What still puzzles me is how something like 45% of the country's population still supports Trump. This fact calls into question the fundamental basis of democracy, if a substantial portion of the voter base is delusional and/or irrational.
Few people are “irrational” except for maybe demonstrably crazy people (even they often demonstrate rationality). The “irrational” slur is just lazy thinking; it’s akin to a Marxist accusing someone of “false consciousness”. Anyone we disagree with can be labeled “irrational”.
The main problem with the electorate (and people in general) is ignorance, which is the actual threat to democracy. But we don’t really have democracy anyway; we have elected oligarchy. But sometimes the people get a bit uppity and the defenders of democracy (oligarchy) get upset.
This is a strange takeaway. If the Electoral College were abolished (ie, if the US moved even more in the direction of "mass suffrage democracy"), Trump never would have been elected in the first place.
"Useless people" have human rights, and that includes voting. I think your real problem is with encouraging mass fervor towards the democratic process. It should be treated like a hobby that anyone can get into, not a religion that we actively try to convert people into.
The idea that questions of governance should be a mere "hobby" is absurd. These are deadly serious matters--matter of crime, punishment, war, life, death, etc. Little bit more important than just something you do for fun on the weekend.
Anyways, no, voting is not a "human right." But if we are going to stipulate that it is, then yes, *in theory* everyone should be super enthusiastic about it--highly rational, highly informed, etc. That is not what happens in practice, but it is most certainly the theory behind mass democracy.
There's plenty of wiggle room between the disaster we have now and outright dictatorship. But if you force it into an all-or- nothing binary choice, don't be surprised when some people make the choice you're afraid of.
By what standard is the modern democracy a disaster? It certainly has flaws, but I would prefer living in modern America to the vast majority of historical societies.
If you don't view the current state of things as a train wreck, then our worldviews are probably irreconcilable. Even if I take the viewpoint of this article, though, that would mean we have a guy who unironically attempted a coup, then he got nominated to run for president again anyways 4 years later and now he might actually win the election and return to power. Doesn't seem great!
You're probably right about that. In many ways, I am dissatisfied with the state of American politics (and have been for a long time). I think that America has many problems, but calling it a disaster, especially with some historical perspective, strikes me as bizarre and hyperbolic.
Thought exercise: assume only 1 million best qualified people in the nation were granted suffrage and nothing else changed in the system. Criteria was intelligence, empathy, consciousness and interest. 50k best applicants each year get a 20 year term. Would the outcomes of this limited democracy be better or worse than the current system?
My bold claim is that we can incrementally improve on the current system limiting the degree of democracy while remaining democratic.
That doesn't surprise me, it is easily explained through the instinctual operation of in-group, prestige and frequency bias in cultural (meme) transmission.
What does surprise me is how few of what Hanania calls "elite human capital" (EHC) on the right have done what Benham is doing here, and Michael Huemer has done
EHC are people for whom individual learning (analysis of the facts) and direct bias (assessing the reliability of the meme transmission one receives as to whether to adopt it) are sufficiently well-developed to override the three instinctual biases mentioned above.
Uh, yes. Historically “democracy” was seen as a degenerate and hedonistic mob state whose net impact was to put the fate of a nation at the whim of people who barely had time to care about how taxes work. That’s why until very recently the few extant democracies limited their voting class to a very small number of elite individuals who were usually educated and had high stakes in the efficiency of government.
I cannot emphasize enough that literally for millennia “Democracy killed Socrates” was the core impression most political thinkers had about democracy.
It was Jefferson who wrote that a well-informed populace is essential to democracy... and Tim Urban's recent book talks about how both the red and blue golems (but particularly the red) in our system are playing anti-democratic games. It won't hold for much longer at this rate.
But, I'd gently correct one bit of your comment. It isn't delusion or irrationality that's driving most people's continued support – its living in an alternate, uninformed reality. Most have no idea about the fake electors scheme. They have no idea how poorly formed the court challenges were. They think there was something there, that some technicalities or elite manipulation prevented the truth from coming out.
They believe that because its what Trump told them.
Democracies can and do fail, and they fail when demagogues realize how easy it is to exploit anger and fear, how easy it is to lie boldly and selfishly, and how much there is to gain by playing games which are incompatible with democracy... its the other side who has to still play by the rules of civil society. So, yes. Democracy has a fatal flaw, history has shown us how it can be exploited, and its being actively exploited by the right this time around. Its why i'm voting for Kamala despite never having voted blue before in my life.
It is perfectly rational to support an attempt to overthrow democracy by your own party. After all, the reason you support your party is that you want it to be in power.
They are perfectly rational, they just don't believe what they say.
There's a rhetorical move, that shouldn't be done, where someone says "make a bingo card" against common rebuttals, as if making a bingo card does any work whatsoever (it doesn't) in refuting those rebuttals. It's a rhetorical move I find annoying and see too often.
Some of those seem to have pretty reasonable readings, though?
Standing vs merits definitely affects how strong evidence you take the court cases to be. (Or are you disputing that whatever amount were dismissed on standing? I'm not familiar with that; I'm just taking your word for it.)
Looking at Trump's speech preceding the capital incursion, he also there indicates that what he wanted was to exert pressure on Republican moderates in a peaceful manner, not to carry out a violent coup.
He did suggest that the national guard should be present.
Are any of these enough to say that his actions surrounding January sixth were not terrible? Certainly not; he should never have done what he did. But I don't see why those are refuted?
