Trump Falsely Shouted 'Fire' In A Crowded Theater

That goddamn analogy is ALWAYS misused. It's the bane of conversations about free speech. 

But that's what Trump did today. 

   Ok. He genuinely believes that he "won in a landslide"...but he should know better. He has an epistemic obligation to recognize that he lacks the relevant knowledge. He has--irresponsibly--allowed himself to believe because he wants to believe. I don't know what the law says--and it's always got something interesting to say--but one common non-legal view of the matter is that you're every bit as guilty if you talk yourself into genuinely believing something false as you are if you lie about it. 

   I've got significant doubts about the election. But at this point I'd rather take my chances and get this guy outta there.

   People like me were never quite sure what Trump's worst was, but we thought that, whatever it was, we'd never see it...so long as he won. Losing was always the danger zone. That's when his worst was always most likely to come out. We hoped he'd win--because the Dems have lost their minds--and guessed there was a good chance that he wasn't quite as bad as he sometimes seemed. And, of course, he's never been as bad as the left made him out to be--a psychopath, a Russian asset, etc. Spend enough time around people who are delusionally screaming that someone is evil, you start overcompensating. But here we are. When he lost, we entered the danger zone. When genuinely puzzling evidence of fraud came along, things got really dangerous--the last thing somebody like Trump needs is plausible evidence for what he wants to believe. That's when I really started to get worried. When the evidence was striking enough that I started thinking there might have been fraud, I basically figured Trump was lost. If the evidence made me worry about it, it likely made Trump convinced of it. And any president falsely convinced an election was stolen would be dangerous--Trump doubly so. 

   I will say that, in a sane world, the press would have taken concerns about fraud seriously and gotten to work on them--and we'd have good reason to accept their findings. But that's not the world in which we live. Something like half the nation thinks the election might have been stolen, and the press's only reaction was to assert that they were fools. Which, post-Russiagate, was simply not rational. 

   Anyway.