I grew up in a very red, rural community in the midwest. [View all]

[yardwork]

I have relatives who live in various red, rural communities. I see the Facebook posts of my former classmates.

Hillary Clinton didn't lose the election because coastal elites are snobby. (They aren't paying any attention to us.) She didn't lose because she called Trump supporters deplorable. (They don't know or care what the word deplorable means.) Rural people who voted against Hillary did so because they are convinced that:

1. She deliberately caused U.S. patriots to die in Benghazi, which is somewhere far off, because she sent them there with no weapons and refused to send troops to protect them.

2. She's responsible for the murder of millions of babies.

3. She tried to hide her emails because they revealed that she was sex trafficking children, and so then her emails were hacked by Isis and that's why they attacked Benghazi and killed American patriots. Then she deleted 30,000 more emails that were about even worse things than sex trafficking children.

4. She lied. And stole. Details are vague, but she's crooked.

Why do millions of people believe these blatant falsehoods? Because millions of people deliberately spread the lies - including a lot of supposed progressives.