In psychology, a bicameral mind is contrasted with a unicameral mind, with bicameral meaning that the person does not understand that their thoughts originate within their own mind. Instead, they attribute their own thoughts to forces outside of their mind; creative thoughts are interpreted as raw sensory input. In contrast, someone with a unitary mind understands that their internal monologue belongs to themselves. Psychologists originally thought that the unitary mind was an evolutionary development that was very advantageous and so it quickly spread through the human population.
Julian Jaynes was a famous psychologist who suggested that perhaps there was no evolutionary change and that instead it was not the hardware (brain) that changed, but instead the software (culture). The idea, basically, is that culture determines how you understand the functioning of your own mind, and that directly affects how it functions; i.e., unicameralism is learned as is bicameralism. This means that thought leaders can induce bicameralism in a population of people via their influence on culture and that a mind can switch between bicameral and unicameral functioning.
For a more concrete example, considering a Victorian era medium conducting a séance. There are no ghosts, just a table surrounded by people who really want to believe in ghosts. The medium guides their audience to interpret thoughts and (especially) emotional states as having been caused by supernatural forces (spirits); they have induced bicameral functioning in the minds of the audience members. It’s as if the creative and emotional output of the mind has been rewired and plugged right back into the sensory inputs of the brain. The effect of the medium on their audience is temporary, but through culture (which is basically just repeated exposure to a set of narratives), the effect can become more constant.
A bicameral effect can occur because of a physical brain anomaly — schizophrenia would be what you would usually call that. The content of the hallucinations of schizophrenia is determined by the culture of the person. In culturally-induced bicameralism, the content of the “hallucinations” is culturally determined as well.
Republicans and Democrats have a lot in common — they are conservative, tend to either be narcissists or people who enable narcissists, and they are complacent. The major difference is that the culture of Republicans is far more likely to induce bicameralism. What we might call “lack of critical thinking” is a much deeper problem — the culture-derived output from a Republican’s mind is being re-routed directly back into their sensory inputs. It’s not that they “believe their own bullshit”, but rather than they are constantly experiencing it as a stream of alternative reality. What they want to believe is true is true, but what they fear is even more true — even if it is patently absurd.
Fascism, generally, is an inducement to bicameralism. Historically, this is sometimes explicit, as was the case with the Nazi philosophy of “will to power” and their approach to propaganda. Unicameral people will talk about having a goal and then working to manifest that goal; in contrast, will to power means that you just believe your reality is already true, then by behaving consistent with this (projected) reality, it forces your enemies to conform to your (false) reality, making it a socially-constructed truth. It is the “fake it ’til you make it” of genocidal assholes. In terms of propaganda, this means fascists will claim something is true in order to justify the horrible thing they will do next; if they want to kill all the Libyans, they will imagine, believe, and disseminate the crimes of the Libyans. Looking for this kind of logic is, in my opinion, the second best way to spot fascism (the best being to look for groups that promote “punching down”).
What I’m saying, then, is that Republicans are all suffering from a rather severe, culturally-induced mental illness. I think that they realize this. While they constantly claim that mass shootings are caused by mentally ill people, they also refuse to pass legislation that would bar mentally ill people from possessing guns. They know that a review of their own mental health would not turn out well. Please note that this is a big area of debate; I suspect that mental illness is not a good general criteria for barring gun ownership, and I’m really pointing out the hypocrisy in the reasoning of the Republican position, not talking about my own position.
Speaking of guns and Republicans hallucinating, “Bill” (not his real name) is a survivor of the Parkland mass shooting whose father has decided (partially thanks to Qanon) that the Parkland shooting was a hoax. Vice confirmed that the man is a survivor of the shooting and interviewed him.
“It started a couple months into the pandemic with the whole anti-lockdown protests,” Bill said. “His feelings were so strong it turned into facts for him. So if he didn’t like having to wear masks it wouldn’t matter what doctors or scientists said. Anything that contradicted his feelings was wrong. So he turned to the internet to find like-minded people which led him to QAnon.”
You know how Republicans like to say “facts don’t care about your feelings” when their facts are demonstrably — obviously, even — false. It makes sense to them because of the way their minds work: Their facts are their feelings, so what they feel is a fact. In the case of Bill’s dad, he was already primed to bicameralism by his upbringing (enculturation) — and that’s probably true of all Republicans. The first step in rehabilitating them has to be somehow modifying the models that they use to understand both the world and their own minds. Bill describes this as “restricted access to the internet and lots of therapy” which, more broadly, is 1) cutting them off from the source of false narratives and 2) repeated exposure to true narratives. This basically describes a “re-education camp” — another component of conservative mass hallucinations that fills them with terror. It isn’t going to happen.