The Arrogance of Ignorance
By: D J B
Tags: Politics, Trump, Violence, Lies, Election 2020

Photo by Julius Drost on Unsplash

Clicking around on Medium I found a post that listed some of the claims of why Biden only won the election by fraud. I read the claims. One said that there were more mail-in ballots counted in PA than were sent out. I Googled that claim to see if it was true. In less than half a second Google showed me six articles that explained why people believed that, and why they were wrong. I trusted the AP’s version.

I wrote a reply, asking basically, why do you continue to believe these things? I got a reply, from someone else, not the author. The commenter said that I had only refuted one of the four claims of fraud that was posted, so the rest must be true.

To that I answered this:

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“I don’t agree with that at all. First of all, I mentioned three reasons to disbelieve the hype that the election was a fraud: every court rejected the idea, Wm. Barr, Trump’s most loyal supporter and hitman, rejected the idea. Then I gave the example of how one of the popular clams of “fraud” was false.

Second. It is not up to me to refute every possible claim that Trump and his supporters invent. It really is up to people like you to do the work to check out what is true and what is not. It took me almost 90 seconds to read the article that explains away the claim about the number of ballots. You really have to ask yourself why you are so willing to believe increasingly ridiculous theories?

Third, you have to ask yourself, is there anything that you could learn that could change your mind? You know Trump is never going to admit that he lost. A month before the election he began to say that he would not accept a loss. He didn’t even try to win the popular vote. He tried to game the system with either the Electoral College or the Supreme Court. It didn’t work.

But, if you want to believe that green men in space ships put twenty-million ballots into two counties in PA, then I am not going to be able to refute that. But, maybe you should recheck your evidence.

It’s your right to believe what you want. But, if you want to live in a country where the rulers determine the outcome of the election, try Russia. They have the kind of government Trump was hoping to run. I don’t want that happening in America.”

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What is happening now, across the country is sad and dangerous. It is clear that the cult of Trump is holding fast to thousands, if not millions of people. I don’t know if all of those people actually believe what he says, but they certainly do what he wants. He lost the election. He doesn’t want to admit that, so they don’t either. He did the same thing about the virus. He somehow decided that the virus made him look bad. Kushner delayed testing and PPE because he thought it would make the Blue cities look bad.

I had written before that for a long time I thought Trump was a wannabe Putin. After the virus, and now with the election, he seems like a wannabe Jim Jones. I’m not the only one who has been saying that, several former Republicans are making that comparison.

I have heard other “mainstream” pundits try to predict where this is all going. There is a pandemic raging. Due to that, the economy will be tanking again until the vaccine gets distributed, which will take six to nine months. People are starving and being evicted. Millions of kids have lost a year of school. But the Republican Party is only talking about election fraud. I expect Ted Cruz and Jim Jordon to make angry speeches in their Congressional chambers. They will declare how America was deprived of the chance to believe their lies. My guess is that they would both like to run on a ticket together in 2024, and they need the Trump voters on their side.

Meanwhile, Trump seems determined to execute as many Black men as possible. Is he doing that to keep his base happy, or just because he is an angry, vengeful sadist?

I believe that Biden will be sworn in on January 20. Trump will probably not be there, even virtually, as he can’t stand not being the center of attention. He also likes getting donations to continue the fight, so he will never concede. He certainly doesn’t mind destroying our government if he can’t be President (even if he can).

But I can’t predict what will happen next. McConnell will do his best to continue to increase the country’s homeless population. Trump will do his best to keep the loyalty of his fans and to keep the anger boiling over. He will be distracted by his legal problems. Those will give him another reason to play the victim, skipping over the fact that he has always lied and defrauded people and governments.

Right now, I am sad for my country. America is the land of opportunity and innovation. People like Elon Musk and Kamala Harris’ parents came here because this is the place to make things happen that can change the world. But it seems to me, the underlying reason people are clinging so tightly to Trump is that he has promised them that he can stop the progress. He tells them they can keep their antiquated jobs, their cis genders, all the money they inherited, and their white privilege. He is telling them that he can turn America back to 1957.

It is obvious, that like almost everything else that Trump promises, like his healthcare plan, his deal with North Korea, that the virus will disappear by Easter, it won’t happen.

Yesterday, someone got shot and killed by a person in a Stop the Steal rally. There were also shootings and stabbings in other places. It has already come to that. Trump does nothing to stop the violence or calm the country. He drives away in his limousine to play golf.