> Standing vs merits definitely affects how strong evidence you take the court cases to be. (Or are you disputing that whatever amount were dismissed on standing? I'm not familiar with that; I'm just taking your word for it.)
"Standing" decisions comes in various favors. Sometimes it can be completely orthogonal to the merits, however standing is oftentimes deeply entwined with the merits. For example, one of the essential components of standing is proof of legal injury, which has to be proven with evidence. If you allege injury, then the merits question is whether that injury is one you can recover from. So many people who claimed election fraus sued, had no evidence of any ballots, and then were tossed out. The courts may not have decided whether those hypothetical ballots were legal, but the decision still defeats claims of fraud.
Furthermore, Candidate Trump would obviously have had standing to contest ballots in any lawsuit if he had evidence that they were cast. The fact that he didn't sign on to most of these suits is strong evidence that they are full of shit.
Finally, there were court cases decided on the merits. I believe the 8th circuit described the evidence presented on the merits as zero.
> Looking at Trump's speech preceding the capital incursion, he also there indicates that what he wanted was to exert pressure on Republican moderates in a peaceful manner, not to carry out a violent coup.
This is simply not what Trump said when he instructed the mob to head down to the capitol, and it certainly does not reflect his actions after he knew what was going on.
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
"Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong…"
"The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
Those quotes all look like what I said.
To be clear, when I said "indicates that what he wanted was…not to carry out a violent coup," I did not mean that he said something like "don't carry out a violent coup" (aside, I suppose, from "peacefully and patriotically"). What I was saying was that his speech is, as I said, instructing his people to be pushing the Republican moderates to agree with him, and that what he is pushing for there is clearly something separate from a violent coup.
Sure, and I basically agree that those arguments you’ve listed are bad, but the act of placing them in the bingo card isn’t what’s doing the refuting. Its actual function is that of mockery, more or less.
You missed Ray Epps using his mind control powers (given by the FBI; he is their most powerful warrior) to force them to break into the Capitol against their will because he said something the previous night.
I endorse this entire essay. Recognizing that the bar is EXTREMELY low, what's the "best" substantive defense of the fake elector scheme that you've encountered?
The single most effective argument in support the stolen election meme is the same reason why the vast majority of its adherents actually do believe it. Simply put, the president of the United States, and the twice-nominated leader of the Red political faction said it had been.
Republican elites and media had had plenty opportunity to shut down Trump in 2011 when he started babbling about Obama not being born in Hawaii. Romney could have chosen not seek Trump's endorsement in 2012. The party could have made a deal with the other Republican candidates to all withdraw and endorse Cruz in early 2016 to block Trump, as the Democratic elite did with Sanders in 2020. The fact that they did none of this meant Trump was judged as fit for office, when he was manifestly not, as later events have borne out.
You cannot wait to be sure on these things, that doesn't work. It's like the hundreds of thousands of dead in Ukraine because Biden dithered with Putin.
On that's the second most effective argument. The most effective argument was if one was actually paying attention to what was happening on election night.
Ok, the other argument is that fact that the Democrats are constantly fighting tooth and nail to prevent even basic common sense election security measures, like *making sure the voter is who he says he is*.
That’s not right. The charge you make about Democrats is not unique to 2020. People have been pointing that out for a long time. And yet there were not scores of millions of Republicans believing that Bush, Dole, McCain or Romney had actually won. Recall the skewed polls meme in 2012. It was briefly a thing and then vanished, I suspect many people didn’t even know it was a thing.
But the 2020 fraud meme had more legs, and four years later it is a big as ever. Why? Because Trump pushes it
The direction here is clear. The claim is the first step, the driver of the belief. Without it no large-scale belief gets implanted into millions upon millions of Republican brains. The observations you make come after the initial claim, in an effort to find some justification for a pre-existing belief.
There is none except ones based on lies and flagrant deceptions. They'll refer to the 1960 Hawaii case, but in 1960 it was done through the courts and they only used the alternate slate after winning there, rather than having them skulking around and telling their electors things like "When you arrive, please state to the guards that you are attending a meeting with either Senator Brandon Beach or Senator Burt Jones and proceed directly to the room. Please, at no point should you mention anything to do with Presidential Electors or speak to media" as occurred with this case. There's a reason that an Arizona false elector has already plead and many are being charged.
(Also, 1960 Hawaii was not outcome determinative, then-VP Nixon was pushing to take away EVs from his party, Nixon asked that it not be used as precedent going forward, and it was unanimously accepted by the joint session, none of which was true of Trump's false electors. Nixon had more character than Trump.)
Me, trying desperately to justify Trump's attempted coup: "Uhm, you didn't consider the election where they ended Reconstruction by murdering a bunch of black Republicans, though."
Analogy? What is the analogy? You're citing the most notoriously corrupt election in American history as evidence that what Trump did was fine. It's prima facie moronic.
If you want me to get into the details of what is different, the the 2020 false electors WERE NOT selected by state governments, whereas in 1876, they were. The state governments do in fact have the authority to send whatever electors they want. We now live in a more democratic era so they generally send electors who vote according to the will of the people of the state.
It saddens me that most of my fellow conservative friends, whom I otherwise consider intelligent, have deluded themselves into thinking this isn’t utterly disqualifying.
> I asked you for any proof of a "brazenly fraudulent" election.
