They deny proven geoscience techniques, but only when applied to paleoclimatology because it shows climate change exists. They don’t question that same science when it finds the oil with which to fuel their cars or the metals to manufacture their phone.
They oppose puberty blockers, but only for trans youth. They didn’t even know cisgender minors receive identical medicine, but now that they do, they’re okay with cis kids getting it. Not trans kids though.
They enjoy neighborhoods where shops and services don’t need a car to get to. Having things within 10 minutes reach is fine, but mention 15 minutes and out comes the conspiracy theories.
They are hyper-fixated on very specific things, and yet they know nothing about it beyond a few talking points, much less be cognizant of adjacent areas of interest. They’ve never listened to a trans youth or picked up a book on geology.
But fear thrives in ignorance and they were brought to this place of fear by those they see on social media and tv. By actors for whom the subject is more about opportunism than anything, akin to has-been comedians picking on minorities. So your uncle might have never cared about trans youth, until posts on Facebook and/or segments on Fox News induced him to feel something about it. Enough of a something that drove others to government policy and terrorism. Or enough of a something for your uncle to share transphobic posts of his own on Facebook.
We all know people like this. We also all know people consider themselves sympathetic with trans people, but take great offence if trans folk are insufficiently reverent to disinformation about them in exchanges with bigots.
If we exclusively entertain the viewpoints of transphobes at face value as liberals and conservative would have us do, if we keep polite discussions as one party makes monsters out of trans bodies, then we will progress but we won’t stop this hyper-fixation from morphing into the next one.
Because the issue is less trans youth, climate change, or 15 minute cities as it is the systems people have to derive conclusions when presented with information. People have different standards for what makes something credible, and these differing standards do not produce equal outcomes. For some, their inner system to work out these conclusions may make them susceptible to fall for debunked claims despite, say, believing themselves to be an informed skeptic. The issue then is a deficit in media literacy and basic education in science so that the latter does not become this black box to insert fears in. It’s also about how values instilled in early life develop into feelings later on, and how those feelings drive adults to start with desired outcomes (“trans people icky, no want trans!”) and come up with justifications later.
The issue to address then when one of these subjects comes up is less what beliefs the person has, but why they have them. If there’s a debate on trans people, shift the framing to the person with anti-trans beliefs and make the debate their proclivity for disinformation. That’s the takeaway, instead of the fictions they’ve been given a platform to amplify.