Why do people deny the obvious?

I think I have asked this question before, but I want to ask again for this specific case. When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, it was immediately obvious to me that he was unfit. His lack of any plans that looked like anybody had done any work on them, his xenophobia and misogyny, his obvious vulgarity, his bullying and the violence he encouraged at his rallies--and a thousand more things--revealed him as a candidate who was utterly worse in kind and in degree than any candidate I had ever seen. He was orders of magnitude worse, in my eyes. Still, there were, among my acquaintances, people who did not recognize the gap between Trump's and garden variety political misbehavior. "But Hillary's emails!"

And after all this time, I know people who don't see the difference between his mountains of transgressions and those few of their political enemies. I have an acquaintance who, when told that Trump is a pathological liar, trots out examples of his political opponents' lies. Always the same two examples.

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

"You'll be able to keep your same doctor with the Affordable Care Act."

Just those two examples, and the second one isn't even a lie. Maybe she could think up a few more examples if she put her mind to it, but I could drown them in Trump's sea of lies.

I'll admit that we all have a tendency to overstate the flaws of our political enemies, and to understate those of our champions, but most people have a limit beyond which they won't go. Not so in the present case. It strikes me that it takes a herculean effort to not see the mess that Donald Trump is making day by day. My question is, What makes that effort worthwhile?

Is there a Deep State? If so, whom does it serve?

Senator Lindsey Graham said last week that, "When you find out who the whistleblower is, I'm confident you're gonna find out it's somebody from the deep state."

Senator Graham was speaking, of course, of an entity that exists in the minds of conspiracy theorists. I think that if such an all-powerful, secret organization existed, Donald Trump would never have set foot in the White House.

Or maybe keeping Trump out of the White House would not be in the Deep State's interest? Just what is understood by "Deep State?"

According to Wikipedia, "Conspiracy theorists believe that there is 'a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process....'"

Well, hell, that might describe the way the Republican Party currently operates in the open. I have heard conservatives say that they believe the electorate would vote more wisely if it consisted only of people who own property. This is an open admission that the "consent of the governed" is not their priority. And the practice, in red states, of trying to make voting ever more difficult for certain populations is an attempt to achieve just such a restricted electorate.

But I think that Trump voters actually believe that Trump is the first president elected "by the people" in a long time, despite his having lost the popular vote. They think that Trump is finally working for them, and that the current attempt to remove him from office amounts to a coup, a Deep State action.

Anyone with one eye open, however, can see that Trump is unfit for any office, that he has no regard for constitutional government, and that he is causing great harm to the country, in both foreign and domestic matters. Trump's lack of regard for the Constitution makes him a natural ally of the Republican Party that has been evolving since the Reagan administration.

For me, an ideal Deep State would be a collection of watchdogs in government who are dedicated to protecting our democratic institutions. In fact, that describes just the entity that horrifies Lindsey Graham. There are people in government, including the career civil servants who have been testifying in Trump's impeachment hearings, who understand how government should work, and what endangers democracy. There are people at the Pentagon who are exceedingly alarmed at what their commander in chief is doing. That is what I hope the Deep State is.

There's a real balancing act going on at present. Trump won the presidency according to the rules (if one assumes that Russian meddling didn't change the election's outcome), so, according to the Constitution, he entitled to certain powers. The military must follow his orders, for example. The Secret Service's job is to protect him and his family from harm. If the president, however, exceeds his constitutional powers, at what point is it proper for the military to refuse to carry out his orders?

Right now, the House of Representatives is carrying out a process that I find absolutely necessary, but we are saddled with a Republican Senate filled with senators who seem determined to brazen out the whole process and thereby damage our country for a long time.