Self-delusion.
Wait, you mean the right wing "hate machine" "conned" someone into believing that their message was good?
It's better late than never my friend.
You know when I became a conservative? I was 9 years old and Jimmy Carter was doing nothing about American hostages in Iran, he told America they were in a "malaise" as a way to tell us why we were faced with double digit unemployment, interest rates and crumbling steel and auto industries. My father, working for U.S. Steel went to work every day and I was convinced because of liberal leadership that every Friday may be the last day paycheck he ever collected at his job.
Then along came Ronaldus Magnus and told us of a shining city on the hill and that it was morning in America again. He identified evil in the modern world, the USSR, and set us apart from the world which we are. I saw first hand in trips to East Germany and Berlin that our country was ideed on the side of right and free people don't live behind gun towers, mine fields and barbed wire.
Being a student of history at 10 I knew of the Soviet pogroms, military purges, forced collectivization, gulags, the betrayal of Eastern Europe at Potsdam and the like. The fact that a 10 year old boy could identify evil and the American left could not is something that stuck with me for life. To this day they still cannot identify the forces of evil in this world.
I say welcome but I have to wonder, why did a ten year old boy see this and you didn't for the 35 years I've been alive?
Self-delusion.
We all weren't born the same person -- with the same experiences in life.
Any time a person sees the light, is the right time for them. It took whatever it took to get them there. What matters is that they got there -- and where they go from here.
In 1977, as a HS sophomore, I went on a student tour of Europe. We flew from Athens to Belgrade, and landed at the national airport of Yugoslavia. Between the runways, a crop of wheat was being harvested by old women using hand scythes, while able-bodied young men in uniforms and carrying machine guns watched from across the tarmac.
I learned that day all I ever needed to know about Communism. Later, in college, when the leftists tried to speak of the wonders of socialism, I knew that they were just gullible dupes.
For the same reason the fablelist had a child identify the naked emperor as having no clothes while the "adults" were cowardly in their enabling!