It is now almost a month since Joe Biden won the election as president of the United States. Unsurprisingly, the current president refuses to accept he lost. I say unsurprisingly because the man lives in a self-made delusional world where he is not only the smartest guy in the room in every situation but also the most popular president who ever sat in the White House. He has never had greater than a 45% approval rating since his election yet he still insists that he is the most popular president ever.
I'm long since past being irritated by this idiot. He simply can't help himself. The man is totally without scruples or basic understanding of almost any concept and is a classically proven narcissist. None of this is new. He's been delusional and self inflated since he began to ingratiate himself in the media many years ago. There is a long string of broken relationships, broken promises, bankruptcies, refusals to pay people he owes money to, and totally false statements from him that go back for decades if anyone cares to actually look at the record. The fact that he could lose an election by a large margin and yet still insist he won is by no means remarkable. It is simply how he operates and it will never change.
What is irritating to me is the number of people who continue to feed into his fantasies. Obviously, many of them are doing it to maintain their power or influence with his voter base but the really scary part of this is that a lot of people truly believe the things this man says. This has been a puzzlement to me for many years but it plainly exists. Otherwise, a large portion of the population would not have voted for him.
I think we could break it down even further and find that many people don't approve of him or his methods but they like his policies. I can accept that. I find it disgusting that these same people have for years put themselves forward as the moral leaders of our society and now turn a blind eye to a base criminal and habitual liar in the most powerful office in the world, but I can accept it. I will no longer remain quiet the next time they want to morally legislate for the rest of us but I can accept it.
The supporters who really scare me are the ones who believe the drivel he is putting out about the election being stolen. These are basically the same people who believe the rest of his lies but they are sadly disconnected from reality. I'm not quite sure how to react to these people. I am a strong believer in logic and communication as without it, no one ever gets past believing what they want to believe. In other words, choosing what we want to believe in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the kind of thing that brings on chaos and violence and it always has been. It is a dangerous seed to plant and it bears bitter and violent fruit when it ripens.
We have allowed that seed to be firmly planted in our midst. Social media which feeds us what we want to hear and "news" networks that do the same are dangerously close to wiping out the very idea of truth in this country today. At one time, we understood the power of the media and regulated it accordingly. The airwaves belonged to the American people and we zealously guarded them to make sure that powerful voices weren't allowed to drown out dissent. At that time, you couldn't own more than one media outlet in one area. Even the ones that people did own had to answer to the FCC and tell both sides of the story or face losing their license to broadcast.
People say the internet changed all that. That's partially true, but we began to change things long before the internet. Reagan defanged the FCC by putting people in charge of it who ridiculed the idea that broadcasts should be regulated any more than people who make toasters should be regulated. Shortly thereafter, news networks, radio stations, and newspapers began being gobbled up by people who had no interest in unbiased reporting. Instead, they wanted to simply maximize profits. What we have now for news reporting is the inevitable result of that. Affirmation and not information rules the newsroom driven by ratings with no concern for the truth.
Trump is the end result of that type of thinking. Unfortunately, he is not the worst result. The worst result is a large portion of the population on both sides of the spectrum who simply refuse to hear anything that disagrees with what they already think. They don't have to. Just get your news from someone who agrees with you and believe what you read on social media and you never have to question your own ideas. Never mind these ideas are carefully packaged and fed to you by people willing to sell your votes to the highest bidder. You just don't have to think for yourself anymore and you are always right. What could be better than that?
