Repetition of a lie creates reality

In the past week we have seen, anywhere one looks in the media, the thousands of people who deny the reality of the election results.

Not only is this behavior unprecedented in the United States, the causes of it are utterly divorced from reality.

America has fallen under a spell wherein the act of repeating a lie somehow creates a new reality, and the primary vector for this deception is social media.

It is well-established that a baseless post on social media gets shared far more often than a factual one, largely because lies create a more inflammatory response than truth.

Trump's claims of fraud have yet to backed by one single fact. There is no evidence anywhere of fraud. The head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who was sworn in by Trump in 2018, has stated that the elections have been absolutely secure, and that many Americans do not understand the technology used to make them so.

In addition, lawsuits launched by Trump are getting dismissed in Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania for total lack of evidence. Some legal teams are quitting voluntarily, because they know there is no basis to the claim.

Still, posts on social media keep repeating the lie of fraud and people who don't fact check, or don't want to factcheck, keep repeating these.

News organizations around the world all report the same election results, but they find it hard to compete with people who willfully choose the lie over the reality.

DAN STRAYER

Bonners Ferry