![Quote](images/misc/quote_icon.png)
Originally Posted by
Chuck Naill
...I doubt you folks have either, but some of you have a double standard for Trump. It just looks so totally irrational.
Conspiracy thinking always has a "rationality" (a pattern of thinking) of its own: fear, rumor, a few "patterns," and the unknown (unknowable) get mixed into into "possibilities" which then concretize into "truth" ("convince me that this isn't true.")
In Trump's case, in the phone call to Raffensberger, he does exactly that: He asks Raffensberger if it is "possible" that ballots were shredded in Fulton county. Then he immediately continues with "Do you know anything about that?" which concretizes the theoretical "possibility" into an actuality that he asks Raffensberger if he knows about. Raffensberger says "No." Trump then states, "You know what they did and you're not reporting it," again, turning a rumored hypothetical into a concrete factual claim, and an accusation of criminal conduct against Raffensberger. He accuses Raffensberger of criminally certifying election results that Raffensberger knows are false because of a theoretical "possibility" of votes being shredded.
Classic conspiracy thinking there, in just a few sentences. It has its own "logic".
Trump is addicted to this kind of stuff. He did it back with the Obama birtherism conspiracy theory, too. Often, conspiracy theories grow up in response (as a counter measure to) to other conspiracies that they sense in the world. A few people on the fringe make some weird claim out in the realm of mysterious possibility, and Trump's mental maw latches on and won't let go, partly because the "certitude" and feeling of insider knowledge and wisdom it gives him pumps up his weak sense of intellectual legitimacy (thus his bragging about his vocabulary, for example).
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