I have, or rather, had, a friend that lost it. He was the nicest guy. Then 9/11 happened and both him and his wife got into this 'it's all special effects' (they worked in special effects) thing and there wasn't anything you could do about it. Intelligent, creative, very skilled. But on that subject they were completely dug in and any evidence to the contrary was dismissed. Their parting words were that I must be 'one of them' and we are no longer friends.
There are a couple of subjects that seem to do this to people, immigration is one of them, 9/11 is another. Then there are holocaust deniers and people who seem to - without any kind of prompting - find it in them to be defending the actions of the various strong-arm government components in the United States.
I have no idea if there is something in the water or not but it is very scary to see otherwise intelligent people completely lose it over such objectively simple things. Once dug in the only solution seems to be to dig further and to cut off all input to that might lead to introspection.
There are a couple of subjects that seem to do this to people, immigration is one of them, 9/11 is another. Then there are holocaust deniers and people who seem to - without any kind of prompting - find it in them to be defending the actions of the various strong-arm government components in the United States.
I have no idea if there is something in the water or not but it is very scary to see otherwise intelligent people completely lose it over such objectively simple things. Once dug in the only solution seems to be to dig further and to cut off all input to that might lead to introspection.