I was in 8th grade when my social studies teacher said to me, “Democracy only works when people believe in it. The minute people stop believing it is the minute it dies.” I took it with a grain of salt, understanding the basic idea behind her comment, but not realizing the very real and frightening extent to which her assertion was true.

We all found out the reality of this comment only a year later, on January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Building during the certification of the 2020 election electoral votes. 

The mob, angry that Trump did not get reelected as president, claimed voter fraud and conspiracy that had worked against Trump during the 2020 election. Trump and his legal team spent months scouring to find any scraps of evidence to prove those claims true. And every time they tried, they came up short. Yet, despite this glaring lack of evidence, Trump’s supporters still believed the lies of voter fraud, ignoring the ring of cognitive dissonance in their ears. 

The controversy culminated on January 6, 2021. 

The mob stormed through the lines of Capitol police, broke down barriers, windows, and doors, and eventually broke their way into the Capitol as Congresspeople took shelter in the basement. In the hectic hours of the attack, the United States and the world were holding their breath. Eventually, the riot calmed down and the questions and the shock and the trials in Congress began. And a year later, it’s time to take a step back and acknowledge the harm done, and examine the severity of how lies, woven for many years, sowed the seeds of mistrust in the fundamental principle of American government: democracy. 

Donald Trump has always been scared of failure and loss. During every stage of the election cycle, he insisted that if he lost, it was because some unknown and secret force was working against him, ruling out any possibility that he might have actually come up short.

Before getting elected in 2016, he had already been labeling the election system as ‘rigged’ and tweeting about ‘large scale voter fraud’. Not only did he question the legitimacy of the election, he never quite assured the peaceful transition of power between presidents, saying “I will tell you at the time. I will keep you in suspense” in response to questioning if he would adhere to the peaceful transfer of power. 

In November 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

Not another doubt was uttered from Trump or his team, no more attacking the legitimacy of the election happened after his 2016 victory. That is, until the 2020 election cycle began to ramp up. In April 2020, Trump reiterated “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged”, suggesting postponing the election and attacking mail in ballots. 

For the entirety of United States history, free and fair elections have been the consistent foundation of politics and civic life. Every year, on Election Day, anyone who is registered to vote can go vote for their local, state, and federal government representatives; every 4 years, United States citizens vote for the president.  

The technology for counting and verifying votes has changed significantly over the 250 years of the nation, but the voting process was always dependent on a system that was trustworthy. The 2020 election was no different. In fact, it was proven, time and again, that the 2020 election was the most secure election in United States history. But never before has there been such doubt about the fairness and security of this democratic process. How does the United States get to a place where this doubt and basic dismissal of facts ends in an insurrection at the capitol building?

Lies.

More specifically, lies that a large portion of the population wants to hear. On the whole, right-wing America has become obsessed with the idea that they are being oppressed by an unknown force, sometimes characterized as the opposite side of the aisle, but oftentimes as marginalized groups whose demands for equality threaten the status quo. Trump appealed to the right’s fear of these cultural changes with slogans like “make America great again”. In his quest to delegitimize his losses, Trump fed the conspiracies about a mysterious force that was persecuting conservative voters and voices, helping to create the mass hysteria that culminated on January 6. 

But the problem is not with Trump. 

There will always be people like Trump: narcissists who are willing to take advantage of mass hysteria will always exist. The problem is that there is a large segment of the population who continue to live their life denying facts and believing the lie that they are being silenced in the democratic process, and therefore ignored in their government. This doubt threatens the very core of politics and life in the United States, and it will continue to come up, year after year. Even when Trump is gone and ‘MAGA’ has been left behind, the misinformation that sows doubt and fear about democratic processes will still exist, long after the echoes of the Trump era have faded. 

There might not be a good way to repress it. However it is imperative that as citizens, we understand the source of mass hysteria instead of pinning it on one person and allowing it to show it’s ugly face every 4 years. 

This is our struggle: to consciously preserve our democracy before misinformation and doubt destroy free and fair elections.