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With the end of Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­cy fast approach­ing, we’ve seen a surge of columns and posts assert­ing that Repub­li­cans and Trump sup­port­ers have lost touch with real­i­ty. After four years of mar­i­nat­ing in “false­hoods” and “disinformation”—a term that real­ly just means “infor­ma­tion I don’t like”—Trump’s back­ers are all turned around, we’re told. They believe much that isn’t so.

David Brooks of The New York Times explains that these poor saps, most of whom, he says, are une­d­u­cat­ed, uncre­den­tialed peo­ple who don’t live in pros­per­ous cities, have retreat­ed to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries to explain their mis­for­tune and unhap­pi­ness. “Peo­ple in this pre­car­i­ous state are going to demand sto­ries that will both explain their dis­trust back to them and also enclose them with­in a safe com­mu­ni­ty of believ­ers,” he writes. Trump, QAnon, and Alex Jones “rose up to give them those sto­ries and pro­vide that community.”