You didn't, but now that you have:
There's the synchronized stopping of the reported count across multiple states flowed by statistically impossible jumps for Biden, the numerous instances of observers being kicked or tricked out of the counting room followed by the count resuming, in one case the counters literally boarding up the windows of the counting room so observers can't see what the counters are up to, the video recordings of counters feeding the same ballots multiple times through the machines, the multiple eyewitness affidavits, the miscellaneous statistical irregularities, etc.
More generally, how the Democrats are constantly moving heaven and earth to try to prevent even basic common sense anti-fraud measures, like *making sure the voter is who he says he is*.
Timely, my most recent post is my long-form reply to this. I think that we can sit here and quibble about whether Trump really attempted a "coup"--after all, some people will argue that what he wanted Mike Pence to do was technically legal/constitutional, and such like. We can also disagree about whether he really "knew he lost" or not, I think you are too uncharitable in your interpretation. I don't think any of this ultimately matters though.
The real question here is just how much we truly value "Our Democracy." This is the implied conflict going on when people argue about whether Trump is really a threat to "Our Democracy" or not. The contempt with which the right views this phrase--"Our Democracy," repeated by liberals as if part of a sacred liturgy--should be informative on this point. The truth of things, if we are capable of being honest, is that we value "Our Democracy" as the status quo so long as it is sufficiently aligned with our interests and preferences.
If we imagine a world in which society had "democratically" decided to enact overwhelmingly conservative preferences--for the sake of example, let's suppose the criminalization of any homosexual relations, also of abortion, a near-total ban on immigration, an end to no-fault divorce, and so forth and so on--then all the liberals who today love to harp on about the value of "Our Democracy" would be singing a different tune. Indeed we already witnessed this in the sharp ferocity with which our rulers turned upon "free speech" the moment they perceived that it no longer sufficiently served their interests.
As for me, I do not support Donald Trump, because I do not trust him to improve the situation (in part because of his actions after the 2020 elections). But I don't pretend to like "Our Democracy" either. Most people who support Trump do so because they hold the status quo in absolute, utter contempt. The notion that he threatens the status quo is therefore a feature in their minds, not a bug. The conservative perception, largely correct in my view, is that the left are honor-free scoundrels who will stop at nothing to win at all costs, and that they constantly get away scot-free with lying, cheating, and all manner of other totally unacceptable, "rule-breaking" sorts of behavior. Thus, to hold Donald Trump in particular contempt by comparison feels absurd.
"If we imagine a world in which society had "democratically" decided to enact overwhelmingly conservative preferences--for the sake of example, let's suppose the criminalization of any homosexual relations, also of abortion, a near-total ban on immigration, an end to no-fault divorce, and so forth and so on--then all the liberals who today love to harp on about the value of "Our Democracy" would be singing a different tune. Indeed we already witnessed this in the sharp ferocity with which our rulers turned upon "free speech" the moment they perceived that it no longer sufficiently served their interests."
Well, I mean, I support having the US Supreme Court strike down any bans on child sex dolls/robots that Our Democracy might push through, through either the ballot box or their elected representatives. Does that count for this? I don't want individual rights, especially those deemed vital, to be in the hands of majoritarian mobs!
Sure, that's a great example, because in the eyes of conservatives the left has already weaponized the courts long ago. Roe v Wade and Obergefell are two of the easiest examples of a subverted judiciary being used to bypass our heckin' "democracy." No one really believes in "the will of the people" when it comes to their most sacred values, whether they're left right or anything else.
Yeah, I mean, some of SCOTUS’s most notable decisions were extremely controversial when they were decided, so SCOTUS shouldn’t cuck on the child sex dolls/robots question, at least not in an ideal world. Denying minor-attracted persons that opportunity for a satisfactory harm-free sex life (specifically to those of them who are capable of being permanently satisfied by such dolls/robots) would be extraordinarily cruel.
This is also a major drawback with a cure to aging. For those of us who value social progress, a cure to aging would make social progress much harder since it would ensure the survival of past generations with backwards political views indefinitely. A lot of times, a population’s political views change as a result of generational change, not as a result of people changing their minds.
When voters aren’t required to show up to vote in person on election day ,when voting is conducted during a once in a lifetime pandemic, allowing for once in a lifetime voting procedures one might expect irregularities to occur.
When the sitting president’s legitimacy and competency are challenged from day one by all of the MSM with an abundance of bogus claims ( Russian hoax) etc. , one may understand the consideration of voter fraud in some circles.
> one may understand the consideration of voter fraud in some circles.
Yes. I understand perfectly the consideration of voter fraud: you are mad your guy didn't win and are fine with lying to pretend otherwise. More than fine - you prefer it! That's why Fox got fucked in the Dominion lawsuit, they were afraid of their viewers leaving to go watch more dishonest news sources if they didn't entertain the dishonest claims of voter fraud, so they ignored all their fact checkers telling them it was bullshit.
There's no need to do "election fraud apologism." There simply wasn't election fraud. That's why every single time you people have your feet held to the fire and asked to provide any substantive evidence, you can't.
> That's why every single time you people have your feet held to the fire and asked to provide any substantive evidence, you can't.
You mean aside from the synchronized stopping of the reported count across multiple states flowed by statistically impossible jumps for Biden, the numerous instances of observers being kicked or tricked out of the counting room followed by the count resuming, in one case the counters literally boarding up the windows of the counting room so observers can't see what the counters are up to, the video recordings of counters feeding the same ballots multiple times through the machines, the multiple eyewitness affidavits, the miscellaneous statistical irregularities, etc?
