Recent poll shows fantasy is eclipsing reality

Last Wednesday, the results of a very widely reported poll revealed that a third of Republicans believe Trump will be “reinstated” to the White House and the the presidency sometime in August. This story was carried in both left-leaning and right-leaning publications, online and in print.

This insane belief is a core holding of QAnon adherents, Trump’s former counsel Sydney Powell, a number of political zealots who still support Trump, and Trump himself.

Like the belief that the election was stolen, the story is utterly without merit, both in its origin and its supposed legal basis. There is in fact no legal or constitutional basis whatsoever to any of it.

Another is that vaccines are dangerous, contain micro-chips, or don’t work altogether.

All of these views are similar, in that they are held almost exclusively by Trump supporters. But the strongest common thread is that they are fueled by hypocrisy, ignorance, and gullibility.

There is no basis in reality for any of it. Every one of these people who believe these things was vaccinated as children, which is why they are now healthy adults. Not one of them can tell you the Constitutional basis for believing Trump can retake the White house. Not one can tell us how ballots are counted, or how vaccines work. How gullible must one be to believe there are electronic devices in a vaccination?

Ignorance is forgivable, but the willful, deliberate intent to be ignorant is not.

DAN STRAYER

Bonners Ferry