Election Eve Thread.

Here’s the deal, folks. Y’all need to stop freaking out. Just stop.

Breathe. It’s all good. We are winning.

Enjoy it.

The day we have been waiting for is upon us.

In just hours, we will send Donald Trump his notice of eviction from the People’s House. 1/

There is no doubt Biden will win the popular vote, the 7th time in the last 8 elections for the Democratic candidate to do so.

There is also little doubt that he will win well more than 270 electoral votes, enough to secure the presidency. 2/

Biden’s lead is safe in enough states and districts to win 279 EVs.

The only drama is over how far above that number he can get.

Will he be closer to 400 or 300 EVs when the dust settles? 3/

I won’t waste your time marshaling the evidence.

At this stage, like biological evolution or the heliocentric model of the solar system or the reality of climate change, no reasonable person believes Trump is winning this election.

Trump is toast. 4/

And yet, there are some who are reticent to speak this truth aloud.

A bit of 2016 PTSD with a dash of superstition, mingled with perhaps a bit of performative humility leads many Biden supporters to fret and worry and find the touch of gray behind every silver lining. 5/

I get it. I really do.

Folks in the reality-based world question our own beliefs.

We worry that we might be succumbing to motivated reasoning, that our conclusions might be unduly influenced by “living in a liberal bubble” or some such. 6/

But at some point, it’s time to be done collecting the data, questioning it, poking it, prodding it, and testing it, and just accept the inescapable conclusion that is literally staring you in the face.

This is that point.

Trump is toast. 7/

Now, there are folks who don’t dwell in the reality-based world.

They’re members of a cult, the Trump cult.

And they have pretty much made it their life’s mission to deny as much of external reality as possible & still remain plausibly functional human beings. 8/

I know something about cults. I used to be in one.

I know what it’s like to believe things “with every fiber of my being” that "the world" found absurd (& which I later discerned were actually not true).

Some of these beliefs were satirized on South Park and Broadway. 9/

One of the allures of a cult is the feeling that you and your fellow members possess some esoteric “knowledge” the rest of the world is deprived of (or willfully blind to). 10/

And that shared “knowledge” becomes a sort of glue or magnet, holding the members together and creating a sense of unity and community.

But it also serves as a sort of shield, a barrier that insulates the cult members from the objective reality shared by the outside world. 11/

Cult members’ beliefs are subject to a “feedback loop” from other members, who reinforce the strength of their fellow members’ convictions.

Cults share the same media sources and are distrustful of information from media sources outside the cult. 12/

Cult members engage in apologetic reasoning in defense of their beliefs.

They use rhetorical tools to sound reasonable and educated.

They begin with their conclusion—that which they “know to be true with absolute certainty.” 13/

Then they go about hunting high and low for *any* evidence to support the conclusion, while ignoring or dismissing out of hand any facts that contradict what they already “know” to be true. 14/

When confronted with evidence that what they “know to be true” is actually false—and provably false—the cult member suffers what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance.”

“Cog dis” causes the brain to try to resolve the contradiction between two contradictory “truths.” 15/

Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon, chronicled in the classic work “When Prophecy Fails” by Leon Festinger, involved a UFO cult in the 1950s, where a small cult believed aliens were going to destroy the earth (save the cult members, of course). 16/

When the prophecy failed, the cult members did not, as one might expect, renounce their prophet and abandon the cult.

Instead, the cognitive dissonance kicked in, and the members doubled down on their beliefs, becoming more, not less, devoted to the cause. 17/

They resolved the contradiction between their deeply held belief and the failure of the prophecy by developing elaborate reasons for why the prophecy failed.

It was less painful psychologically to remain in the cult than to admit they had been so wrong. 18/

I’ve suffered cognitive dissonance.

It’s not a pleasant feeling.

And it’s not easy to abandon and discard old beliefs that you once held as absolute truths.

It’s painful. It’s difficult.

And it’s going to hit the Trump cult like a ton of bricks tomorrow night. 19/

Unlike us Biden supporters, Trump cultists have no doubt about tomorrow’s results.

They are absolutely certain that Trump is going to win.

They believe it with religious fervor, with a zeal that burns with the white-hot heat of a hundred thousand suns. 20/

They know with “every fiber of their being” that Trump is not just going to win, but that he is going to win in a historic landslide.

Many of them believe that Trump is going to win the state of California(!) 21/

The cognitive dissonance Trump cultists will suffer tomorrow night will be epic.

How they handle the psychological distress of seeing the unstoppable force of their fervently held beliefs come crashing up against the immovable object of a Biden victory is anyone’s guess. 22/

Things could get ugly.

It is likely many Trump cultists will deal with their cognitive dissonance simply by refusing to accept the results.

They will spin conspiracy theories to explain how Trump’s glorious prophesied landslide victory was ripped away from them. 23/

For others, Biden’s victory may be the jolt they need to cause them to re-examine their faith in Trumpism.

Those UFO cultists in the Festinger book didn’t *all* remain faithful (at least not after subsequent prophecies failed). 24/

But don’t expect Trump cultists to react rationally, certainly not at first.

They’ll need time to absorb the information.

They’ll need time to process.

They’ll need time to recover.

They’ll need time to heal.

And in that, we may find we all have something in common. 25/25