"Hang Mike Pence" Trends On Twitter

Conservatives lost it fast. For a couple of years now they've been markedly less loony than the progressive left. When I first started hanging out over there seriously I was struck by how much less doctrinaire and nutty the conversations were, how much wider the scope of ideas and positions could be discussed, and how much funnier they were. Sure, they had their problems. But they were nothing compared to the shrieking, rabid insanity on the left. Things started getting rockier as the election rolled around. I saw a lot of certainty expressed about Trump winning. Then he--seemingly--lost. Then came the deluge of reports of puzzles and anomalies. By this week, you could look straight down post comments places like Instapundit and see near-uniform expressions of certainty that the election had been stolen. I was one of the few to argue that--though I was suspicious enough to want an investigation--I doubted it'd change anything. And, I said, we certainly had no right to claim that Trump had won simpliciter. The most we had were some prima facie grounds for suspicion, some hearsay, and some statistical peculiarities--some of which could be explained away pretty easily, and some of which were readily debunked. I got a lot of responses claiming that I was an idiot. I got a couple that just said 'liar.' I was once told that we saw the election theft "with our own eyes." 

My own view, often expressed here, is that we can't take anything like this for granted after Russiagate. But that there's a world of difference between We need an investigation and They stole it.

But it's too late now. People's pride and emotions are engaged now. People have said Trump is good or its near-equivalent with too much certainty and gusto to backtrack on that now.