Great description! Ive watched a lot of people slowly descend down this path that you laid out via your explanation. People who I knew to be rational and smart, in my perspective, over the course of the last 10 years have been so inundated with propaganda and bullshit that they now hold insane nonsensical viewpoints. When you present certain bits of information to them, they literally cannot process that info. Ive seen it over and over. They go quiet for a few seconds. You can almost see their eyes glaze over. This is probably the conscious part of the brain looking for a way to reconcile the contradictory info with the built up straw house world view. The brain fails as its an impossible task and short circuits. The 95% brain takes over, wipes the short term memory, and then suddenly that person starts talking about something totally different as if nothing had happened. Its quite fascinating how this happens. I once talked to a person who had fainted due to a medical condition. They said that they had felt tired and dizzy at the time, and decided to lay down on the kitchen floor to relax. They then got off the floor and were shocked to find other people being alarmed. In their mind it was totally rational and they remember the full sequence of events including lying down. However, that persons SO watched them literally go stiff standing straight up and tilt forward careening headfirst towards the floor. Luckily they were caught before impact.