The thinking is societal collapse = bad; Orange Man = bad; so Orange Man = societal collapse.
Honestly, it's exhausting at this point no matter what you think of Trump.
When it's 60% who have doubts, is it still a "blindingly obvious lie"? What about 80%?
Does it? Seems to me that most people don't, and never have trusted each other.
Most people don't need to trust each other. The elites certainly do, at the very least, to respect the peaceful transfer of power. Democracies have, by design, lots of elites, so the coördination problem becomes (intentionally) more difficult.
Today, one year later, the evidence is clear about what the plot was. Actually it was all admitted to on live TV and even had a name: “The Green Bay Sweep”
- pretend there was fraud, and lie about it profusely.
- GOP Reps and Senators challenge specific states, baselessly.
- Pence rejects the certification, assuming powers he doesn’t have (but who would stop him?)
- states baselessly reject election results and choose Trump instead
- Contested election is thrown to House
- Majority Republican delegations install Trump as President, thereby officially ending American democracy.
Of course at the last moment, Pence refused to be part of this plan, because he knew what they wanted him to do was unconstitutional. Hence the Capitol insurrection. Hence "Hang Mike Pence".
Whether that equates to societal collapse, I don’t know, but it does amount to tearing up and burning the Constitution.
Also - everything collapses, every world order and every regional power either has collapsed or will collapse. The Roman Empire collapsed with a thousand-year gap between the last breath of the east and west wings. The fact that something is currently collapsing doesn't tell us much except that it hasn't collapsed yet.