By Chris Satullo

Excuse me a moment, I’m rooting around in my home’s infernal junk drawer, looking for something I need right now to get started.

That it? No. This? No. Could it be in this corner? Ouch!  Ooh, yes, that’s it.

Good reader, I present to you: Occam’s razor.

It’s a handy mental tool I’ve extolled previously in this space. Not since the writings of the medieval theologian William of Occam gave this tool its name has it been more needed by a society.

The principle behind Occam’s razor is simple. In fact, it is simplicity itself. Occam’s razor advises: When seeking an explanation for any event or phenomenon, know that the simplest one is the most likely.

Not necessarily the right one, just the most likely. So, in your hunt for answers, start there. Cops, for example, know this truth in their bones. Whenever a woman is killed violently, they look first at the husband or boyfriend.

MAGA World, alas, has become pretty much a razor-free zone. It is a land of motivated thinking and gnarly conspiracy theories designed to help its denizens avoid facing simple, obvious answers.

Some examples:

Event: COVID-19 virus begins killing people at an alarming rate around the world and across America, leading to a societal lockdown followed by lingering restrictions on economic and social life.

MAGA Theory: It’s all a hoax perpetrated by Donald Trump’s enemies to damage his glittering economic record and harm his re-election chances in 2020.

Problems with the MAGA Theory: COVID-19 reportedly killed 6.5 million people worldwide, 1 million of them in the United States. How could anyone coordinate that much pan-global lying by media, governments of all stripes, and medical authorities? Meanwhile, those same evil liberals endured the lockdowns, losing jobs and investment holdings along with everyone else. Why would they put themselves through all that just to damage the prospects of a president with a 41 percent average approval rating? (There’s much more, but I’ll stop there.)

Occam’s razor says: The pandemic was terrifyingly real, not a hoax. Dramatic responses were justified, even if not everything done turned out to make sense.  Only a titanic, deluded narcissist would think people endured all that just to harm him.

Event: Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump’s re-election bid by a lot – 7 million popular votes and 74 Electoral College votes.

MAGA Theory: Trump won, but massive coordinated election fraud by Democrats in multiple states, and multiple counties within those states, stole the victory from him.

Problems with the MAGA Theory: Trump’s vote fraud allegations were discounted and dismissed by state and federal courts hearing more than 50 lawsuits he filed. Many of the judges making these rulings were Republicans; some were Trump appointees. Only a tiny smattering of 2020 election fraud cases have been prosecuted successfully, and a goodly percentage of them involved people voting illegally for Trump. What’s more: Since elections are conducted at the county level – i.e. thousands of distinct jurisdictions – the coordination needed to pull off such a risky, illegal plot would be mind-boggling. Finally, if Democrats would go to all the bother of this massive fraud, while they were at it why didn’t they also ensure firmer control of the U.S. Senate and House, plus a bunch of key state offices?

Occam’s razor says: Biden cleaned Trump’s clock, plain and simple. The rest is loser whining.

Event: Trump urges crowd at a Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6, 2021, to march on the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 election result. Some in that crowd storm the Capitol, battling with Capitol and D.C. Metro police. Roaming mobs force lawmakers to adjourn and flee to safety. The rioters only disperse after Trump, browbeaten by his family and staff, finally tells them to.

MAGA Theory: Trump supporters were peaceful. It was Antifa anarchists posing as Trump supporters who fomented and committed the violence.

Problems with the MAGA Theory: At least 910 people have been charged in connection with their actions on Jan. 6. About 180 have been sentenced, with about 80 receiving prison time. Under oath, not a single one professed allegiance to Antifa. Many spoke candidly of their loyalty to Trump.

Occam’s razor says: When people tell you who they are, believe them.  All those people waving Trump flags, chanting his name and quoting his words were not double agents. They really were MAGA loyalists there to do his bidding.

Event: Trump now faces multiple ongoing state and federal investigations into serious charges about his role in the Jan. 6 coup attempt and his removal of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate, as well as other deeds.

MAGA Theory: Trump is at once the greatest American president and the most persecuted. His vile enemies will stop at nothing, no matter how spurious, to prevent him from holding power. The Mueller probe, the two impeachments, the sanctions against his family foundation, and the blizzard of legal activity now – all witch hunts, every last one.

Problems with the MAGA Theory: Somebody is corrupt and lying here. Could it be every career employee in the FBI and Justice Department, as well as various state attorneys general and county prosecutors, not to mention dozens of judges who’ve approved search warrants and issued rulings allowing cases to proceed? Or is it just Trump? Did I mention that many of the people who’ve conducted probes, or approved warrants, are lifelong Republicans, including Robert Mueller?

Occam’s razor says: Odds are the reason Trump is perpetually under investigation is not that he is being unfairly persecuted. It is far more likely that he is a corrupt liar with chronic contempt for the rule of law.

OK, why review all this, most of which you already know? Because it’s desperately important, in our divided nation with its survival as a functioning democracy at stake, that we attempt something that’s hard.

We must embrace opportunities to talk with the reasonable people who might still be inclined, out of family tradition or long-held policy views, to vote in favor of a party that now has decided, tragically, to go steady with lawlessness, fascism and white supremacy. Occam’s razor is a very useful tool to bring to those difficult conversations.

I know that many of you think: What’s the point? I’ll never change their minds.

You’re right, wholly changing someone’s views is not a reasonable goal for one conversation. But opening minds a crack, letting a little light into mental silos, is.

I concede that some folks deep into Q-Anon and MAGA-think are too far gone right now for even me, the dialogue optimist, to think I could do much to crack open their mental prison. But not all Republican voters are like that; they are troubled by what they see. Still, it remains a very hard thing to vote against the party you’ve embraced your whole life. 

Think, fellow Democrats: What would it take for you to vote for a Republican for a federal office? (And not one from this Republican Party, no. The current GOP is hopeless and unworthy. But, say, a party led by Liz Cheney, Adam Kenzinger, Jeff Flake et al.) 

That vote would take a whole hell of a lot. It would entail mental and emotional pain. Would it help you get there if all the other side did was shun you and dismiss you with words ending in “ist”? If all you had access to were the half-truths and full-on lies peddled by the captive media of your lifelong party? Of course not.

Millions of Republicans (not, sadly, a majority, but millions) sense that their lifelong political home has become a prison of lies. But escaping is hard work. It’s human nature to cling to the gentler of the MAGA lies listed above as a shield against unpleasant truths.

Why not help such folks glimpse a way out, instead of showing them your back?

At the same time, it is well-established that merely flinging facts at people does not work. Facts bounce off mental frames. What works is listening, asking questions, admitting your own doubts, before offering your views.

Occam’s razor helps you do that. Once you’ve introduced the concept, you can slide salient facts into the conversation by way of questions like:

• Doesn’t it seem a bit unlikely that…?  
• Can you help me understand how something like that might work…?
• Can you lay out why would someone go to all that trouble just to do that?
• Given x, y and z, what’s your theory on how that could still be true?
• If it was terrible when x did it, and I’m not disputing that it was, why is it OK for y to do it?

Now, in such a conversation, no one is going to break down like a witness at the end of Law and Order and cry out, “You’re right! I admit my sins!” But the sliver of light this civil conversation could inject into their psyches might keep working its way around their brain, expanding in time into a changed view.

It’s worth a try. ‘Cause what we’re doing now ain’t working.