> No, it was explicitly to change the outcome of the election

Exactly what part of my comment refutes this? Ultimately the end result of all outcomes I listed (from the perspective of someone who believes the election was stolen, aka not me), would lead to a change in the outcome of the election.

> See, you bought the lie, so to you, stealing the election on the basis of a lie seems legitimate.

I'm uncertain if you are attacking a hypothetical here or me personally, but I feel it's the latter. Are you implying I "bought into" the lie of Trump's supporters or from Trump himself?

> The problem with "alternative facts" (such as the idea that republican officials and Republican poll watchers in 5 different states all conspired to steal the election from Trump) is that when you believe them, all sorts of horrible behavior seems justified, and in fact you believe that your side "isn't going far enough!"

You say that but is that necessarily true? What exactly has the party that always claims to be armed and ready to overthrow the government done when faced with a scenario where they believe there was a stolen election? We can agree to disagree on this but I still have trouble wrapping my head around why people are so hysterical about random unarmed people loitering around the capitol building.

It's certainly a far cry from actual insurrections:

* Like when Puerto Rican nationalists broke in and shot at members of the house of representatives (and were later pardoned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_United_States_Capitol_sho...

* Or when the capitol building was bombed by Weather Underground (also pardoned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Weatherman_actions#197...

To make my position on this more clear, my concern here is not the election itself, its this growing anti free speech movement spurred by fear of these "Alternative Facts". I'll remind that this is in-fact a discussion on the public's trust in the media and I believe apologists such as yourself are "buying into" their lie that this was a bigger deal than it really was. In order to retain their position as guardians of the "truth", they spread fear to achieve their goals like they always do.

The web provides us direct access to the discussions of people from all kinds of backgrounds and political ideology. One can easily get a feel for the "other sides" perspective on nearly any issue. I'm not talking about the issues themselves but the people who believe in them and why. Yet far, far too often, people rely on talking heads with an agenda, to TELL them what and why people believe something, often exaggerating or misrepresenting their intentions to make them out to be some kind of ultimate evil.

I'm not saying the election was stolen and I'm not saying they were right. I'm saying you don't have as complete a picture of this as you are suggesting because you didn't get your "Facts" from a primary source.

Exhibit A:

> such as the idea that republican officials and Republican poll watchers in 5 different states all conspired to steal the election from Trump

The impetus of all this, for many conservatives in the online discussions I was following (but not participating). Was explicitly that Republican poll watchers were complaining about their level of access to the ballot counters. Their access was restricted due to Covid, and they were disputing this restriction directly on social media.

This detail is far easier to overlook when you are fed all of your positions by journalists spinning a narrative that makes this out to be far less complicated than the reality of the circumstances. Personally I consider "spin" to be functionally the same as lying.