Reality Deniers

It is an unexpected relief to find that election deniers running for office in the 2022 midterm elections largely lost their races. This seems to indicate that the bulk of voters in the United States do not buy the narrative created by Donald Trump (and seized upon by opportunist Republican politicians and perhaps uninformed voters) regarding his loss to Joe Biden. I use this characterization because no compelling evidence of election fraud has been demonstrated by those who claim to support this narrative. Of course they can always blame the liberally biased media for this lack of evidence, but I suspect this oft used excuse to deny facts put forth in the media rings hollow to most people. Not that a liberal bias does not exist, but even if it does, this does not mean that everything it puts forth is a lie. The failure of most election denying candidates to win political office seems to support this.

It is not surprising that election deniers also tend to deny the reality of the events on January 6. These events were of course former President Donald Trump inciting a mob of his followers to attack the US Capitol in order to disrupt the confirmation of Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election. In a recent exchange in the comment section of the far right wing blog The Orthosphere for a post entitled “The Beast Speaks,” Orthosphere writer JMSmith writes:

It is my opinion that no one proposed to hog tie legislators with zip ties on January 6. There is no logical path from hog-tied legislators to a second term for Donald Trump. There is no logical path from a mob disrupting Congress to a second term for Donald Trump. There is no logical path from Mike Pence with a hemp necktie to a second term for Donald Trump. I, who think January 6 was a joke, would have protested a second term for DT by these means.

I agree that there is no logical path from a mob disrupting Congress to a second term for Donald Trump. However, just because there is no logical path, that does not mean that the events did not happen. The videos of the former president’s speech clearly exist. As do the videos of the violent attack. And yet even this clear evidence of these two events are not enough to convince a person who is emotionally invested in this sort of denialism. Another (frequently emotional) Orthosphere contributor T.Morris commented:

Yeah, I watched “Shadowland” too. It isn’t very convincing; it’s just several The Atlantic “reporters” (mostly female) going out and finding the craziest “right-wing” conspiratorialists in the country and acting as though they are representative of the “pro-Trump” movement.

I have never heard of this “Shadowland” T.Morris seemed to be excited about. However, I was a little confused as to his implications. The video of Trump’s speech clearly shows him telling the mob to go to the Capitol. The video also clearly shows the attack on the Capitol. What does T.Morris’ “Shadowland” have to do with it? It is not as if the subsequent production of this movie changes the events captured on video on January 6th. T.Morris goes on to argue:

[Shadowland was produced by] The Atlantic magazine and its pool of mostly female writers/reporters, in collaboration with Peacock, as in “Proud as a Peacock,” as in NBC, as in Main. Stream. Media. As in, you’re a fool if you believe this stupid-ass shit, whether you’ve seen “Shadowland” or not …You might just as well join with the kooks nominally “on our side” who are always yapping about “chem-trails” and whatnot. I mean, act like you have some goddamn sense.

I think T.Morris is trying to argue that because “Shadowland” (I movie I have never heard of) was produced by NBC, which happens to be a “mainstream media” outlet, whatever argument it made has to be false. If that is T.Morris’ argument, I find nothing logical or convincing about it. Yes, NBC is a mainstream news media outlet, but it also produces a lot of content that is not news. That does not mean that their other content necessarily reflects on their news reporting. But even if one were to accept that argument, T.Morris’ “Shadowland” was produced after the events. I got my information from the live footage, not from this movie T.Morris was raving about.

In any case it seems silly to me to even have to make this argument. The facts are clear for anyone who chooses to see them. It is also clear that some people are hell bent on not seeing them. This is fine with me because the 2020 midterm elections are over and based on the results, it would seem that most people in the US are not buying the specious arguments propagated by former President Trump. Some are, but thank God, not enough to make a difference in the long run.

For the record, I certainly did not vote for any election denier, but I also did vote for any woke candidates either. I do not hold with extremists on either side of the political spectrum.

Casting my Lot

I recently received an absentee ballot in the mail for my daughter who is attending her first semester of college. It got me to thinking. The upcoming midterm elections will be the first election of national scope that she will participate in. A new generation has joined the voter rolls. The system (although tested of late) is still functioning. No doubt it will be tested again come November. But no matter. I believe there are enough citizens (like myself) who are not yet ready to give up on the election system in the United States.

