Painful as all that is to read, it’s interesting as a case study of conspiracy theory thinking. The basic dynamic is like: choose your premise (Carlson’s a freedom fighter / truth teller), then let all subsequent statements support it. It goes without saying the argument isn’t evidence-based — but reading all that I felt like it resembled a weird mathematical proof. “IF we accept this as our basic premise, then all this follows; we can evaluate all other evidence in light of it.”
It’s also obvs. like a profession of faith: “I’m not ‘convinced’ this is true; rather, I proactively plant my flag here and then aggressively affirm this position.”
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