In a long thread on his many discussions over the last year with Trump and Harris supporters, a Daily Wire editor drops this contrast down in the middle:

I live in a deep-blue zone, and I have these vibes-and-racism conversations several times a week. I learned today, face-to-face, that Donald Trump hates everyone who isn’t white. I mean, he despises them. All of them. These conversations go like this:

A: Trump is SUCH a f-cking racist, man. He hates everyone who isn’t white. How can you even support someone like that?

B: Why is he racist?

A: Are you being serious right now? C’mon, man!

B: No, but why is he racist?

A: I can’t believe you’re defending him!

B: OK, look: Donald Trump has already been the president for four years. What would you say were the top three racist policies he implemented?

A: You know what, I’m done with this discussion.

B: I’d settle for one really good one. What big racist policy did he implement?

A: I can’t even talk to you about this stuff — you’re so irrational!

Over and over and over and over again, these conversations hit the “I can’t even talk to you about this stuff” moment, the hard shutdown.

1. What evidence can you offer for that view?
2. [cognitive program shuts down]

Certain trigger terms warn you that the shutdown is moments away: “conspiracy theory,” “disinformation,” “what are you even talking about?” This personal observation about social interaction applies equally well to CNN panel discussions, by the way.

I’ve written before that I had a conversation just after the 2016 election in which I was asked how I could support someone who was going to put my own friends and family in the camps, man, he’s gonna put us in the f-cking camps!

Eight years later, and after four years of a Trump presidency in which no one went to the camps, Trump can’t be allowed to return to the White House because, guess what, he’ll send us all to the camps:

See also:

And click here to watch paste-eating “journalists” at MSNBC talk about how they might share the same prison cell if Trump returns to the White House.

1. He’s gonna send us to the camps!
2. (They don’t get sent to the camps)
3. He’s gonna send us to the camps!
4. (They don’t get sent to the camps)
5. He’s gonna send us to the camps!
6. (They don’t get sent to the camps)
7. He’s gonna send us to the camps!
8. (They don’t get sent to the camps)
9. He’s gonna send us to the camps!
10. (They don’t get sent to the camps)
11. He’s gonna send us to the camps!
12. (return to 1)

If Donald Trump wins this election, returns to the White House, and doesn’t put his opponents in internment camps, and then J.D. Vance runs for president, the same people will warn us that J.D. Vance will put his enemies in the camps. If J.D. Vance wins, serves four years without putting anyone in the camps, and then runs for a second term, the exact same people will warn us that Vance can’t be allowed a second term because he’ll put us all in the camps. The cycle never breaks. The narrative is the narrative. It has no inputs. Under all circumstances, it runs again.

It’s totally not true that Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage,” by the way. Where do you guys even get all this crazy conspiracy theory stuff? The news totally debunked that! I can’t even talk to you about this stuff!

So a significant portion of the population is completely immune to information, having been vaccinated by a news media that preemptively debunks … reality. They’re cognitively hardened, like bunkers.

It’ll be the work of a generation or more to grind down the instrument of this mental programming, although a few short sharp shocks might bust some extra concrete more quickly. It’s 150 million individual cognitive problems, embedded in a culture of programmed unreality. But again — I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve said this — the problem isn’t politics in any conventional sense. The conflict begins to seem neurological, like you could distinguish voters from an MRI of their brains.

I suspect we’ll need to send some of these people to the camps, but keep that part quiet for now.

This article was originally published at the author’s Substack, Tell Me How This Ends.

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Chris Bray is a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army, and has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles. He is the author of "Court-Martial: How Military Justice Has Shaped America from the Revolution to 9/11 and Beyond," published last year by W.W. Norton.