But there are certainly those who are not only ready to give up on the system, but desire to actively seek to undermine it. Recently, I exchanged words with a neighbor of mine on the subject. My position is that the election system in America is based (in large part) on the faith of the voters in the integrity of the system. Up until the 2020 Presidential election when Donald Trump refused to recognize the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory, faith in the system ran high enough for it to function normally. However, Trump’s followers seem to want to believe what he says and despite there being no evidence of election fraud, the mere fact that he claimed it was sufficient to cause them to loose faith. But really they had no faith in the system to begin with and were willing to jump onto any movement that agreed with them. This was evidenced by his response to my assertion that there was no evidence of election fraud. He responded by sarcastically deriding my belief in the system in the first place. It did not pass without my notice that he chose to defame voting itself (and my adherence to it) rather than pursue the argument that fraud did in fact take place.

It seems we live in a time when red lines are being crossed or there are threats of crossing them. Donald Trump refusing to concede the election after he legitimately lost is one red line crossing. Now Vladimir Putin threatens to cross another red line by using nuclear weapons to reverse his losses in Ukraine. Perhaps it is the spirit of the times. But this spirit is an odious one that reeks of sour grapes, sore loserism and intellectual dishonesty. But no matter. My sense is that the United States and its election system will prevail in this current challenging time. It has been through challenging time in the past and emerged all the stronger for it. I see no reason why this time should be different. Is it a perfect system? Probably not, but unlike rigid authoritarian regimes it has the ability to adapt and grow and for this reason, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I choose to cast my lot with it. We shall see what happens.

An Intellectually Dishonest Game

There are many people who claim the 2020 Presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden to the detriment of Donald Trump. Notably, there seems to be no clear evidence to support this claim. Former Attorney General (and Trump partisan) Bill Barr clearly stated that there is no evidence to support claims of a stolen election. All of former President Trumps legal attempts to overturn the election were fruitless. The “evidence” I have seen supplied by the supporters of the stolen election theory consist of articles or movies making accusations without sources. The supporters of the stolen election theory support this “evidence” by claiming that the “mainstream media” is biased in favor of liberals and Democrats and therefore, nothing printed in the mainstream media can be trusted. As I have discussed before, this convenient and specious crutch employed by some conservatives allows them to reject actual facts and to believe whatever they wish to believe.

It is interesting that many of the same people who claim the 2020 Presidential election was stolen also espouse anti-democratic sentiments, even anti-American sentiments. Obviously, pushing a story that the 2020 election had been stolen serves to undermine faith in the democratic institutions and to do this without proper evidence seems (at best) intellectually dishonest. What makes this especially intellectually dishonest is the fact that the same people pushing this story espouse anti-democratic views. If their goal is to undermine democratic institutions in order to replace them with something different then the intellectually honest position would be to make that argument and let the chips fall where they may. By all appearances, however, the intellectually dishonest game they choose to play is to push an unsupported story about a stolen election (either through willful ignorance or outright duplicity) in order to dupe a conspiracy minded base into believing it and to support the political candidates who pay lip service to it. This is intellectually dishonest because seems to profess support for free and fair elections when in fact its true aim is the direct opposite. That is, the real motivation is to weaken and destroy democratic institutions so that they can be replaced with some form of autocracy. I suspect the real motivation at the heart of this movement is a generalized feeling of scorn and disgust for the bulk of humanity.

The “Mainstream Media” Myth

The Trump supporters of the Orthosphere are so blinded by their own rhetoric, and so reinforced by their echo chambers that they will reject actual evidence presented to them as a product of the mainstream media and therefore automatically false. In full honesty, I do recognize some degree of bias in the mainstream media, however, this does not mean that everything printed in the mainstream media is automatically false. I have observed this myth of the “mainstream media” conveniently abused by conservatives in order to reject evidence before.

Here is a recent example of what I describe. In this comment thread to an Orthosphere blog post the argument was made that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were on par with Trump’s claims of election fraud. When I pointed out that Hillary Clinton actually conceded the election, I received this response:

Hillary conceded – not personally, but by the offices of her campaign manager (for she was too distraught and terrified and drunk to do it herself) – because it was quite apparent to her, and to everyone on Earth, that despite her campaign’s concoction of a false story of Russian interference in the election, she had definitively lost.

I cannot find a source that confirms the claim that Hillary Clinton did not call Donald Trump to concede the election. In fact I have found sources that describe the call she made. Hillary Clinton made a public concession speech as well. But again, even though these events are documented, (I imagine) they can be dismissed, simply because they appeared in “mainstream” sources. Likewise, if some more “credible” (albeit secret) source can be produced saying the opposite without evidence, it is to be believed, because the mainstream media is biased.