More generally, how the Democrats are constantly moving heaven and earth to try to prevent even basic common sense anti-fraud measures, like *making sure the voter is who he says he is*.
Name a single actual specific case of serious voter fraud. I don't mean some random guy pretending to be his grandpa, I mean serious numbers of votes being distorted. Do not list out ten things. I will then investigate this SINGLE, SPECIFIC case of election fraud, one wherein you provide enough detail for me to corroborate and look into details. If it is ACTUALLY fraud, I will change my opinion. If you do not do this, I will take it as a concession that there was no voter fraud and you're just a lying hack fuck.
The consideration is fine. If people initially trusted Trump and decided to look into the evidence and changed their minds, I would be perfectly happy to respect them. But the total unwillingness to grapple with the facts or have any sense of self-reflection is galling.
Or do you have an innocent explanation for the synchronized stopping of the reported count across multiple states flowed by statistically impossible jumps for Biden, the numerous instances of observers being kicked or tricked out of the counting room followed by the count resuming, in one case the counters literally boarding up the windows of the counting room so observers can't see what the counters are up to, the video recordings of counters feeding the same ballots multiple times through the machines, the multiple eyewitness affidavits, the miscellaneous statistical irregularities, etc?
Rather the courts refused to even look at it. I suspect they didn't want to deal with the messy fallout, especially considering the left had just stage "fiery but mostly peaceful protests" in the major cities.
Hey, remember when a couple hours ago, you linked a source containing "evidence" of fraud, and its very first cite for a claim of fraud was "I made it the fuck up"? Did that make you consider even for a single second that you might be wrong?
The election was stolen because it's very clear from credible anecdotes that there was widespread fraud. The evidence did not hold up in court because the entire judicial system is corrupt, just like the DOJ, the media and the FBI.
This is the most simple and logical explanation: Occam's razor and all that jazz.
I almost entirely agree. I think a big factor though is that he has *just* enough plausible deniability in all the well-known individual cases to make a semi-reasonable defense possible. E.g. he told the J6 mob to march "peacefully", or that "find
11,780 votes" can just mean trying to uncover that much genuine fraud, not a call to manufacture votes.
Overall, I think it's beyond reasonable doubt that Trump wanted and tried to stay in power based on mere allegations of fraud, and achieving this would amount to a coup. But this requires evaluating all of his actions as a whole, not because any one singular action passes the reasonable doubt threshold.
I think Republican ambivalence towards this has also been influenced by a certain amount of "crying wolf" about Trump in different areas, and low trust in media and institutions that is not entirely without merit. "Trump attempted a coup? Well, previously it was 'Trump is a Russian agent' and before that 'Trump is the next Hitler'. What's next?" Whereas if this has been 1974 again, where the media were more trusted and political rhetoric less hyperbolic and polarised, Trump's actions would have rightfully seen as far worse than Watergate.
I don't think the case against Trump is partisan. I agree with this article. I also think that Democrats are doing everything they can to make it seem partisan.
This is especially true regarding the case against Trump in New York. That case is partisan, I hope you'll agree. The Democratic machine throwing their support behind Bragg poisons the well.
Also after the history of the Mueller investigation, which turned out to be a nothing burger, the faith in the system is (justifiably?) eroded among the GOP base.
Then again, I have no doubt the Republicans would also abuse the system against their political opponents if they could, so I guess I can't blame the Democrats too much.
I don’t thank Mueller was a nothing burger. I think he found plenty of crooked stuff but he just didn't think it was his place to take it to it’s logical conclusion.
"Trump repeated the claim that more than 10,000 dead people voted, even after it had been investigated, and the real number was 12."
Just playing devil's advocate here, but shouldn't it be concerning that any dead people voted at all? If 12 cases were able to be definitively proven, couldn't there have been many more cases that weren't detected? Any proveable fraud, no matter how small, makes it seem possible that it occured on a larger scale and just wasn't detected. I would argue that when even miniscule levels of fraud are found, that the burden of proof is to prove the election was actually genuine, not to prove it was fraudulent.
> Any proveable fraud, no matter how small, makes it seem possible that it occured on a larger scale and just wasn't detected.
No? This is the same argument for "we've flipped over less than 5% of the Sahara, therefore there could be a secret highly advanced lost civilization there" or "we've only explored a tiny percentage of the ocean, so Megaladon could still be alive." The fact that a very small number of cases were found is evidence there was not a large number of cases.
And yet, when you had a discussion about voting for Trump with Richard Hanania, who has been slagging Trump in multiple posts, he expressed his intention to vote for Trump for boutique reasons.
What is the matter with people like Hanania? It's like when al Qaeda attacked us on 911 and the president referred to them as "folks" and then "criminals" when what they were was *soldiers* of a religious military order like the Teutonic knights (i.e. Islamic crusaders) who had *declared war* on us.
it is disturbing that US has unreliable election process
no one sane in Britain, France, Germany , any EU country, and a large number of normal countries in global South is satisfied with the level of election process in US
no observers
no credible paper trail that allows recount
Again, no observers either from opposing candidate or from foreign organizations /states e.g. EU, UN, Russia, India, BRICS.
it is very disturbing to witness almost unanimous efforts by deep state to openly support falsehoods, lies aimed at one candidate
several well known examples like Hunter Biden‘s laptop
it is also disturbing tham mainstream media are unified in supporting one side only, resorting to psychology warfare instead of reporting
Conclusion from a European:
it is possible that significant efforts were invested to manipulate mail votes,
and it is possible that majority for Biden was a result of these efforts.
