Sunday, January 03, 2021

I Think I'm on the Verge of Losing My Capacity for Surprise

I wasn't surprised that the Democrats cast about for an excuse, some excuse, any excuse for Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 presidential election that didn't involve Hillary Clinton being a terrible candidate who ran an incompetent campaign.

I was mildly surprised that they settled on the bizarre "Russiagate" conspiracy theory as the main excuse. Surprised, because it was so dumb. Only mildly surprised because after she tried out "women voted for Trump because their abusive, controlling husbands forced them to" they obviously had to run as far as possible, as quickly as possible, from that if they didn't want to lose 20% of their previous female vote expectations next time out.

I was more than mildly surprised that so many rank-and-file Democrats ate "Russiagate" up, and that so many of them seemed to continue to believe it for so long.

I wasn't surprised that the Republicans cast about for an excuse, some excuse, any excuse for Donald Trump losing the 2020 presidential election that didn't involved Donald Trump being Donald Trump.

I'm not surprised that they seem to have settled on a combination of "massive voter fraud" and a Chinese version of "Russiagate" as that excuse.

And I'm not surprised that so many rank-and-file Republicans are eating it up.

David Maurer wrote (in The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man) that "there's a mark born every minute, and five to trim him and five to knock him." I think he got the ratio wrong, at least vis a vis American voters. The vast majority of them continue to prove themselves easy marks, while a few get over on those marks continuously and even fewer try to talk some sense into the marks.

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