FE has implications for me that casual FErs might not realize.
First, in science class, they didn't say "believe this just because we told you". In 4th grade, we made inclinometers and used them to get an angle on the north star. Then we looked up our latitude, it matched. The teacher then drew a diagram of round earth with people on it and showed how their latitude was equal to the angle they would see to the north star. This was the beginning of education in science through university where we did as many of the actual experiments as practical, we did the math, we saw diagrams, etc.
According to FE I was "brainwashed", but to me that means "too stupid to see through that crap". After all, FErs figured it out, often say it is obvious. So RE must be too dumb to see. Then I look at FE posts and videos and compare it to my fourth grade teacher presentation. Really? 4th grade teacher was tight, clear, simple, complete and explained it. There is no youtube video to explain north star inclination = latitude, I have looked.
Second, I grew up at Edwards AFB USAF Flight Test Center/NASA Dryden/rocket test site where my father worked. My father and most of my friend's fathers worked at test center, nasa, rocket site, astronaut training school, Lockheed, and North American. The first scenes of "The Right Stuff" were filmed there, some in a house exactly like mine. Where they first broke the speed of sound, Yeager. Space shuttle has landed there. I saw SR-71 AND b-70 take off and land. Two X-15 pilots lived on my street, I knew their kids. I asked one if he saw the curve of the earth (through a flat rectangular window), he laughed and said "yes, everybody asks that." Sonic booms all day.
Our fathers got us into very cool aerospace tech places, one father brought home a genie bottle of liquid nitrogen and we did the freeze flower and shatter it, just like the science films. I was in aerospace explorers, tours of Pt Mugu and Goldstone radiotelescopes, climbed all over the test stand for Saturn V, saw (and heard tests of it). Neil Young gave a speech to my high school science class before he went to the moon. After they taught us the periodic chart, we made explosives (chlorine pellets from my backyard pool and some gasoline in a used CO2 cartridge mortar bomb, for one).
In college, I had a summer intern job at the flight test center computer where they were doing data analysis of the then new F-15. My girlfriend summer interned at NASA Dryden, where her father worked on very high temperature glue. I had lunch there and got tours. My best friend's father was an engineer working on the lunar module. The lunar lander was first tested at Edwards. We followed this stuff like other kids followed sports teams.
My father worked on the Saturn V tests. When they fired one off, you could see it and hear it in town. Impressive. Later my father worked on the SR-71, first at the "skunk works", then at area 51.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
My youth was immersed in aerospace, and I personally knew two men who went over 200,000 feet in the X-15. Our fathers were mostly WW2 vets, what Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation". FErs would say they were a bunch of people doing phony things who lacked the ability that FErs have to see through it. The FErs have to be a lot smarter than literal rocket scientists.
So my father was a liar and I am brainwashed, or both brainwashed? Conspiracy theories are not harmless, they hurt people. And I defy you to define the edges of the conspiracy of how ten, or a hundred, or a thousand could do all the required shenanigans to fool billions.
It was miserable living at Edwards, 60 mph wind, 115 degree heat, no trees, tumbleweeds in my yard, out in the middle of nowhere, could get down to zero in winter, once it snowed 2 feet - high desert is a bitch and I hated it. But we did it, to do our tiny part so that USA could have fighters and rockets. And at least I got one of the coolest tech childhoods ever.