Can we call it stealing an election ? Yes.
We are now a few weeks before the equally important election, and all the problems that make result look suspicious to honest observer have not been solved.
Nowhere in developed world can a person vote without identifying her/himself.
In civilised countries EACH voting position, has a team of people working on organising election, AND observers from both political parties, guaranteeing that there can be no election fraud.
Recount
How do you do a recount with voting machines?
How do you do recount if you do not have
A. a list of voters, who have identified themselves, and
B a corresponding exact number of votes
US does not have it.
It doesn't mean that elections have been stolen, it means one can never say whether the election has been stolen.
At each and every voting station? In the third largest country in the world, with the third largest population in the world?
In my state, voting machines print paper ballots that you can physically check and hand over. Dunno about the rest of the country.
Don't know what you mean to suggest with the 'exact number of votes' stuff. Votes are by secret ballot, so there would be discrepancies between number of voters who showed up and votes, period, no matter what (guy comes in, gives name/ID, submits invalid ballot, boom, one more identified voter than vote).
These are just bizarre claims which don't seem to have been checked before being made. The US goes to great lengths to ensure the integrity of its election.
> In the third largest country in the world, with the third largest population in the world?
How is population size relevant here? A large population means more people who could potentially be observers.
> Votes are by secret ballot, so there would be discrepancies between number of voters who showed up and votes, period, no matter what (guy comes in, gives name/ID, submits invalid ballot, boom, one more identified voter than vote).
I've generally been of the opinion that Trump was the lesser of two evils. But articles like this are really making me feel like I'll be sad and concerned no matter the outcome.
I've never particularly looked into the facts around Jan 6 (I'm a US citizen but grew up in Sydney and live in London).
I prefer Trump's policies, and have been willing to deal with his moral failings for that reason. But his stance towards the government is a pretty important policy in and of itself.
I think Trump is clearly less dangerous in some ways and seems to be more dangerous in others. But the point of my first comment is that I'm finding it harder and harder to choose a lesser of the two evils.
The relative danger of the two candidates/parties isn't even close. The fact you still don't get that means you're about 1/1,000th as smart you seem to pretend to be. I say this as someone doesn't like Kamala or the Dems. I'm just not a fucking idiot.
Be smarter and pay better attention. Read this piece a second time if necessary.
I don't think Trump thought he lost. I think he was just egocentric enough and delusional enough to think he won. You can see this, for example, in how he's continued to spend large amounts of money on trying to prevent election fraud in the 2024 election, which is a big waste if you don't think there's fraud going on, and harmful to his own interests.
I still think January 6th was very bad, but everything looks like a less crazy path of action if you're acting under the assumption that there actually was a ton of fraud, that the electoral counts were totally illegitimate, etc. Now, that assumption was false, but I think Trump thought it was true.
Likewise, I'm pretty sure he had his lawyers pushing for him that this was the proper plan to contest the fraud. (And there has been some (probably dubious) precedent of alternate slates of electors in a handful of previous elections.)
Merely saying that people debunked his statements does not prove that he believed their debunkings. People generally have a hard time being convinced of things that they're invested in not being true.
> I don't think Trump thought he lost. I think he was just egocentric enough and delusional enough to think he won.
This is equally, if not more so, disqualifying. If you have a close group of advisers you trust who all tell you the same thing on an issue of fact, to continue to believe the opposite is insanity if you have no other evidence. It's the upholding of dogmatic belief over any rational consideration of fact. That is not a trait a leader should ever exhibit.
> Merely saying that people debunked his statements does not prove that he believed their debunkings. People generally have a hard time being convinced of things that they're invested in not being true.
This is not a workable standard. It invites left-wingers to do precisely the same thing w.r.t mental states i.e claim that they were unconvinced by all contrary evidence and then carry out crimes in service of left-wing ideologies. It would fundamentally render the law weaker and increase the violence we can realistically expect in our lives.
It actually doesn't matter at all whether he knew it was 'true.' He lost. This defense of 'oh, well he is dumb enough and irrational enough to believe it was stolen' is not even a defense. It boggles my mind to see people make it. Just stop. Jesus.
Bingo, rationalist types often demonstrate (as here) a model of how (other) people believe (even propositional) things that is just not true, but is just subtly enough wrong to not be obvious. It's funny; there are LW posts from The Sequences describing beliefs as more of a network and as motivated by many things, yet when it comes to characterizing Trump (for example), they forget all that, and model him as simply believing-or-not, instead of a much fuzzier thing driven by his narcissism.
What still puzzles me is how something like 45% of the country's population still supports Trump. This fact calls into question the fundamental basis of democracy, if a substantial portion of the voter base is delusional and/or irrational.
I mean, it's not a new information that most people are irrational. The 98% meme exists for a reason.
Few people are “irrational” except for maybe demonstrably crazy people (even they often demonstrate rationality). The “irrational” slur is just lazy thinking; it’s akin to a Marxist accusing someone of “false consciousness”. Anyone we disagree with can be labeled “irrational”.
The main problem with the electorate (and people in general) is ignorance, which is the actual threat to democracy. But we don’t really have democracy anyway; we have elected oligarchy. But sometimes the people get a bit uppity and the defenders of democracy (oligarchy) get upset.
