Jan 28

 Joe,

Sorry, I had to take a deep figurative breath after your last letter. I want to give what you said a lot of thought and reflection before reacting. Tact has never been my strong suit, as you well know. But you also know that in my frankness I mean well and try to be as honest as I hope others will be with me. Sometimes, we just need to hear the blunt truth. Over the past few weeks I've done an awful lot of soul searching and I THINK have gotten a clearer picture of things that were very murky for a long time. I realize in hindsight I had some very good friends that tried to gently correct me back in '16 when I was veering off the path of reason. But I wasn't open to listening back then. I can be a slow learner at times. Maybe you will be wiser than I was in that regard. 

What my sage friends tried to point out to me at the time was arrogance. They didn't say that, but that's exactly what it was. I thought I knew more than they did. I thought I knew more than I actually did. What made me arrogant was that I was characterizing what I thought and believed as fact, without sufficient evidence to back it up. I'm talking Comet Ping Pong here. You remember how it was. I don't want to get back into it too much at the moment, but that got way out of hand. We were both sure something was fishy there, and there definitely is or was SOMETHING shady going on with some of the people associated with it. That I still believe. But we were pretty well convinced there was rampant, ritualistic sexual abuse of children going on there. 

I'm bringing this back up because we not only firmly believed there was something vile that needed to be exposed, we thought it was incumbent upon us to sound the alarm and demand that other people believe it, take it seriously, and do something to punish the evildoers. We weren't nearly as vocal as some people, and we fell back when things started spinning off into bizarre territory, but we were angry that so so many people were completely dismissive and didn't want to hear anything about it. We were especially angry when mainstream media appeared to be colluding with the DNC to introduce strawman arguments in an effort to shut it down.

Here's the thing: We just KNEW something of a disgusting and/or criminal nature was going on. Except we DIDN'T know. We didn't have concrete evidence of the activity, What we had was some cryptic DNC emails, a couple of memes showing coded language (purportedly from the FBI) and a handful of photos from the restaurants showing spaces where unsavory activities could have taken place. We knew nothing of that place ourselves. We had never been there, or even known anyone who'd been there. Everything we had was second or third-hand from sources we never bothered to vet. What we had was speculation, nothing more, yet, we were sure we had put the puzzle together. 

All this lead-up is by way of saying this -- No, my friend, you do not "know" Trump won the 2020 election. You THINK he won, and you wholeheartedly believe he won. There's a difference. And it's a big one. I think in the midst of your passionate discourse you have lost sight of the difference between objective truth and conjecture. And that's dangerous. It's dangerous in the current political environment because too many people are all too willing now to take violent action based on very little evidence. You've seen it. These days, most people think nothing of canceling someone over a tweet, and doing so before they're even verified it or been made aware of the context.

Cancel culture is completely out of hand. Within a matter of hours or days, someone's reputation can be ruined, their job lost, and their family's welfare threatened over what might be a slip of the tongue or a momentary lapse during a less evolved period. And sometimes people are canceled and vilified over something that never happened. We're so reactive! Hyper-reactivity combined with a low threshold for proof is so pervasive and destructive. You have to see that. At worst, it can lead to physical violence, to people being physically harmed or even killed. It's not right, and we need to examine the phenomenon and the part we personally play in it very seriously.

Back to Trump. Try, if you can, to step back and be completely honest with yourself. What do you actually KNOW? You weren't at any of the thousands of polling places other than the once where you cast your one vote. You didn't tally votes. You haven't examined any voting machines and seen evidence of tampering. You didn't conduct any exit polls. What do you actually know? Very, very little. Isn't the truth of the matter that you just THINK and BELIEVE Trump won because your perception of the political climate led you to believe he was much more popular than Biden? Isn't it true that you find Biden to be such a flawed and lackluster candidate that you can't conceive of him having sufficient support to trump Trump?

The difficulty you're having here, as I see it, is that you're conflating passion with purposefulness. Your perception that Trump was more popular is nothing more than that, your PERCEPTION. We probably shouldn't even use the term "popular" because it carries a connotation of enthusiasm that isn't necessary for a candidate to carry the day. I don't think I have to tell you a candidate can be extremely unpopular or disliked and still garner support from the party faithful. And we have to acknowledge that loyalty to party is rarely overtaken by anything else. We've seen that repeatedly in primaries and in Congressional voting. Voters and elected officials can despise a de facto leader or frontrunner and still extend unconditional, unqualified support when it comes down to a loss or win for the party.

You are correct, hardly anyone was enthusiastic about Biden. He stirred no one's passion. He didn't need to. That's the piece you're missing, I think. You're assuming that people wouldn't go out in droves to vote for a man they haven't been vocally supportive of or don't have complete faith in. If that's what you think, I'm here to tell you that's a misguided assumption. Democrats weren't voting for Biden in 2020, they were voting to stop Trump. And that's something they were absolutely determined and passionate about, whether they shouted it from the mountaintops or not. Those millions of voters weren't running their mouths on social media or going to rallies. The were simply observing, talking amongst their families and friends IRL, making judgments about the way things were going in our country, and then carrying out their civic duty by going to the polls and voting against a man they believed to be wholly unsuitable for office. 

I know these people, Joe. I live among them. They're my parents and grandparents. They're most of my friends' and associates' parents and grandparents. They have dutifully voted without fail their entire lives, and the most any of them would do outwardly is affix a bumper sticker to their car. In 2020 they were joined by a new segment of voters, and that's a segment you don't seem to be fully aware of. Younger minorities in critical urban centers made all the difference this past season, and it wasn't difficult to rally their support and activate them after what they witnessed throughout Trumps term and especially in 2020. The police brutality and spate of killings we  watched, combined with the disproportionate losses we suffered during the pandemic were factors I think you really underestimated. The last election was a matter of life and death for us, Joe. Literally. We needed to act to save our lives and the lives of our children, and we did that.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but it came out in the news recently that a number of your arrested compatriots didn't even vote. They were ready and wiling to take  up arms, travel across country to DC, and storm the Capitol, but didn't go to their local precinct to cate a vote for their leader. What kind of b.s. is that? I can only assume they were so sure Trump was wildly popular, they thought his re-election was a foregone conclusion, that their vote wasn't needed. It's that kind of misplaced confidence in one's perceptive abilities that lands people where they didn't intend or expect to fall..

I don't want to give you the impression I think this is a trap only Trump supporters have fallen into. From what I've seen over the past few years, it's pretty universal, human. If you become wedded to a particular worldview, you're going to be naturally drawn into echo chambers. The thing about echo chambers is that once you're in one, you can't get a good sense of its size relative to what's outside of it. It's all that reverb. The same ideas being pounded into your head over and over. Of course, you're going to think you're right. And if you're right, there has to be something shady going on. There has to be something evil and manipulative going on behind the scenes if you don't come out on top. 

Just as common and human as falling into that trap is regarding, chastising, and mocking your opponent as a sore loser when you prevail. No one who thinks they're correct ever thinks of him/herself as a sore loser, just righteously indignant and victimized. I think Americans have cornered the market on egocentric, righteously indignant victimhood. We've perfected it. That's our thing. 

Do you remember how shocked we were when Bernie didn't come out on top in the '16 primaries? How long did we make railing over the unfairness of it a way of life? Four years, more or less. We were called sore losers. How long did Hillary supporters cry foul when Trump won? How long did they bitterly scream about Russian interference without a break? A solid three-and-a-half years, I'd say. They were called sore losers. I expect no less from Trump supporters now, and no less from those who consider themselves Trump opposition. Maybe one of these days we'll figure out what a time-wasting, counterproductive dynamic we've settled into.

Indy