>Nobody has a good explanation of what makes an otherwise normal, intelligent person believe Q-anon, for example.
It's easily explainable, on the contrary, it was an intelligence psyop using half-truths that was setup to perform the two fold-function of honeypotting and distracting the "conspiracy theorists" who might look into the Trump admin and understand it's real dark underbelly, which is completely different from the one the MSM pushed for four years, and then to be used as most limited hangout psyops are; as a tool to discredit genuine conspiracies as crazy by association.
So now people like you who are probably fairly intelligent, but probably not keeping up with the underlying truths in the "half-truths" side of the phenomenon that was Q, can easily just discredit those who believe it as uneducated (usually the nicest term used), without understanding how they got there, and that you also lack education, at least in that department.
So thats the sort of high level overview, but I can give you a few examples about how psyops manipulate otherwise intelligent people to buy into that sort of thing.
1. Hope and belief: After the war, I ended up becoming an atheist and started to notice in my studies on that topic, more specifically in conversations with old christian friends, that much of their belief system stemmed not from the truth of the matter, but from the hope it gave them. Further, from the need for hope, and need for belief it provided. Q-Anon exposes to some limited degree that the elites are up to some very shady shit, and then said: "Don't worry, it's being taken care of! Trump is a good guy, antiestablishment revolutionary who is going to take them down from the inside, and drain the swamp!" And for a certain amount of intelligent people who know the elite are indeed up to nefarious things, that's so tempting to want to believe! Having been on the Q-board from more or less day one, I do want to make a point that the first few months were full of very original and deep "bread" (research postings), by the more intelligent from the conspiracy and chan community. After a few months when the game became increasingly obvious to those people, but as it gained more noteriety and more normies showed up, the demographics shifted noticeably, primarily towards the religious right... a group who have already demonstrated their ability to suspend critical thinking when it comes to belief. The vast majority if not all of the people (besides the q psyop group themselves) that did the best work left knowning what the intent was (this was max a few months into the forced switchover to 8chan)
2. Real truths: I'll just come out and say what most of it really is: the multi-national, multi-intelligence agency compromise operations are completely out of control, and target most if not all high level politicians and businessmen. There is a myriad of evidence, buth deductive and inductive, to support this claim. Epstein was just a disposable middle manager in a blackmail network, for example. When analyzing this issue it quickly gets to the darker stuff people don't want to think about or talk about. My usual summary of how it works is that the order of operations for compromise/control go like this; idealogical - at a lower level , say a freshman state congressperson, having idealogical alignment is enough to get them to do what is wanted, no real overt control need be exerted, but lets go to the next level; bribery. This is standard congressional fare. Lunches, parties, pac donations, kickbacks of various kinds to both the campaign and to causes the campaign wants pushed, cushy jobs and kickbacks for relatives and friends of the congressperson, etc. All mostly legal, with a few outliers like Jack Abramoff pushing the edges of that level. What happens when you get a congress person who doesn't play ball though? This is where you start to run into the higher levels, such as pure blackmail. Cameras are setup, and it starts with the after-after-party, usually just drugs at first. Then it's hookers. Then it's underage hookers... and it gets worse. Human trafficking, and worse. If for some reason the rare person with integrety survives all this, that is when the threats begin (and they are not empty!). This is all true stuff. But no one is actually doing anything about it, because most of the people in a position to do so are already compromised are at the very least afraid.
What Q did was exploit that these things really happen, by creating a false narrative that tended to only focus on the democrats participation in this system (both parties are completely compromised in this way, anybody remember Dennis Hastert?), and then pretended to offer a (false) hope by saying Trump was an anti-establishment savior, despite his many connections to this very system! For example, his mentor Roy Cohn was a CIA and Lansky-gang (who blackmailed Hoover) connected pedo-blackmailer very much in the vein of Epstein! Then creating other false narratives to distance the more obvious connections between him and that world (for example, pushing the narrative that he didn't like Epstein because of his pedo-tendencies, but in reality their spat was over a real-estate deal that went sour, and had nothing to do with Trump having a higher moral compass (laugh) than Epstein). Then taking all these things and promising there was always some action going to be taken around the corner, next week, next month, next year, stay tuned, etc... and none of it ever materialized.
So for a people who find so much value in the need for hope and belief, mixing real truths with half-lies and then pretending something would be done was a recipe made in heaven for the people behind Qanon. The media, who didn't want to address any of this just lied through their teeth about the Russian narrative, created a reinforcement mechanism that they weren't to be trusted, which pushed even more "normies" over into Q-territory.
Now, as you see the push for censorship and castigation of all things Q-anon, remember all nuggets of truth inside the half-truths are going to be thrown out baby and bathwater style... and I argue that this was the main intention all along (along with the cries of "domestic terrorism" being used to push all kinds of horrible things). Cass Sunsteins cognitive infiltration system is at play and is the modern evolution of COINTELPRO.
PS. For just one example in a myriad, look up the Dutroux Affair, aka Belgiums X-Files sometime, if you think that darker stuff isn't true/doesn't happen. (warning, not for the faint of heart)