I'm not at all shy about wading in on people's social media posts and expressing my disagreement. I make a few exceptions: family members of my parents' generation and an subset of my friends' list (who shall remain unnamed) who I have learned from experience take offense very easily yet whom I wish to maintain cordial relations with. Most of the people with whom I interact on a regular basis have similar political and culture views to mine, and if there any who don't, they choose not to express those views on social media.
Even when it comes to Donald Trump, a president whom I find corrupt and incompetent, there are areas of disagreement where I will entertain an opposing view. For example, even though he clearly doesn't understand economics, in particular tariffs, his "get tough on China" stance is reasonable. Trump has managed to avoid getting us into any new wars, and even though he hasn't done it yet, he talks about withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan, a position that most Americans agree with.
But what I have seen over the last few years, and in particular since the presidential election, is a complete willingness to believe anything that Trump says, despite evidence to the contrary. The claims of massive and widespread election fraud, not only isn't "a matter of opinion", but have been debunked repeatedly by election officials in every state, some of whom are Republicans, and rejected in courtroom after courtroom. Trump lawyers themselves have, when questioned in court, denied that their lawsuits are allegations of fraud, but are seeking to disallow votes on technical grounds, such as improper absentee ballot rules and the existence of drop boxes.
Hard core Trump supporters believe, based on Trump's word, that Republicans who decline to break the law and invalidate thousands of votes, are somehow not really Republicans but RINOs - Republicans In Name Only, as if the test of a true Republican is unwavering loyalty to Trump.
They really believe that, not only did Trump win the election, but that he won "by a landslide", by "a lot", and "easily".
They have convinced themselves that ballots cast in the name of dead people or otherwise conjured from the ether, tipped the balance to Joe Biden, even when Republican House members and Senators in those same states and on the same ballots were elected.
They imagine that poll workers threw ballots marked for Trump in the trash and scanned Biden ballots multiple times.
They are certain that a far-reaching conspiracy involving the DNC, the Biden campaign, poll workers and election commissioners throughout the country, judges in (so far) close to 40 jurisdictions, Republican governors and Secretaries of State, and the Supreme Court, has subverted the will of the people to attempt to oust Trump from office.
They ignore the fact that Trump's Election Integrity Commission was disbanded within a year after finding no organized election fraud.
They ignore the ongoing efforts of state Republican governors and legislatures to make it more difficult to vote, targeting with almost surgical precision, demographics that tend to vote for Democrats. This includes reducing polling places and indiscriminate purging of voter rolls.
They point to the many affidavits by Trump supporters and the Trump campaign alleging fraudulent activity and ignore the explanations from local election officials that these allegation, virtually without exception, either result from a lack of understanding of ordinary procedure or reading into innocent circumstances nefarious intent (such as the poll worker who thought it suspicious that food for only about a third of poll workers arrived at lunchtime while a white van was parked outside)
Now we have the spectacle of the State of Texas suing to invalidate all the electoral votes in four states that went for Biden. Not for fraud, mind you, but for technicalities and disagreement over procedures.
But despite all of the evidence that there wasn't fraud on any detectable scale, despite Trump's own attorneys saying that they aren't alleging fraud, and 40 judges saying that no evidence of fraud has been presented, and even this move by Texas, because Trump, on Twitter, says that he won in a landslide, easily, by a lot and that there was fraud and an attempt to steal the election...that's what people believe.
We have a lot of idiots in this country.
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