Percent of Republicans who think that the 2020 election was illegitimate: 70%
What is challenging is that I feel like I’ve been very much formed by worldview education and Religious Right cultural education that really emphasizes political alignment as an important part of your identity because of the elevated role that national politics plays in our society. That kind of formation is really difficult right now because the people whom I would like to identify as my “tribe” are all crazy and delusional. There was plenty of talk about Trump’s election in 2016 not being legitimate, but the only poll I could find only held that 30% of democrats thought that he was not legitimately elected (and those numbers are not fully representative of “Russia hacking” delusions, but also, I presume, include people who are just ideologically opposed to the Electoral College method of election, which would at least contain agreements on the facts of the circumstance even if there was disagreement about what constitutes legitimacy.
It’s probably not just a formational circumstance that makes it so hard to deprioritize the role of politics in my thinking. I also have a personality that feels the need to gain control by seeking information and understanding about what is happening, and the path that this takes you down is generally going to lead you to a political explaination (at least at first). And then by nature, once you learn information you situate yourself in relation to that information. And then you are again building and developing an aspect of your identity that is primarily referenced toward politics.
I’m very much reminded of David Foster Wallace in “A Supposedly Fun Thing that I will Never Do Again” looking out at his fellows passengers on his cruise ship disembarking on a third world port town and just feeling embarrasment, self-consciousness, and humiliation that he belongs to the same tribe as them. But the difference is that he doesn’t really have any choice but to accept that identity even if he he’s ashamed of it. In politics you get to choose your identity. And I have for the most part. Maybe the distressing thing is actually the realization, with the synchronized spasms of insanity of the Republican party, that the political identity that I have chosen has pretty much no chance of ever holding power.