I was driving down the road a few months back when, in the distance, I saw a man on the sidewalk. He was on a bike, dressed in a full Uncle Sam costume, and holding a pole with two flags.
When I drove up and stopped at the intersection, I saw that one flag said, “Trump 2024 Save America Again”, and the other said, “Stop the Steal!”. Although it was rush hour, this intersection wasn’t generating much traffic, which made me admire the commitment. It was a pretty hot day.
As I drove past and continued to drive down the road, it made me rethink a few obvious things. One, the Trump supporters are wholeheartedly convinced that the 2020 election was stolen, and two, they blame the Democrats. But are these seemingly obvious points correct?
Ask Democrats, and clearly, the election wasn’t stolen. And they have a bunch of facts and logic to back this up. But since they’re the rival party and thus the enemy, all those facts and logic won’t and don’t register with most Republicans. Emotion typically trumps logic.
The counterarguments for Republicans sometimes delve into conspiracy theories, and it all becomes a big back and forth of emotion and logic, which never seems to get to the truth.
But what is the truth? The Democrats and Republicans think they know, but honestly, I don’t think it even matters. Because let’s assume the election was stolen for the rest of this article. And let’s go back to the point above, that Republicans blame Democrats for this. Are Democrats to blame for the stolen election? Or should Donald Trump and the Republicans be the ones to blame?
How? Why? Well, let’s dive into this thought experiment, and I’ll try to show that if the election was stolen, the flag shouldn’t say “Stop the Steal”; it should say “Stop the internal Republican incompetence.” It’s not as catchy, but it might be the truth.
