4,924,464

 At this moment Biden's popular vote lead over Trump stands at 4,924,464.

The Electoral College is, of course, where the action is, but it is interesting to see the president and his legal crew trying their best to overturn a 5-million vote plurality. This is a margin larger than Obama's in 2012. The race was very close in some states, but nationally not particularly close. It should rank about the 14th narrowest margin of victory in history (Garfield and Kennedy are the two closest ever in the popular vote). 

So far, Trumps  legal maneuvering has come to naught. Perhaps this is just the new way of American elections: the adjudication stage. 

Arizona and Georgia appear destined to go with Biden in the end. Trump has been closing the gap in Arizona, but appears to be running out of time. He would have to win 60% of the remaining ballots to pull even. Of course these states (and others) are destined for recounts, but normally recounts don't result in drastically different results (maybe a change of a few hundred at worst).

The other simple fact to keep in mind that most of the complaints lodged by the Trump lawyers are not only lacking evidence, but they don't account for enough votes to reverse the results in any state. In other words, even if they were all successful (and they won't be), they wouldn't change the results. All they amount to is sand in the gears.

I would suggest that the way has been prepared for this moment by 4 years of this administration working hard to undermine the belief in truth itself. All truth, for them, is simply political truth, an artifact of political gamesmanship. The truth that belongs to the Democrats is a construct, bolstered by the MSM, that one may dismiss out of hand. The truth that belongs to Republicans is trustworthy, and needn't be bolstered by anything. Evidence is not necessary and critical thinking is a tool of the elites.

This is a point of view that seems to mirror what we've heard from the radical left for many generations now. Dismiss all contradictory evidence as tainted, but require no particular "burden of proof" of your own side's allegations. It seems like a condition that makes all kind of abuse possible and successful. What would Hannah Arendt say, I wonder?

Well, she said that we've never been able to trust our politicians, and that the realm of truth-telling lies outside politics. She also noted that factual truth is always vulnerable to political power. That's because power rests on narrative, and narrative, a cracking good yarn, beats the rigors of critical thinking every time. This is why in Trump-world anecdote always trumps data. A story about an immigrant who murders someone, for example, trumps the overwhelming data that immigrants are law-abiding.

Here's a nice piece on Arendt's thinking about truth:

Factual truth is in great danger of disappearance. It is engaged in a battle with political power, and it is the vulnerability of factual truth that makes deception possible. But this isn’t new either. Factual truth has always been in danger. It is easily manipulated and subject to censorship and abuse. Arendt cautions that factual truth is in danger of “being maneuvered out of the world for a time, and possibly forever.” “Facts and events”, she writes, “are infinitely more fragile things than axioms, discoveries, theories, which are produced by the human mind.”

Something to chew on, that.