Election was fair; Trump to blame for Capitol deaths

Dear Editor:

Distract. Deny. Deflect.

That’s the strategy of conservatives whose morality ends when it conflicts with Donald Trump’s narcissistic ego trip.

I’m tired of hearing about voters feeling “disenfranchised.” The president got 3 million fewer votes in 2016 than his opponent; weren’t all those folks disenfranchised? He got 7 million fewer this time around, but this page has people whining about their voices not being heard. Well, the majority has rights, too.

Don’t try to distract us with your fake narrative about voter fraud. It didn’t happen, and thousands of people in both parties — poll workers, secretaries of state, governors, security experts, judges, etc. — have concluded the results were fair. Yes, there are a handful of documented cases of fraud for which people will serve prison time, but as Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said, “The plural of anecdote is not data.”

Don’t deny the fact that Trump’s rhetoric incited sedition in the Capitol. He’s as guilty of those five deaths as the traitors who rushed in. Remember, Charles Manson didn’t kill anyone either, he just got some very impressionable people to do it for him. And he died in prison.

Don’t deflect by trying to equate the protests of last past summer with the events in Washington last week. You lost an election fair and square. You weren’t oppressed, marginalized, beaten, murdered and, yes, disenfranchised for 400 years and then expected to ignore all that when white cops abuse their power.

Get over yourselves.

Stephen Massardo

Saugerties