Questions how election deniers trust anyone
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has seen plenty of video of the January 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol. Enough to know better, at least. That didn’t stop him from publicly suggesting yesterday in a Congressional hearing that the attack was actually carried out by professional “agents-provocateurs” with Trump flags and MAGA hats, not actual Trump supporters. This would suggest an astonishing level of underground organization, excluding any black Antifans, etc.
Yet Senator Johnson, like so many of our fellow citizens — as is clear from a recent poll showing that 65 percent of Republicans still believe that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected President despite all the contradictory evidence — is apparently living in an imaginary world filled with shadowy operators.
I ask those who see their world this way, as one conspiracy layered upon another, stacked upon a third, and so on — how can you live this way?
How, then, do you trust your neighbor? Do you trust your doctor? Your electrician? The people stocking the shelves at Kroger or Walmart (maybe they’re secretly slipping some tracking device into your Cheerios)?
I am glad I don’t have to live in your world. But thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, for creating that imaginary world, lurking on the sidelines, continuously leaking a little (a lot), into the real one.
Paul Mack
Columbus
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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