No, it is not. All people show demonstrable biases, most people show lack of awareness of said biases and thus of self-correction.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jclester/p/rationality-a-libertarian-viewpoint?r=b5zww&utm_medium=ios
A big pile of falsehoods and low-level language plays.
Jump over there and explain his errors.
I think the _degree_ of irrationality is new information, at least to me.
This clearly shows Trump is God. He's managed to create an army of MAGA haecceities
Congrats on arriving at the real takeaway. Mass suffrage democracy was never that good of an idea to begin with.
This is a strange takeaway. If the Electoral College were abolished (ie, if the US moved even more in the direction of "mass suffrage democracy"), Trump never would have been elected in the first place.
On the other hand, if useless people couldn't vote, we probably never end up in this situation either.
"Useless people" have human rights, and that includes voting. I think your real problem is with encouraging mass fervor towards the democratic process. It should be treated like a hobby that anyone can get into, not a religion that we actively try to convert people into.
The idea that questions of governance should be a mere "hobby" is absurd. These are deadly serious matters--matter of crime, punishment, war, life, death, etc. Little bit more important than just something you do for fun on the weekend.
Anyways, no, voting is not a "human right." But if we are going to stipulate that it is, then yes, *in theory* everyone should be super enthusiastic about it--highly rational, highly informed, etc. That is not what happens in practice, but it is most certainly the theory behind mass democracy.
Do you have a better system in mind? Democracy certainly has its flaws, but it's much better than dictatorship.
There's plenty of wiggle room between the disaster we have now and outright dictatorship. But if you force it into an all-or- nothing binary choice, don't be surprised when some people make the choice you're afraid of.
By what standard is the modern democracy a disaster? It certainly has flaws, but I would prefer living in modern America to the vast majority of historical societies.
Okay, what system do you have in mind?
If you don't view the current state of things as a train wreck, then our worldviews are probably irreconcilable. Even if I take the viewpoint of this article, though, that would mean we have a guy who unironically attempted a coup, then he got nominated to run for president again anyways 4 years later and now he might actually win the election and return to power. Doesn't seem great!
You're probably right about that. In many ways, I am dissatisfied with the state of American politics (and have been for a long time). I think that America has many problems, but calling it a disaster, especially with some historical perspective, strikes me as bizarre and hyperbolic.
Thought exercise: assume only 1 million best qualified people in the nation were granted suffrage and nothing else changed in the system. Criteria was intelligence, empathy, consciousness and interest. 50k best applicants each year get a 20 year term. Would the outcomes of this limited democracy be better or worse than the current system?
My bold claim is that we can incrementally improve on the current system limiting the degree of democracy while remaining democratic.
That doesn't surprise me, it is easily explained through the instinctual operation of in-group, prestige and frequency bias in cultural (meme) transmission.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-cultural-evolution-works
What does surprise me is how few of what Hanania calls "elite human capital" (EHC) on the right have done what Benham is doing here, and Michael Huemer has done
https://fakenous.substack.com/p/i-dont-care-about-the-issues
EHC are people for whom individual learning (analysis of the facts) and direct bias (assessing the reliability of the meme transmission one receives as to whether to adopt it) are sufficiently well-developed to override the three instinctual biases mentioned above.
Uh, yes. Historically “democracy” was seen as a degenerate and hedonistic mob state whose net impact was to put the fate of a nation at the whim of people who barely had time to care about how taxes work. That’s why until very recently the few extant democracies limited their voting class to a very small number of elite individuals who were usually educated and had high stakes in the efficiency of government.
I cannot emphasize enough that literally for millennia “Democracy killed Socrates” was the core impression most political thinkers had about democracy.
It was Jefferson who wrote that a well-informed populace is essential to democracy... and Tim Urban's recent book talks about how both the red and blue golems (but particularly the red) in our system are playing anti-democratic games. It won't hold for much longer at this rate.
But, I'd gently correct one bit of your comment. It isn't delusion or irrationality that's driving most people's continued support – its living in an alternate, uninformed reality. Most have no idea about the fake electors scheme. They have no idea how poorly formed the court challenges were. They think there was something there, that some technicalities or elite manipulation prevented the truth from coming out.
They believe that because its what Trump told them.
Democracies can and do fail, and they fail when demagogues realize how easy it is to exploit anger and fear, how easy it is to lie boldly and selfishly, and how much there is to gain by playing games which are incompatible with democracy... its the other side who has to still play by the rules of civil society. So, yes. Democracy has a fatal flaw, history has shown us how it can be exploited, and its being actively exploited by the right this time around. Its why i'm voting for Kamala despite never having voted blue before in my life.
It is perfectly rational to support an attempt to overthrow democracy by your own party. After all, the reason you support your party is that you want it to be in power.
They are perfectly rational, they just don't believe what they say.
I need to make a Bingo card for the replies.
> What about the BLM riots!
> What about the 15 morbillion fake ballots on UPS trucks!
> Only 5 of the 63 court cases were dismissed for lack of evidence! The rest were only dismissed because of standing!!!
> He said that rioters should halt the transfer of power peacefully on Twitter!
> Nancy Pelosi didn’t use her secret powers as speaker of the house and take command of the entire military! Her fault!
Etc etc.
