For Americans who choose to believe in a wide-ranging cornucopia of fanciful conspiracies, argumentative reasoning is a pretty hard sell. But it is not necessarily because anyone has a lack of deductive skill that Americans often find themselves at loggerheads, in screaming matches with the “other side” on major issues. 

It is more about people being unwilling to voluntarily choose to accept the premises of others. If that happened, they would enter into a psychologically uncomfortable position; one that is absolutely not necessary to endure, especially while ensconced in a self-designed, mutually agreeing, social community. 

And there are so many such “comfort places” in which we can hide—among family, friends, associates and, of course, within the opacity of the dad-blasted internet. 

I don’t want to be wrong and neither do you—and we doubly don’t want to be publicly wrong. Therefore, one rule is to never, never, never admit you were ever wrong. 

For example, stretching back many years, it has always been surprisingly difficult for me to find more than a scant few people who will claim to have ever supported the U.S. war (police action) in Vietnam. But I still remember a time when war protesters were a distinct minority, regularly vilified and even physically attacked. Where did those majority attackers escape to? Oh, that’s right, they’ll tell you that they were never there. I had forgotten an unspoken and clearly delusional condition that seems to prevail—hardly anyone ever admits to being a supporter of the infamously ugly War in Vietnam (or lately, add the disastrous war in Afghanistan). 

We all have to live with ourselves, and one argument claims that excusing our errors is “only human.” However, hiding errors, even from yourself, may be another matter. 

Perhaps that is partly why Republicans generally will choose not to mention their historic and nearly uniform opposition to the national Social Security program and, more recently, to Obamacare (the Affordable Health Care Act). Americans overwhelmingly agree on the necessity of both of these benefit programs and by any measure, such programs literally save the lives of huge numbers of middle-class and poor Americans. 

Likely, in a few years, no one will fondly recall much about D. T***p or the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy. In fact, it is my hope that at some later date, few Americans will ever admit to having been in sympathy with either T***p or the entire sordid and likely criminally traitorous “Stop the Steal” effort. We badly need that likely outcome—otherwise it might mean a future filled with more “Jewish lasers from space.”

Finally, this letter itself is NOT part of any worldwide conspiracy relating to the deep state, QAnon, pedophilia, Hunter Biden, Dominion voting machines, antivax efforts or the ghost of Hugo Chavez. I kid you not.   

Friends, please vote this November.

John Pace lives in Honesdale, PA.