dollars back every day through roads, health care, security, social services, social security benefits, etc. These MAGAs seem to think that someone else is getting all of the benefits, but we all get them in some form or fashion.

But to be fair, there were a lot of positive comments that echoed what I had said. Statements like “Extreme concern and trepidation, yes. Respect absolutely not.”  Their use of the word trepidation was a tip that they probably weren’t a MAGA.

After these exchanges I decided to pull myself out of the abyss and have ceased to view or comment on the MAGA posts. As the saying goes, “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.” I was starting to feel a bit dirty and would rather approach the issue from a more positive manner.

So, what did I learn by my trip into the abyss?  First, the critical thinking skills in many Americans are lacking and our education system has failed many.  Whether this failure is systemic or if some people have no real desire to learn is debatable. I know many teachers who are frustrated with their students, who often reflect the attitudes of their parents. I think willful ignorance and science denial is a serious issue in America today. When did the Republican party start a war on science, and more importantly why?

Secondly, our country is deeply divided, and we have people living in different altered realities. Like a bizarre episode of the Twilight Zone, only it’s not a science fiction show. None of this is a news flash, but my visit to the MAGA abyss made it abundantly clear how bad this problem is.

Like in the movie The Abyss, I was affected by my encounters in the MAGA abyss, and I have a new perspective on the MAGA psyche. I also question whether there is the potential for peaceful coexistence with those from this political spectrum.  It’s evident that to reunite and heal this country we need better, moral-based leadership, and we need to redefine and clarify the values that shaped the formation of this country. Both sides talk about family values, Christian values and American values but there is not an agreement on what those mean exactly. I bet if we listed all of the values and beliefs of these 2 tribes (Republican and Democrat) and drew a Venn diagram that there would actually be significant overlap. But the culture wars distract us from our shared values. We also need to disrupt these echo chambers and restore the legitimacy of the media in the eyes of Americans. That will take a lot of time and reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. And we must also find common ground with those on the other side of the political spectrum. I don’t mean we should discard our values or morals, but seek areas of mutual agreement, and build upon that.

The big question is whether we can find common ground without a shared reality? Kate Cohen recently wrote an article in the Washington Post on that very point, and she was pessimistic about whether we could find that common ground. However, she did say that when we all share an undeniable personal hardship (i.e. high gas prices, empty grocery stores, or no tax refund payments), maybe people will begin to realize that we are all in this together, and maybe the current administration is not their savior.  This is a pragmatic approach, and as more people lose their jobs and their savings, and the country falls into a recession with possible stagflation, maybe they will see the light. There is an old joke that a recession is when your neighbor loses their job, and a depression is when you lose your job. Maybe it will take people and the ones they love losing their jobs, their healthcare, and their security to realize there is a better way.

So, I challenge everyone to talk to your neighbors, your friends, your coworkers, and your family and share personal stories about how the Administration is hurting millions of people and putting our nation at great risk. This will take some personal courage, but we must stand up now because waiting for this to pass is a risky strategy. Just ask the Germans.