First Scenario
Presidential campaign 1 hires some thugs to break into the headquarters of their opponent, campaign 2, and steal information they hope to use against them in the election.  They get caught, and the nominee #1, a sitting president, tries to cover it all up.  The press find out and jump all over the story blowing it into a national crisis of unprecedented proportions. 

Second Scenario
Presidential campaign 1 hires some high tech people to break into the servers of their opponent, Presidential campaign 2.  They also co-opt university-based analysts to sift the data so they can massage it into a narrative that scandalizes their opponent, and then they give it to the FBI in order to seduce them to investigate Presidential nominee #2. And when presidential nominee #2 gets elected and becomes a sitting president, the losing nominee and her group continue to spy on them. Meanwhile, the media and congress run off on a wild goose chase created by the false information generated by nominee #1 and her employees. They all spend three years and millions of dollars, pedaling misinformation such as claiming they have proof the massaged story is true, trying to make a unicorn live, and when then president (nominee 2) claims they spied on him, they all laugh and ridicule him because his own style of communication makes him an easy target.  Meanwhile, just how many laws were broken? How damaged has become the government, and how polarized have become the people of the nation? All because elements on one side of the aisle did not actually and peacefully accept the real outcome of an election and genuinely hand over the reigns of government to a duly elected president?  

And then what happens?  The country is so sick of the sparring between that president and the media, etc, that they elect a guy who hid in his basement and refused to actually conduct a presidential campaign much at all.  All people really knew was that he wasn’t the previous guy.  And then what happened?  The basement-president botched one issue after another, lost the confidence of the nation and set the stage for the re-election of the president who had been lied about.  Never mind that that man became so tarnished by years of fighting the false narrative that he is now a much more dangerous thinker, embittered and on a vendetta to reclaim his reputation.  Because all people remember is that the country was better off when he was in the white house, and he is likely to be elected all over again.

And the whole thing makes me sick.  I don’t want to see Trump run again.  I dread the whole dance.  But it is NOT all Trump’s fault. What kind of accountability can there be for the people who foisted such a massively damaging fiction on the whole country?
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