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The problem: people were led to believe that "This is a rigged election" (Trump, August 24, 2020). Certain TV, radio and print outlets consistently and firmly amplified and expanded this message, stating that early and absentee voting was invalid, that voting machines were hacked, and that votes for Biden were "dumped" into the voting system overnight. So with the help of those media sources, the groundwork for disbelieving the election results, no matter what they were, was in place.
By the weekend after Election Day virtually all the votes were counted (and in some cases, recounted), and Biden had won. But Trump and his supporters still believed the election was stolen from Trump, who then proceeded to use all legal recourse to try to fix the problem. For the next several weeks, in about 60 cases that were brought by his legal team:
- Widespread fraud was neither alleged nor evidenced,
- Most cases were dismissed for reasons that might be called "technical", e.g. lack of standing to sue, or (in PA) waiting many months to dispute the legality of the absentee voting process,
- No court supported the assertion that the election was rigged.
The fact that 60 court cases found no widespread problems did nothing to change the minds of those who had been convinced in advance that the election would be fraudulent. Trump and certain media continued to say that Trump had won. In time they went further, saying that it was actually a Trump landslide, and that the election should be reversed. The Electoral College processes of certifying each state's vote count should be reversed by State Governors, and (later) Congress' certification of the overall result should be blocked.
If you believed that Trump actually won, and that the election process was subverted, your next move might have depended on the degree of passion you had developed. Some people in the public sphere promoted and harnessed this passion, including Trump.
A large crowd from all over the country assembled on January 6, organized by Trump's tweets and by other people who were convinced that "the election was rigged". They gathered in front of a podium and screen near the Capitol, where the last step in preparing to inaugurate the new President was about to occur. Here they were urged to "fight for their country" by Trump and several other speakers, and watched a video supporting the patriotic nature of the crowd's genesis. Then the crowd walked to the Capitol.
Here is where things went south. If you sincerely believed that the November 3 election was fraudulent, that your country's government was in danger of being taken over by bad actors, and that there was a way to stop all that from happening, what would you do?
Some of the angrier participants entered the Capitol violently and tried to find the Congresspeople responsible for finalizing the election results. We don't know what those participants would have done if they had found the Congress members, but many were shouting things like, "Hang Pence", and a few were carrying plastic zip-ties of the sort that would normally be used to detain criminals.
Many people were injured, some severely, and a few were killed during the incident. We don't yet know the full story concerning Law Enforcement intelligence, preparation and response to the unfolding incident, but we do know that they were unarmed and severely outnumbered. They have arrested many people, and more arrests are likely.
The questions in my head include:
- Was the election fraudulent? There are always some irregularities, but were there enough fraudulent votes to have changed the result?
- Since legal remedies had been exhausted, was “stopping the steal” the only appropriate action? Do LEOs think it was appropriate?
- Does inviting a crowd, speaking to them about "taking back your country", and telling them to go to the Capitol - does that constitute incitement? Does the bigger picture do that?
- At what point should Trump have spoken out against the incident? Did he wait too long?
And a little further afield:
- Why has government become a zero-sum football game? Will we ever go back to discussing consequential issues instead of what enables one "side" to "win"?
- Should the Fairness Doctrine be reinstated and apply to all media? Doesn't that just perpetuate the "us vs. them" zero-sum mindset?
- How do we distinguish between facts and falsehood? How do we agree on a set of facts that the Fairness Doctrine would apply to?
- Who won the Civil War?
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