In the first days after the election, you could feel the sorrow here in Charlottesville. When I went grocery shopping at Whole Foods, that usually cheerful place felt funereal. A lot of people, including me, were buying flowers and big desserts to cheer ourselves up. My family, and almost my entire neighborhood, was going through this weird communal mourning.
What I'm wondering about is how this feeling of loss is affecting people's reaction to the possibility of fraud. Could it be that some of those who don't want to hear a word about the possibility of fraud can't stand the idea of going through another fight that seems to offer only a slight chance of being won?
Is staying in that gray realm of ambiguity too uncomfortable? Accept the bad result and move on because a lingering death is too painful?
I'm not trying to start another fight about whether fraud exists or not. I think everyone pretty much agrees that so far there isn't any proof of it. What I'm wondering about is why the idea of fraud seems so horrifying to some people that they don't want it even mentioned, as though people who say the F-word have broken some crucial taboo, like taking a dump on Great-Aunt Lulu's living room rug.
If we push hard to investigate, if we try to look hard enough and thoroughly enough that we can actually know whether there was fraud or not -- and find none -- then what? Would looking but not finding fraud feel humiliating in some way? Is not knowing the answer in advance unbearable? When people say, "the country shouldn't be put through this" I keep hearing that the poster can't stand to be put through this.
What I'm trying to get at here is some kind of psychological basis for the positions some are taking. I'm not saying people shouldn't take them, just wondering about some of the underlying reasons for these strange and ugly fights that keep breaking out.