How did our democracy end up like this?

At first, I found the Republican’s embrace of Trump pretty funny. Watching the GOP go from neo-conservative to Trump’s personality cult was even somewhat entertaining to me. The party went from disavowing Trump, calling his candidacy a joke, to fully supporting him. I found it so strange how the entire GOP either rallied behind or sat by idly at all of Trump’s egregious missteps.

There are absolutely problems on the left in this country. Calls by AOC to “keep lists” of Trump supporters is something that I think is truly dumb. There is no good that will come from furthering divisiveness. Many people, myself included, have used rhetoric to attack both sides. I still think both sides in American politics are faulty, but I cannot pretend like the harms done from either side are comparable at this point.

The Republican party the past 4 years really has become a personality cult and rubber stamp for anything Trump says or does. It’s really bizarre, because these very same people spoke of the dangers of nominating someone like Trump. Even some of Trump’s closest allies, like Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz were both very vocal critics of Trump prior to him winning the 2016 election.

These very same people today are attempting to subvert the democratic process. Every single claim of voter fraud that has been brought to courts has been thrown out. Even by conservative, Trump appointed judges. There hasn’t been a single credible claim of widespread voter fraud. And this isn’t like the 2000 Bush v. Gore election which was decided by a few hundred votes in a single state. Trump lost by a pretty wide margin. He lost by over 80k votes in PA, over 11k in Georgia, and over 30k in Nevada. The irony is that some of the Republicans calling this election fraudulent are simultaneously celebrating their election victories from the very same ballots. How can this level of cognitive dissonance even be possible?

In order to believe some massive scale voter fraud has occurred, you must believe the following.

• Wide scale voter fraud is possible in a very decentralized electoral system
• Thousands of people are operating this conspiracy
• Many more thousands are keeping quiet about said conspiracy
• Every judge and court is either subverted or has been deceived
• Republicans in key positions of power in states like Georgia are also all in on this conspiracy

Now, people are free to believe this kind of thinking just the same way people can believe the moon landing was a hoax or 9/11 was an inside job. There are crazies who will believe very silly things. But this level of conspiracy is being maintained by Trump and his cronies. Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 and conceded defeat the day after the election. It’s been weeks. Trump even called on Pence to somehow reverse the electors decision despite there being no legal route for that to happen. These people are sick with hypocrisy. How can you call for stopping the counting of ballots in some states while demand that counting continue in others?

The level of disinformation is unbelievable. There is so much lying in politics now that you apparently don’t even have to make reasonable or credible lies. You can seemingly just repeatedly spout bullshit and no one bats an eye. It’s worth adding that in every election Trump has participated, he has claimed fraud. He claimed fraud in the Iowa Caucus when Cruz won in 2016. He claimed fraud in the general election in 2016 after winning. He even went so far as creating a bipartisan committee to investigate voter fraud in 2016. Surprising to no one with a brain, they found nothing and dissolved the committee.

Never in my life did I expect a sitting president to act this way. His speech and actions have been appalling, especially around this election. Even his calls today to remain peaceful continue the cry that the election was fraudulent. It’s honestly absurd.

Disagreeing with many of the policies of the left is a far cry from attempting to subvert a free and open election. How can people continue to support a party that acts in this way? The saddest thing is that this entire ploy to undermine confidence in our democratic processes was all a part of Trump’s plans. For months, he warned of the “dangers” of mail in voting with no evidence to suggest that mail in voting is fraudulent. He even voted by mail himself. This has led to the extreme polarization of many, many people. The division that is caused by the left in this country is in no ways an analog to the division that the right has caused by peddling conspiracy theories.

All that being said, I must stress that there is a massive difference between Trump voters and his inner circle of political allies. Over 70m people voted for Trump. Some with probably decent reasons. There were genuine reasons to not vote for Biden. Holding 70m people accountable for the actions of this administration is not the right way to go. Further divisiveness will only lead to more extremism, I promise.

The one thing I hope comes from this completely absurd presidency is more processes be codified. It has become abundantly clear that so many political processes are run and upheld based on norms. This can’t be the case going forward. There needs to be carefully outlined processes to protect our republic from dying.

The next few days will be very interesting. I hope that the Biden administration is able to clean up this mess that Trump has left in his wake. There is tons of work to do and challenges to overcome.