Brick Walls and Rabbit Holes

 I have stopped trying to respond to people who insist that the election was "stolen" from Donald Trump. There's no point to it. You either wind up talking to a brick wall or following them down the rabbit hole of their own deluded thinking. Even when you present them with verifiable facts (with citations from multiple sources), they tell you it's all fake and part of the vast conspiracy. When you ask them to present verifiable evidence of their "truth," they fall back on the oldest conspiracist argument in the world: The fact that there is no evidence is the evidence of how big the conspiracy is. 

Early last year, before the pandemic, I directed a production of Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue. I never thought the ravings of the lead character, Mel Edison, as he goes through a nervous breakdown would have any bearing on the real world, but....well, read the following and tell me it doesn't sound familiar if you've argued with a pro-Trumper or an anti-masker virus-denier in the past six months:

MEL: Do you want proof, Edna? Do you want me to give you actual, indisputable proof?

EDNA: Of what, Mel?

MEL: That me, that Dave Polichek, that Mike Ambrozi, Hal Chesterman, twenty-three secretaries, six point seven of the working force in this country today is unemployed not because of a recession, not because of wages and high prices, but because of a well organized, calculated, brilliantly executed plot? Do you want me to give you proof right here and now in this room?

EDNA: Well--alright...If you want, Mel. 

MEL: I CAN'T GIVE YOU ANY PROOF!! What kind of proof do I have? I'm out of work, that's my proof...They won't let me work!

 Let me point out that Simon wrote that in 1972, decades before Twitter and Facebook were even gleams in their creators' eyes.