I keep looking for what people are claiming is proof that the election was stolen. That would be HUGE news if something turned up. The closest anyone seems to have come up with is 2nd or 3rd hand reports - i.e. somebody heard that someone saw something nefarious. If 20% of the population believes the election was not honest or fair, what are they using as evidence? What constitutes proof that the election was stolen for these people?
No. No one has. In another thread, someone made a ridiculous fact free claim about China, and I asked for evidence. What I got was “just wait! You’ll see!”
“People are saying…”
That’s really it. They’ve had over 60 court cases in which they could have provided any actual evidence, if it existed and they had it, and they’ve never shown any. The people out there in the wild repeating the Big Lie are basing their claims on nothing more than “Well, they said it was stolen, so I believe it!” It’s all just a big game of “telephone”, where they’ve all heard the rumors, which just keep getting bigger every time they get repeated.
These words you are using have special meaning (apparently) in Republican dictionaries and certainly in MAGA dictionaries:
EVIDENCE: Something told to you by someone you really trust (even if you have never met them in person). Remote authority figures who agree with your knee jerk first impression are favored sources (e.g.: doctors who are being investigated or have lost their license, hysterical ministers with flocks under one hundred souls, anyone with a working Twitter account, your cousin’s friend who took one biology class twelve years ago, anyone who believes his or her own views so strongly they sweat whenever they speak)
PROOF: More than one other human being holding the view you are inclined to believe before checking any facts or knowing anything about the situation at all. (Also, see EVIDENCE above)
FACT/FACTS: Whatever you have read from any source that agrees with your preconceived notions.
I think it comes down to; ‘Who you gonna believe? You’re fellow Rep patriots, or your lying eyes?’
You can’t reason someone out of a position they ‘BELIEVE’ !
Not only that but when they got in front of a judge instead of bloviating on some news talk show – a place where repeating their lie has consequences – they would say they weren’t alleging fraud after all.
Time to update the Devil’s Dictionary, which would be especially appropriate given the religiousness of many of the MAGATS.
“The Fake News MSM is suppressing the facts!” If so, why hasn’t any of the “trusted” news sources on the right identified that smoking gun? The reason: there is no smoking gun, there is no “proof”, and there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. But hey, those who believe the Big Lie won’t let facts get in the way of a good fantasy. There are a great many things people accept as true, in spite of no evidence whatsoever, and now that politics has gone all tribal, there are two truths.
A conservative friend of mine laments that we cannot discuss current events any more. I have stated that unless we can agree on basic facts, like Biden won the 2020 election, then there is not much point in taking that conversation further.
There are also a number of current events that do not involve politics at all. I’ve yet to meet a believer in the big lie who could restrain themselves from bringing it up in any conversation that lasted more than 10 minutes. Many lead out with it. I get plenty of updates on the corruption of the Democrats from my clients who feel the need to keep me informed.
For most of my life I’ve had Republican friends who can’t resist a little poke here or there, or a brief argument, even though I’ve made it clear I won’t engage. In the last few years we’ve actually lost a close friend and some more distant friends because instead of a little poke here or there, it’s an angry declamation and questions of “how can you stand for such a thing or believe that about evil masks” etc. etc. etc.
ETA just wanted to clarify on the close friend, after 17 years of tight friendship across the families, they began ghosting us when my wife said during a high point of the pandemic that she wasn’t comfortable meeting in a restaurant. One of their adult kids still hangs with one of our adult kids, but he got vaccinated without telling them.
For someone who supported Trump there are two possibilities…
-
The guy I supported lost so I supported a loser which makes me a loser, and now Biden who I was told is evil is legitimately in charge.
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I supported the real winner and I was justified in that, and the people I was told were evil stole the election, so now I have a righteous cause I can be proud of to save the good people of my country.
Option 2 is more appealing, and people will cling to it despite all the facts because it makes them feel better. Comforting delusions are a terrible trap that people fall for all of the time, whether you are talking about politics or anything else.
Let’s not forget too that there is “evidence” which is BS but they cling to anyway. A poll worker throwing away a sleeve around a ballot is filmed and used as evidence that a ballot was tossed. A news camera crew wheels out boxes of equipment and a photo of that is shared as ballots being tossed. The idea that a Trump lead swiftly vanished when a batch of mail-in votes are counted is called improper and proof that the votes are “manufactured” (ignoring how Republicans claimed that you can’t trust mailed ballot integrity, so that mostly Democratic voters used them). Even the idea that poll watchers had to observe social distancing (Covid protocols) has been used as evidence that they were covering up vote fraud.
The evidence is bogus but if it supports a comforting belief then some people will cling to it. The rejection of that “evidence” by authorities is just more proof of the conspiracy. It’s sad and it’s sick and it’s dangerous, and I can only hope that sanity will reassert itself post-Trump.
Premise 1: Biden beat Trump.
Premise 2: There’s no possible or conceivable way that Trump could have lost honestly.
Therefore, conclusion: The election must have been stolen.
My mother’s full on tin-foil hat territory and refers to the vaccine as the “kill shot,” believes Biden stole the election, refers to both Biden and Harris using vile language, and has even started posting 9/11 conspiracy theories. I still visit her each week but I can’t talk to her about anything of any significance. This is a person I used to have a great deal of respect for but I no longer care about her opinion on anything. It’s brutal.
Everyone of the “believers” that I have spoke to claims to have proof.
In the sense of “They found 96,000 ballots in a dog kennel in Georgia!”. It’s never clear who they is, and where one could find additional details.
The response that works well for me is to point out that no-one has yet claimed Dan Patrick’s $1 million reward for finding election fraud – why don’t they take that evidence to him and roll in all that juicy, non-bullshit cash?
(Yes I am aware that for people who believe in evidence and reasoning, that the “$1 million prize” argument is about the 1000th most compelling reason not to believe in election fraud. But it seems to hit at the right level for these people).
It is truly staggering what some people believe, despite not only no proof - but even with a clear refutation.
In the Arizona ‘forensic recount’, a group of Republican politicians hired the ‘Cyber Ninjas’, who were headed by a Republican (who stated in advance the election had been fixed) in order to prove election fraud.
The ‘Cyber Ninjas’ hired Republicans to do the actual counting and eventually stumbled upon the fact that Biden had actually received more votes than previously stated.
Trump’s response to this ludicrously partisan ‘investigation’:
“Huge findings in Arizona! However, the Fake News Media is already trying to ‘call it’ again for Biden before actually looking at the facts — just like they did in November!” 
And of course this Arizona result means the Republicans will continue to demand similar ‘recounts’ … because there is ‘proof’ of ‘election fixing’.
“We stole ten million votes and lost. So the Democrats must have stolen twenty million votes.”
Premise 3: Everyone I know in my small rural community is a conservative white voter.
Premise 4: I’ve seen voter maps. The red areas are big. The blue areas are small.
Premise 5: Therefore the clear majority of voters in the country are conservative white voters.
Premise 6: Therefore any claim that the majority of people voted for Biden (or Clinton or Obama or Gore) must be a lie.
Evidence? Most people’s beliefs aren’t based on evidence. Why do people believe in God? Why do people believe in miracles and the power of prayer? Why do people believe in things like astrology and woo-based medicine? These have nothing to do with evidence.
Add to that, if you live in rural Alabama or rural PA, that all of your friends and neighbors voted for Trump, so the only way he could have lost is through electoral fraud. The evidence is that no one you know voted for Biden so he could not have won legitimately.
Wait - you mean they’re now saying that the Arizona audit was rigged? The true results are being withheld by the press? I won’t both to ask what evidence they have. So sad.