Election Madness and the Erosion of Our System: From Maddow to Hannity

 

No one wants to hear this but... the "stolen election" conspiracy theories Newsmax and OAN are spewing, that Trump supporters gobble up, are different only in degree, not kind, from the Russian collusion theories Hillary Clinton voters adored hearing from Rachel Maddow and her ilk re Hillary's defeat.

Yes, we can stipulate that there was indeed attempted Russian interference. But it was minuscule—enough to affect an election for dogcatcher in Podunk, maybe, but not enough to swing the presidential race. Hillary lost. Period.

Meanwhile, there's zero, none, no evidence for the Trump "stolen election" theories. Those are made up entirely of bad faith and vapor. The Trump lawyers argue a completely different set of facts and claims in court than the crazed fraud allegations they and Trump present to voters.

But Democratic and GOP conspiracy-believing voters have a few more things in common than any are likely to admit:

1) They each place a religion-like trust both their preferred "news" sources and their politicians. If voters in either group did some independent investigation (examine the evidence presented to respective courts and investigators instead of simply listening to their side's explanation of it) they'd discover that both "news" sources and pols were conning them; 

2) Neither group appears to want the evidence that they are (and were) being conned. How else to explain why they are so carefully selective with their "news" sources, and why many of them lash out when those sources are contradicted;

3) Each group believes the other group is crazy, deceitful, and/or clueless because members of each group are well aware of the shenanigans perpetrated by the rival group's "news" sources and pols (their "news" sources and pols have given them all the details) but blissfully unaware of those perpetrated by their side.

So, this is what we get in 2020 according to reporting today in the Washington Post. And it's not going to get better going forward unless/until citizens of the USA decide that they can handle--and will pay attention to--the truth. Read and weep. Better yet, watch the accompanying video:

>>It wasn’t just White men carrying the Trump flags and banners. Korean and Vietnamese immigrants, young gay couples and Black, White and Latina women, many with children, marched alongside conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and members of the Proud Boys hate group. They wound slowly from Freedom Plaza to the Capitol to the Supreme Court, demanding, among other things, that Biden be sent to prison and the election be handed to Trump. 

 

For hours, we talked to protesters who weren’t merely skeptical of the election outcome; they believed it to be a total fraud. They distrusted the count, the voting machines, the media that reported the results, even the state officials, many of them Republican, charged with certifying the outcome.<<