How Can I Tell My MAGA Coworker The Election Wasn’t Fixed When I Distrust The System?

(Originally written in March of 2021, this conversation is still happening)

My MAGA coworker showed me an article today about Dr. Seuss books being banned. I usually avoid political conversations with him because they run so far afield I really don’t know how to respond. But I was kind of trapped. Then he started telling me about how the election was rigged and that I should watch the two hour video by the pillow guy. And I don’t want to agree with him because it might lead to him distancing himself further from any objective reality into believing whatever he wants to believe and disbelieving anything he didn’t want to believe. But what was I to say to him, that the elections weren’t rigged? I didn’t spend the required time needed to tell him that with any degree of confidence. Should I tell him he should have faith in the system? How can I do that when I have none myself.

It began with the black box voting machines in the Bush era. It always seemed obvious to me that ballots should be hand-counted with a clear physical ballot if we are to expect the election results to be trusted. Politics is a dirty game, just look at how gerrymandered voting districts are. Both political parties do everything they can to rig the system. Our motto as citizens should be “Distrust and verify.”

I didn’t want to feed his crazier conspiracy theories, and believe me, he has some good ones. The one I’d most like to disabuse him of is the idea that Joe Biden is a socialist. But how could I tell him to trust the electoral process when I don’t? How can I tell him the ballots were properly counted when the DNC couldn’t even count the votes in the 2020 Iowa caucus? How could I tell him with any confidence that the election wasn’t stolen when I watched time after time how the DNC did everything they could to determine the outcome of the primary? From refusing to release the Iowa pre-poll to changing the rules to let Michael Bloomberg enter the debates to changing the rules to keep Tulsi Gabbard from the debates to the ridiculous manner in which they conducted the debates. How could I tell him in good conscience that he is wrong to question establishment and Democratic shenanigans in the election when I have watched for four years the entire establishment push a laughably absurd Russian collusion story involving pee videos and Pokemon Go? How could I tell him they weren’t cheating in the general election when they knocked off the Green Party from my state of Wisconsin?

I couldn’t do it. So instead when he came back to show me the link in his Facebook feed about Dr. Seuss books getting pulled or censored or something, I told him it would take me a while to get a good understanding of the story. Not only would I have to read the article, I would have to do some digging of my own. I told him you can’t learn anything from a headline because you don’t know the purpose of the creator of the article. And then, to put it in a way that he could appreciate it, I told him about all the articles people shared on social media and posted directly to my page about Trump colluding with Russia. And I explained how I broke the article down for people, showing that what it boiled down to was that the only evidence given is what some anonymous source from an intelligence agency said. Article after article, everything hinged on the testimony of some unknown spook from an intelligence agency. And then I told him these were the same agencies that funneled money to terrorists in Nicaragua and were responsible for covering up the evidence that MLK’s murder was the result of a conspiracy.

I told him it was not easy to get to the truth of matters, that any truth provided to you would likely be propaganda, but that the truth was out there. Because what else was I to tell him? That the mainstream media was worthy of his trust? How could I ever hope to have him develop critical thinking skills by watching CNN or MSNBC? You know about the story of the emperor with no clothes? Sometimes you have to be clever not to notice the obvious.

And then he told me that he had voted for Barack Obama in 2008, because he wanted change and believed Obama when he said he was for change. Because way back in 2008, he had already grown sick of the endless wars we were involved in. And rightly or wrongly, in 2016 he viewed Trump as the person who could deliver change.

I suppose he might have realized that Trump was no more an agent of change than Obama was if it were not for the fact that the media went after him like no president in our living memory. Perhaps if the media and the political establishment had gone after Barack Obama in the same way he might have defended him, as well. But the fact is they didn’t, and in the eyes of so many, the mainstream media is the enemy. As for myself, I wouldn’t say it is THE enemy, because conservative media is typically even worse, but it is not something I can ever in good conscience defend.

Note: The conversation mentioned above has been slightly idealized but is in the main factual.