A Simple, Indisputable Truth... our Election and our Nation.

At the core of the confrontations -- both on Wednesday in the Capitol, and in recent weeks across every media -- is a simple, basic question: was the 2020 election fairly won, or "stolen" from Donald Trump? On this pivot rests the right and wrong of all that has occurred since, a watershed moment in American history.

If you believe that the election was fair, as stated by the various government agencies responsible -- "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history" -- then the subsequent actions of the President and his allies are disingenuous, a repudiation of their oaths and potentially or likely criminal.

If you believe, as often stated by the President, that the reported results of a substantial Biden win are directly the result of conspiracies and fraud, turning a "landslide victory" into a reported loss, then there is a deep and abiding problem that is being reasonably objected to and disbelieved.

There is no middle ground, there is no maybe. There is a yes and a no, a true and a false, and the context of our angry winter, the understanding of our roiling and split nation, relies on understanding which is which.

Fortunately, the answer is both knowable and indisputable. The President and his allies knowingly, cynically, traitorously are fully aware that the election was fairly contested and accurately portrayed.

We know this for multiple reasons and by multiple facts. We know this by the pronouncements of virtually every institution our nation holds dear, and every logic that withstands scrutiny and challenge. We have known this all along, and continue to see confirmation daily.

And, we know this by the President's own words and actions, and the words and actions of those most loyal to him.

We, as a nation, rely on certain systems, institutions and agencies for information. To those entities we have given the power and resources to evaluate and report on the most critical aspects of our American values. They are bound by more than party, but by the governance of the Constitution and the precepts of our democracy.

What are those entities? Start with the ones tasked with knowing what is unspoken and obscure: our security infrastructure, from the FBI to the Justice Department and myriad other agencies. Those agencies have unanimously rejected the idea of fraudulent or conspiratorial impact on these elections, without objections from within their ranks.

Remember that the leadership of those institutions are Republican, and were placed in charge by the President, and partisan leanings are removed from consideration. Christopher Ray is the Director of the present, appointed by the President in 2017, following Andrew McCabe, also appointed by Trump. Jeffrey Rosen, the current AG, is the sixth person to hold that position in just four years, all chosen and vetted by Trump's administration. Surely, they have no reason to contradict the fervent wishes of the President, and yet... they have. The heads of his agencies responsible for overseeing the election, Republicans all, were emphatic in their rebuttal and equally unanimous. There have been exactly zero persons in position to know, with the tools to find out, who have agreed with the President's assertions... and not a single Democrat among them.

We trust the thousands of members of the State's election infrastructure, duty bound to provide the granular results. These, two, were unanimous -- they, and their governments, many of them long-standing Republicans, sent without disagreement a slate of electors based on the outcomes in their states, and attested frequently and when asked under oath to the veracity of their findings. This was not their choice, nor convenient -- many have been threatened, have seen their homes and families disrupted and necessarily secured, for having spoken a truth that they would have preferred was different.

Beyond these members of the governments, we have the judicial branch of our government, again largely and prominently Republican in personal origins and derivation of office. The campaign brought dozens upon dozens of suits before almost every level of the judiciary, from local and state to federal and the Supreme Court. In 62 cases where a verdict was sought and rendered, the results were similarly unanimous -- the petitions rejected, often with dismay or disapproving comment. The President stated early and often that he would trust the Supreme Court to defend his position, having recently appointed three of its members... and yet when the courts denied him, he refused to accept their verdict.

There are no institutions remaining, nothing that marks the United States of America as a nation, that has not repudiated the fraud and conspiracy allegations. The Congress and Senate have both rejected the claims, although shamefully not unanimously. The Vice President, the most loyal of acolytes, found his duty to the Constitution was greater than his willingness to follow the demands of his boss. The Majority Leader, who for four years rubber stamped virtually every demand of the President, stood and declared that the facts were obvious and indisputable.

Nothing that is America, nothing that we as a nation have given power and resources to in order to defend our interests and our democracy, nothing has bowed to the demands of Donald Trump.

Then, we have logic. Were there a massive, national conspiracy... were there a concerted attempt to defraud the system as has been insisted on by Trump and his allies, the coordination across many states involving many thousands of co-conspirators, many of whom campaigned for precisely the result that so dismayed the President would have been unprecedented and unimaginable. That a conspiracy of that dimension would have somehow escaped the notice of the President's intelligence community, somehow left no smoking gun or paper trace, is impossible.

Einstein once said, in reflecting on a God that was alien to his leanings, that the odds against there being no God, but of the universe being the product of randomness, were infinite. In the face of infinite odds against disbelief, he accepted that he must believe. Such is the situation here.

Finally, conclusively, there are the President's own words and actions, and similarly the words and actions of his allies. Trump states that he knows for a fact that there was a conspiracy, that there was fraud... and yet, the derivation of knowledge must be some form of evidence, some article beyond just faith. When Trump called the heads of the election in Georgia, he did not offer them proof, nor did he suggest that he had it. He asked them to find the proof, to find the evidence that he lacked. How can he have proof, yet be unable to produce it? How can he have knowledge, yet need to ask others to procure it? He cannot, and therefore he does not.

His allies demanded that the machines were somehow selectively dishonest, choosing to take away his votes while producing them for the rest of the ticket... and yet, when the paper trails were tallied against the mechanical results, there were no discrepancies. Did the machines also write out the ballots and print them falsely, then convince the random audit participants to lie about it? His allies protested publicly that the election results were based on fraud, but repeated stated when under oath the reverse, that they alleged no fraud, no conspiracy. There is no evidence provided not only of fraud, but under oath that they believed there was fraud... none. Not alleged to state courts, to federal courts, to the Supreme Court. There were allegations of technical mistakes by state bodies in their interpretation of arcane election laws, and that is it... and they lost 62-0 in even those arguments. Fraud? Conspiracy? No allegations, no claims, as a matter of fact a clear denunciation of that being an intention. Guiliani: "No, your honor, we are not alleging Fraud".

If the President was in possession of any document, any evidence of any part of his accusation, would he and all around him not been ballyhooing that information to every one of these institutions and courts? If there was any logical progression, would not the DOJ and FBI leaned into the investigations on his behalf?

We have all that we need to know. The argument by the Senators and Congressman on the President's behalf was that if so many people in our country believed the repeated shouts of the President and his media microphones, there must be guilt in the system somewhere. Their circular arguments were that because American's believed their President when he made declarative statements, then those statements must by their adoption be true.

There is a simple answer, one that would be unquestioned in any other time in this nation's history: the election was fairly wrought, and the President and his allies know and understand that fact. Given that essential truth, the actions of the President before and since November 3rd are the acts of a person intentionally and conspiratorially seeking to overthrow the will of the people, and to install himself illegitimately in the office that he was voted out of.

There is no definition of that reality that does not relate to treason and insurrection, that does not count Donald Trump as a man intent on attacking and overcoming our democracy. The actions of this past Wednesday, in that light, take on every dark dimension that we ascribe to foreign invaders and saboteurs.

May the institutions that he so blasphemously threatened, may the nation that he so cynically attacked, and may the history that is to be written have at him as he deserves, and consign him and his co-conspirators to what he has shown himself to be.