In Joshua Rothman’s “Thinking it Through” (New Yorker, Aug 23rd), I came across the term motivated reasoning. He writes that it’s when your gut tells you what to think and your mind then figures out how to think it (paraphrasing).
Earlier on the Gail/Anthony/Tony show, I had seen a clip of a woman at the mic at a school board meeting on mask-wearing by attending children, who declared, “Science is not facts.”
Sounds like motivated reasoning.