“I’m guessing a break with reality, due to some deep contradiction in how they see/saw the world?”
Nah, it’s just ordinary run of the mill emotional thinking and rationalizations, instead of reason. It happens to everyone, not just those on the left.
Where we disagree I guess is that I hope this kind of thinking is not “run of the mill”, and I think the emotions involved are being repressed. The thing about this sort of “skepticism” that gets to me is that it stops exactly where they want it to stop; it only exists to serve the purpose of the paranoia, and, being based on lack of reason, can’t be appealed to with facts. It’s like trying to argue a person out of a schizophrenic state.