Apparently the internet is exploding with election fraud conspiracy theories from the Left. “‘By 8am ET, the number of posts per hour had surged to 31,991,” PeakMetrics wrote in an analysis shared with WIRED.” (WiRED, Nov 6, 2024)
Who’d have thought, huh?
I guess folks would rather blame a convicted felon, serial liar, racist misogynist, and his billionaire sidekick, owner of a vast media empire freely used to spread misinformation, citing their association with Russian hackers — than, you know, turn and blame each other for this election loss.
I can understand that sentiment. People are in pain. We want to find reasons. We want to still believe in the unity we witnessed during the campaign–that it is NOT an illusion. We don’t want to believe it might not be as effective or as widespread as we thought. So there must be another illusion out there…. we think.
Too bad that questioning election results has been a rallying cry of the far-right for so long that we made an oath of office accepting the election returns no matter what. Too bad for voters that election results denial is associated with a lack of trust in democracy, associated with believing in ancient aliens, or lone gunmen, or other conspiracy theories that have no evidence, and just not acceptable to right-minded people. Too bad that even the hint of the question may give the far-right more ammo in their distrust of government.
And nobody wants to do that. So we must tread carefully when understanding where we are.
But blaming each other for Trump’s win, or stigmatizing marginalized groups of voters, or criticizing Harris or Biden or Democrats in general is not the answer either. I’ve been seeing too much of that lately and it’s ripping the Left to pieces; it’s destroying the coalition of joy and those wanting to create a better society from within. Yes, society must change to be better for everyone. We have to build that, but we need each other intact, not bloody on the election floor.
We already built a strong coalition. I saw that. You saw that. We have to maintain that coalition. I saw the future I’d hoped for being created across America these last few months. I still believe it’s there. It was YOU. You were building that. It still exists.
Keep being kind to each other in these uncertain times. We need each other. We can’t let ourselves be divided even more.
I only hope that one day neither party ever figures out how to hack those machines (like they hack banks and credit card companies so easily) because, in our pride, in our sanctimonious belief that we are impervious to being fooled and our machines are hack-proof, and that we aren’t the kinds of people who believe in conspiracies, we won’t be able to allow any Dorothy to pull that curtain back.
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(this is a revision to a previous post)
Bear Witness 