The last few paragraphs in this essay are a slam dunk and nail down why the hysteria….
“…There was no balance in this contest; Hillary should have won in a colossal landslide. When that didn’t happen, the bottom dropped out for the left. Their swift rejection of fact and rapid adoption of fiction has precedent in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. The lack of credible evidence of a Trumpian conspiracy does nothing to diminish the left’s hysterics. That Trump joked about Russia and suggested that he would like to have a cordial relationship with Putin is enough for the left to believe in the collusion theory. They will not be convinced otherwise because of their continuing unwillingness to process the outcome of the presidential election in an emotionally healthy way. The only way they could cope with this catastrophe was to do what many did after Dallas in November 1963: Discard empiricism in favor of wild theory. For some, a conspiracy by John Birchers, Cubans, or Mafiosi to kill Kennedy imbued his death with more raison d’être than the impulsive target practice of a paranoid shipping clerk with a mail-order rifle. Similarly, if a shirtless Soviet ghoul and an oddly coiffed Montgomery Burns conspired to create 100,000 Republican votes in Janesville, Pittsburgh, and Flint, only then can the left emotionally process Hillary’s defeat. Thus, the left needs Operation Trump-Russia; without it, progressives must contend with the undigestible reality that they are responsible for their 2016 election failure given their nomination of a condescending, corrupt harridan who could not appeal to an electorate tired of preening, establishmentarian grandees…” The Left Needs Operation Trump-Russia