There's a rhetorical move, that shouldn't be done, where someone says "make a bingo card" against common rebuttals, as if making a bingo card does any work whatsoever (it doesn't) in refuting those rebuttals. It's a rhetorical move I find annoying and see too often.
It’s basically a logical fallacy whereby an argument is wrong by virtue of being common. Arguments are often common because they’re compelling!
On the contrary, I use the term “bingo card” because these arguments are continuously recited no matter how many times they are refuted!
Some of those seem to have pretty reasonable readings, though?
Standing vs merits definitely affects how strong evidence you take the court cases to be. (Or are you disputing that whatever amount were dismissed on standing? I'm not familiar with that; I'm just taking your word for it.)
Looking at Trump's speech preceding the capital incursion, he also there indicates that what he wanted was to exert pressure on Republican moderates in a peaceful manner, not to carry out a violent coup.
He did suggest that the national guard should be present.
Are any of these enough to say that his actions surrounding January sixth were not terrible? Certainly not; he should never have done what he did. But I don't see why those are refuted?
> Standing vs merits definitely affects how strong evidence you take the court cases to be. (Or are you disputing that whatever amount were dismissed on standing? I'm not familiar with that; I'm just taking your word for it.)
"Standing" decisions comes in various favors. Sometimes it can be completely orthogonal to the merits, however standing is oftentimes deeply entwined with the merits. For example, one of the essential components of standing is proof of legal injury, which has to be proven with evidence. If you allege injury, then the merits question is whether that injury is one you can recover from. So many people who claimed election fraus sued, had no evidence of any ballots, and then were tossed out. The courts may not have decided whether those hypothetical ballots were legal, but the decision still defeats claims of fraud.
Furthermore, Candidate Trump would obviously have had standing to contest ballots in any lawsuit if he had evidence that they were cast. The fact that he didn't sign on to most of these suits is strong evidence that they are full of shit.
Finally, there were court cases decided on the merits. I believe the 8th circuit described the evidence presented on the merits as zero.
> Looking at Trump's speech preceding the capital incursion, he also there indicates that what he wanted was to exert pressure on Republican moderates in a peaceful manner, not to carry out a violent coup.
This is simply not what Trump said when he instructed the mob to head down to the capitol, and it certainly does not reflect his actions after he knew what was going on.
Thanks for the education on standing.
>This is simply not what Trump said
Do you have evidence for that?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
"Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong…"
"The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
Those quotes all look like what I said.
To be clear, when I said "indicates that what he wanted was…not to carry out a violent coup," I did not mean that he said something like "don't carry out a violent coup" (aside, I suppose, from "peacefully and patriotically"). What I was saying was that his speech is, as I said, instructing his people to be pushing the Republican moderates to agree with him, and that what he is pushing for there is clearly something separate from a violent coup.
Sure, and I basically agree that those arguments you’ve listed are bad, but the act of placing them in the bingo card isn’t what’s doing the refuting. Its actual function is that of mockery, more or less.
Well, yes. I was indeed mocking those arguments.
Except they haven't actually been refuted.
Even Mr. MyPillow had to pay out 5 million after his own arbitrators determined he was wrong. Just give it a rest man.
I notice a lack of any refutation in your reply and an implicit appeal to force.
Correct. In fact the reason people put arguments on a bingo card rather than rebut them is because they can't.
You missed Ray Epps using his mind control powers (given by the FBI; he is their most powerful warrior) to force them to break into the Capitol against their will because he said something the previous night.
Oh please. You’re just too cute for words.
Frankly, I don't have a very high opinion of the BLM riots. But this raises the question: Why didn't Trump himself do anything about them?
I endorse this entire essay. Recognizing that the bar is EXTREMELY low, what's the "best" substantive defense of the fake elector scheme that you've encountered?
The single most effective argument in support the stolen election meme is the same reason why the vast majority of its adherents actually do believe it. Simply put, the president of the United States, and the twice-nominated leader of the Red political faction said it had been.
Republican elites and media had had plenty opportunity to shut down Trump in 2011 when he started babbling about Obama not being born in Hawaii. Romney could have chosen not seek Trump's endorsement in 2012. The party could have made a deal with the other Republican candidates to all withdraw and endorse Cruz in early 2016 to block Trump, as the Democratic elite did with Sanders in 2020. The fact that they did none of this meant Trump was judged as fit for office, when he was manifestly not, as later events have borne out.
You cannot wait to be sure on these things, that doesn't work. It's like the hundreds of thousands of dead in Ukraine because Biden dithered with Putin.
On that's the second most effective argument. The most effective argument was if one was actually paying attention to what was happening on election night.
https://benthams.substack.com/p/trump-attempted-a-coup/comment/72637343
Ok, the other argument is that fact that the Democrats are constantly fighting tooth and nail to prevent even basic common sense election security measures, like *making sure the voter is who he says he is*.
That’s not right. The charge you make about Democrats is not unique to 2020. People have been pointing that out for a long time. And yet there were not scores of millions of Republicans believing that Bush, Dole, McCain or Romney had actually won. Recall the skewed polls meme in 2012. It was briefly a thing and then vanished, I suspect many people didn’t even know it was a thing.
But the 2020 fraud meme had more legs, and four years later it is a big as ever. Why? Because Trump pushes it
The direction here is clear. The claim is the first step, the driver of the belief. Without it no large-scale belief gets implanted into millions upon millions of Republican brains. The observations you make come after the initial claim, in an effort to find some justification for a pre-existing belief.