He goes on to say:

Trump per contra refused to concede because he believed that the 2020 election had been massively corrupted, and that he had in fact won by a landslide. His claims in respect to the 2020 election have not been decisively controverted.

The one making the accusation bears the burden of proof. If the election was in fact “massively corrupted” and Trump in fact won by a landslide, there certainly must exist some evidence to support this. But I have yet to see it. On the contrary, the January 6th Committee has produced testimony from former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr saying Trump’s claims of election fraud are “bullshit”. This is significant, not only because Bill Barr was the Attorney General at the time of the election and would be in a position to know whether actual fraud took place, but also because Bill Barr was a Trump loyalist and was arguably making a statement against his own interest in contradicting Trump’s stories. We must also remember that the federal courts threw out all of Trump’s challenges to the election. Some of these federal judges were Trump appointments. Do not forget the Arizona audit which found no evidence of corruption or fraud. Even though those making the argument that Joe Biden won the election fairly do not carry the burden of proof, they most certainly could carry that burden easily. No, Trump refused to concede the election because he is a narcissist who wanted to stay in power and had no respect for (or likely knowledge of) the political institutions and traditions of the United States.

He continues:

On the contrary, they have been massively supported (albeit, not as reported by the mainstream media, upon which you seem to rely).

Here we see the false argument that nothing the mainstream media reports is true. If Trump’s claims have been “massively” supported, where is the evidence? When confronted with this question previously, the author of this quoted comment reluctantly offered the movie “2000 Mules” which he later admitted he had never seen. He then also referenced an article that misstated Georgia law and made a great deal of accusations without any supporting evidence.

He continues:

This is in stark contrast to the 2016 election, in which it is obvious that the Hillary campaign paid for and arranged the specious claims of Russian interference.

Russian interference in the 2016 election is well documented.

The Hillary campaign of 2016 lied, enormously, and manifestly. The Trump campaign of 2020 merely raised questions, which have not been answered.

The question will never be answered satisfactorily to someone who refuses to consider evidence that does not support his point of view. The “mainstream media” myth is an incredibly convenient crutch to lean upon. In this way even the concept of objective truth can be dismissed (while at the same time paid lip service to).

Election 2016

There seems to be a lot of emotion erupting in response to the election of the 45th President of the United States. It also seems to be the case that this emotion has been festering beneath the surface for some time now. The country is divided between two political / cultural camps that are growing more inflexible and further apart every year.

There are anti-Trump protesters taking to the streets. Perhaps this is what they need to do to vent their emotion to prevent a bottle up and an even more violent explosion. There are those observers (both liberals and conservatives) who say these protesters should just get over it because Trump won under the rules of the game and complaining about it after the fact does not accomplish anything. There are those who say we should amend the constitution to remove the electoral college. There are those who are elated that Trump struck a blow against the PC liberals who have dominated the political landscape for too long. There are those who remind us that at the end of the day we are all Americans. There are also those who did not vote for Trump but who are willing to see how things will shake out. I am sure there are many other iterations but these are the ones that come to my mind as most prominent.

I cannot help but feel a little detached from the whole thing. I voted for Hillary and was pretty confident that she was going to win. On election day I was surprised and disappointed that she lost. I felt bad for her and for President Obama whom I admire a great deal. I have a hard time seeing the host of Celebrity Apprentice as the 45th President of the United States. There is something about this situation that seems a little off to me. I do not want him to roll back the progress made on environmental legislation and the Affordable Care Act. I am uncomfortable with Trump’s apparent association with hate groups. I am uncomfortable with the lashing out of these hate groups after Trump won the election. I wonder why they are lashing out since the election produced the result they were looking for. I am processing a lot of emotions and thoughts but on the whole I feel detached from the whole situation.

I guess I would say that I am willing to see where this thing goes. I find it interesting from a cultural and historical prospective. I also find it interesting and entertaining from a human drama perspective. But for some reason (and maybe this is a good thing) I just cannot get emotionally invested to the point where I would want to protest or even speak up the way many of the people I know are doing.

I find myself strangely drawn to Trump’s youngest son Barron. Whenever I see him on TV he looks uncomfortable and scared. I feel sorry for him and I am not entirely sure why. Yes he looks painfully uncomfortable and I have compassion for him in that regard. But I also suspect on some level he embodies the apprehensive mindset that describes the half of the country who did not vote for Trump.