I am sitting down to type these words on a lovely Sunday morning. The sun is shining, and the temps are warm for this time of year and I really should be out in my garage workshop making more of the wooden items I sell online. I could be making more cutting boards, pens, bowls, or other fun things, and that was my plan, just before I hit the road for errands this morning.

So, I am going to tell you about my very bizarre last couple of days.

Just yesterday, I found myself at my local Post Office branch, mailing a cutting board to a customer. There was one person in front of me, and he was engaged in energetic conversation with the sole clerk working the front desk. I came in partway through their chat, but basically, the postal worker was loudly holding forth on the vast conspiracy that had stolen the election from Donald Trump. She talked about “the five,” of which she identified the CIA as the lead secret agency engaged in the satanic plot to put Joe Biden in the White House. She did not state whether her own employer, the massive USPS, is one of the five. She spoke, wearing her near-useless plexiglass face shield up far enough that her mouth was uncovered, with great anger and hostility, about “Hillary” (she used no last name, but I’m guessing we know whom she is railing on about) and “her daughter.” Both, the clerk explained, are “high ranking witches” in the nation’s most important satanic organization, and you can tell that based on their wearing of inverted crosses around their necks (fyi: there are photoshopped images showing that, but the claim has been disproved repeatedly). This conversation went on for a full five minutes, turning to vaccine denial and was, in my view, spectacularly unprofessional.

That was weird…

And today, while visiting my local wood store, I entered the building to hear, “I’m feeling very threatened right now” from the customer at the counter. Given the jovial nature of the shop, I thought it was likely a joke, but I quickly saw that the staff – hardly a bunch of lefties – were firmly but calmly telling the gent that he had to put on a mask or leave. He insisted, loudly (and therefore with even more spittle entering the air around him) that, “Only the House and the State House can make laws, the governor can’t.” There are some poli sci problems with that line of thinking, but for the next 10 minutes or so, the guy was stunningly obnoxious and amazingly uninformed. There is no virus, apparently, and no governor can make him wear one.

The staff told him that, as a private business, they could refuse him service, as the mask requirement was posted on the door. The gentleman, who had been asserting what he thought were his inalienable rights, denied that the store had any right to ask him to leave. He threatened to call the cops on the store staff, to which they said, “please do.” He then stormed out, announcing that he would never return to that shop. The staff seemed OK with that decision. Oh, and as they followed him out, he turned and yelled “keep six feet away from me.” I am not entirely sure you can refuse to wear a mask and also insist on social distancing.

That was really weird…

You see, I had hoped to talk with you today about yet another example of astonishing political hypocrisy, in the form of the Republicans in the House and Senate who were elected from swing states, and who took their oaths of office on Sunday, creating the brand new 117th Congress. You see, many of these newly electeds are insisting that the electoral votes for their state were rigged to give Biden the Electoral College votes. But apparently, the rest of the election in their states was just fine, and that they themselves were somehow miraculously elected honestly while the rest of the ballot was corrupt. On Jan. 6, they will object to seating the Biden electors from their own states, while standing by the claim that they were honestly elected. Stunning and yet sadly fully in character for the Trump GOP these days.

In the case of the postal service worker, I suspect she watches a lot of Fox News (unless she agrees with Trump that it has gotten too liberal lately) and her reality is, well, somewhat altered from what is actual reality. Similarly, in the case of the rude maskless man in the wood shop, there is also a denial of science, coupled with a frenzied and nutty view that somehow the COVID virus is somehow political. Apparently however, the virus cares little about your political opinions.

Look, it is quite reasonable for people to have honest and open disagreements about, say Gov. Polis and whether he did or did not overstep his authority. But that’s not what we are having. In my view, the greatest danger created by Trump is the acceptance of the concept of “alternative facts.” You may remember a close adviser to Trump, Kellyanne Conway, coining that nonsensical term when defending the ludicrous claim that Trump’s inaugural audience was the biggest in history (spoiler: there are actual photos disproving the claim). Alternative facts allow the postal clerk to assert nonsense about the CIA being a secret satanic organization. Alternative facts allow an angry man to yell nonsense at a wood store clerk.

I sincerely hope the Republican Party can reattach itself to reality in a post-Trump era. There are enough substantive things to argue about without insisting on an alternative and fact-fluid world view. We need many, many more Republicans in the model of former Gov. Bill Owens and outgoing El Paso County District Attorney Dan May and, occasionally, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.

Oh, and by the way, that “alternative facts” inventor, Ms. Conway, has now been appointed by Trump to the Air Force Academy’s Board of Visitors, which is similar to a university’s trustees or regents. I hope she takes the time to read the honor code. There is an especially good part about not lying, nor tolerating those who do.