This is a thought-provoking take. I appreciate your sharing.
I may be misinterpreting your analogy so forgive me if this is off, but it seems this implies a heavy amount of cynicism on the part of Trump supporters. Is it that they willfully, and cynically, suppress intelligence in order to bore through the hill to achieve their goals? Is it even willful and thus, if not willful, could not be called cynical?
Lastly, it makes me consider how, and if, intelligence is connected to critical thinking. Critical thinking requires, in this aspect, analytical skills in judging source materials. This is all anecdotal, but it seems a not insignificant portion of MAGA believe their critical thinking skills are acute because they see through the veil of delusion that the media/government/society has draped over the masses. They think their conspiracy theories are the real truth and thus they have an exceptionally high level of critical thinking. However, we know that is hogwash. Their "sources" can be easily debunked. Yet, our debunking is often seen as proof by them that we are "brainwashed" (or another term for not willing to see the "truth").
This is extremely frustrating to me. It is a lack of critical thinking that they disguise as superior critical thinking and we are full of avenues (social media, etc.) that serve to reinforce this belief. I wish I knew how to combat this.
You're right to bring critical reasoning into this, and I should revise my analogy appropriately. Also, I think version 2.0 will be somewhat more apt.
So in the physics analogy, the electron tunnels through an energy barrier. Here, we should think of the barrier as "reasoning required to get to a specific belief." I'm not sure this is the same as motivated reasoning, because that implies conscious effort. In MAGA world, the specific belief could be simply a desire that the world makes as much sense to them now as it did 20 years ago, or it could be a belief in the superiority of white civilization, or just a general discomfort with the minorities they were raised to sneer at. The specifics don't matter all that much. They have lots of different conspiracy theories to govern different aspects of their lives.
The point is that they know they are supposed to get there with critical reasoning. And we know this because of their catch phrase, "do your own research." Most of them aren't saying, "I know this vaccine is evil because God told me so." Sometimes they admit that they are talking with their feelings (especially with the "millions of Americans agree with me that Bill Gates put microchips in the vaccines" dodge), but for the most part, they structure their arguments as if they were the product of critical reasoning. They use the tools of critical reasoning. But the tools don't get them over the barrier of rationality so they just tunnel right through. I'm not sure if they do it consciously or not.
But let's imagine a scene involving some of these people:
Thought 1: "I should take this COVID vaccine. It might save my life."
Thought 2: "Trump has been telling us to use medicines like ivermectin and hydroxy-etc. The experts have been telling us they don't work. Those are the experts who developed the vaccine."
Thought 3: [this one might be unacknowledged] If the vaccine is good, it means Trump was wrong
Thought 4: "But vaccines are good. Vaccines save lives. I know this deep down because nobody gets polio any more. So I can't just criticize vaccines. It has to be something about this vaccine."
Thought 5: "But I don't know how this vaccine works. I don't understand molecular biology."
Thought 6: "If the vaccine would magnetize me, that would be a good reason not to take it."
And then we get the spectacle of someone testifying to Congress that they became magnetic after taking the vaccine. They go with the magnetism explanation because there's nowhere left to go. They don't have enough critical reasoning to get over the barrier, either because the barrier shouldn't be avoided (i.e. it's the truth, like the fact that vaccines save lives) or because they aren't able to do it (whether it's lack of intelligence, facility with critical and fact-based argument, or some other factor). They end up going right through it.
It's an interesting question whether they would go to such lengths if not engaged in dialogue with us. We are the ones who press them on things like "vaccines work." If you took a thousand MAGAs to an isolated island and let them live there for a decade, form a government, do what they need to do to survive -- would they still be spouting so much bullshit? They might get to the same place, but without the express stupidity. Maybe they won't feel the need to rebut vaccines work; they just all mutually assume that it's not true and don't talk about it too much.
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As for the Supreme Court justices and other highly educated people, it's definitely intentional. John Roberts knows when he's writing a shit opinion. His tone is different. Same with some of the others, though there's less of a control group because they rarely write non-shit opinions. He's more strident when defending the indefensible, and uses absolutes more often. It's like in Bruen, when they refer to the Second Amendment's "unqualified demand" (reality: the Second Amendment is the most qualified right on its face, and indeed the only right subject to an express qualification standing apart). Or this passage from Trump v United States:
"Unable to muster any meaningful textual or historical support, the principal dissent suggests that there is an “established understanding” that “former Presidents are answerable to the criminal law for their official acts.” Conspicuously absent is mention of the fact that since the founding, no President has ever faced criminal charges—let alone for his conduct in office. And accordingly no court has ever been faced with the question of a President’s immunity from prosecution. All that our Nation’spractice establishes on the subject is silence. "
So he wrote that despite arguing in the previous paragraph that the text of the constitution is irrelevant to this issue. So it's weird for him to complain that the dissent has no textual support when he has less. It's also weird for him to accuse the dissent of having no historical support. And it's super, super weird for him to cite the fact that this has never happened before as a point in his favor, when it is very clearly the opposite. We never needed presidential immunity for presidents to be effective and not act criminally. Only one president required that, and he is also the only one who has talked about weaponizing the justice system, and thus the problem is clearly with that president.
He absolutely knows that his contention that "The dissents’ positions in the end boil down to ignoring the Constitution’s separation of powers and the Court’s precedent and instead fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the President “feels empowered to violate federal criminal law" is ridiculous. In any other context, he would immediately assume that the lack of penalty for criminal behavior makes people more likely to act criminally. The separation of powers has nothing to do with it (not to mention that separation of powers, if relevant, cuts against his position).
In every one of his most preposterous opinions, there are points of stridency and wild accusations that just don't appear in his more sober opinions. The MO is similar: what about this thing I just made up don't you understand, silly dissenters? He doesn't adopt that tone in his abortion opinions, even when he's been on the flip side (i.e. when he wanted to alter Roe to protect the embryo until 15 weeks only). He knows that position isn't transparently silly.
