It is my earnest and I suppose expert opinion people are willing to recuperate and befriend fascists because they espouse and project strength yet are willing to mock and deride QAnon types because they are victims of flaws in group psychology--flaws inherent to the human brain.

That split might speak to some dark, fascistic inclination, sure.

To me, it's more troubling that it speaks to a more core antipathy towards weakness, especially weakness we might risk seeing in ourselves.

It speaks to an inability to healthily treat weakness in our society.

Drugs, fad diets, cults, and pyramid schemes.

They all work the same basic way.

Everyone has at least one out there lurking in the unknown that is capable of absolutely hacking their brain and taking over their life.

People in the midst of that are no different from you.

I say that as a behavioral economist and someone who's spent some time very carefully experimenting with drugs.

The human brain is a miracle of emergent complexity. It is a beautiful and complex organic machine.

It is also absolutely riven with flaws that can be exploited.

That's why I view the fascist so different from the cultist.

There is a radical difference between someone who has made a series of active, conscious choices--even as a product of their environment as all choices ultimately are--and someone who has had their brain taken over.