<p>John Wayne ducked service in World War II because he said &quot;I never got around to it.&quot; He let other men fight and die so he could stay home and pretend to fight and die in war movies. John Wayne said “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.” Yet he is revered, and almost worshiped, as a true American hero because of the image he created. Understand that one and you understand the Trump worshiper. </p>

Episode 16: How did we become children of the Morlocks? What causes that?

Wait... What!? is an often humorous, sometimes ferocious, but always entertaining romp through the bizarre memes that inspire mass lunacy, religious fanaticism, and ideological intransigency where basic reasoning is overwhelmed by willful ignorance. Why do people believe and refuse to ask simple questions about the nonsense they are fed by corrupt politicians, unscrupulous religious predators, and ordinary scam artists? What is the psychological mechanism that makes masses of people behave in ways that would make lemmings point and chortle? When X-files hero Fox Mulder said, "I want to believe" he was unknowingly speaking for religious fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists, UFO true believers, nut-case truthers, and ideologues who run the gamut from skin heads to Antifa -- people for whom there can be no other side of a complicated issue. What causes these people to willingly embrace nonsense -- ideas and claims that make little or no sense -- and shut out facts and reason as if they repositories of the Corona virus? What strange predisposition keeps them from putting both hands in the stop gesture and saying, Wait... What? Howard Siegel takes us on a voyage to a world where objective, reasoned thinking has been replaced with the powerful appeal of irrationally simple answers. Howard Siegel is an attorney, author, former MSNBC legal analyst, and hapless, sysphysian golfer. He has appeared on 60 Minuets, Larry King Live, The Today Show, NPR, and PBS. He lives in South Carolina where he is a practicing heathen, heretic, and herbivore.