> The charge you make about Democrats is not unique to 2020. People have been pointing that out for a long time.
And Democrats have been cheating for a long time.
> And yet there were not scores of millions of Republicans believing that Bush, Dole, McCain or Romney had actually won.
They probably did. Those were, however, at least legitimately close elections. Whereas in 2020 the Dems pulled out all the stops on their fraud.
There is none except ones based on lies and flagrant deceptions. They'll refer to the 1960 Hawaii case, but in 1960 it was done through the courts and they only used the alternate slate after winning there, rather than having them skulking around and telling their electors things like "When you arrive, please state to the guards that you are attending a meeting with either Senator Brandon Beach or Senator Burt Jones and proceed directly to the room. Please, at no point should you mention anything to do with Presidential Electors or speak to media" as occurred with this case. There's a reason that an Arizona false elector has already plead and many are being charged.
(Also, 1960 Hawaii was not outcome determinative, then-VP Nixon was pushing to take away EVs from his party, Nixon asked that it not be used as precedent going forward, and it was unanimously accepted by the joint session, none of which was true of Trump's false electors. Nixon had more character than Trump.)
> There is none except ones based on lies and flagrant deceptions. They'll refer to the 1960 Hawaii case,
How about the 1876 elections.
Sounds like you're just a ignorant of US history as you are of everything else.
Me, trying desperately to justify Trump's attempted coup: "Uhm, you didn't consider the election where they ended Reconstruction by murdering a bunch of black Republicans, though."
So you have nearly no idea what you're talking about, or are you just to dumb to follow analogies?
Analogy? What is the analogy? You're citing the most notoriously corrupt election in American history as evidence that what Trump did was fine. It's prima facie moronic.
If you want me to get into the details of what is different, the the 2020 false electors WERE NOT selected by state governments, whereas in 1876, they were. The state governments do in fact have the authority to send whatever electors they want. We now live in a more democratic era so they generally send electors who vote according to the will of the people of the state.
The 1876 election involved Democrat-led vote suppression efforts of blacks, no?
Yes, the Democrats have been engaging in ballot fraud of various types for most of the country's history. The 2020 election differed only in scale.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/ballot-fraud-is-as-american-as-apple
Yes, the “Democrats are the real racists”! ;) :D
Party ideologies change, especially in their most superficial forms. Party institutional traditions are much more enduring.
The fact that the elections in those states were in fact brazenly stolen.
It saddens me that most of my fellow conservative friends, whom I otherwise consider intelligent, have deluded themselves into thinking this isn’t utterly disqualifying.
Refusing to quietly submit to a brazenly fraudulent election is disqualifying?
"But, the Dems stole it fair and square".
Any proof of the "brazenly fraudulent" election ?
Why did the courts reject this allegation?
Because the courts are known for being moral perfect even in the face of leftist "fiery but mostly peaceful protesters".
I asked you for any proof of a "brazenly fraudulent" election.
What evidence convinced you of fraud ?
Sarcastic remarks on the courts morality are an attempt to deflect.
> I asked you for any proof of a "brazenly fraudulent" election.
You didn't, but now that you have:
There's the synchronized stopping of the reported count across multiple states flowed by statistically impossible jumps for Biden, the numerous instances of observers being kicked or tricked out of the counting room followed by the count resuming, in one case the counters literally boarding up the windows of the counting room so observers can't see what the counters are up to, the video recordings of counters feeding the same ballots multiple times through the machines, the multiple eyewitness affidavits, the miscellaneous statistical irregularities, etc.
More generally, how the Democrats are constantly moving heaven and earth to try to prevent even basic common sense anti-fraud measures, like *making sure the voter is who he says he is*.
Timely, my most recent post is my long-form reply to this. I think that we can sit here and quibble about whether Trump really attempted a "coup"--after all, some people will argue that what he wanted Mike Pence to do was technically legal/constitutional, and such like. We can also disagree about whether he really "knew he lost" or not, I think you are too uncharitable in your interpretation. I don't think any of this ultimately matters though.
The real question here is just how much we truly value "Our Democracy." This is the implied conflict going on when people argue about whether Trump is really a threat to "Our Democracy" or not. The contempt with which the right views this phrase--"Our Democracy," repeated by liberals as if part of a sacred liturgy--should be informative on this point. The truth of things, if we are capable of being honest, is that we value "Our Democracy" as the status quo so long as it is sufficiently aligned with our interests and preferences.
If we imagine a world in which society had "democratically" decided to enact overwhelmingly conservative preferences--for the sake of example, let's suppose the criminalization of any homosexual relations, also of abortion, a near-total ban on immigration, an end to no-fault divorce, and so forth and so on--then all the liberals who today love to harp on about the value of "Our Democracy" would be singing a different tune. Indeed we already witnessed this in the sharp ferocity with which our rulers turned upon "free speech" the moment they perceived that it no longer sufficiently served their interests.
As for me, I do not support Donald Trump, because I do not trust him to improve the situation (in part because of his actions after the 2020 elections). But I don't pretend to like "Our Democracy" either. Most people who support Trump do so because they hold the status quo in absolute, utter contempt. The notion that he threatens the status quo is therefore a feature in their minds, not a bug. The conservative perception, largely correct in my view, is that the left are honor-free scoundrels who will stop at nothing to win at all costs, and that they constantly get away scot-free with lying, cheating, and all manner of other totally unacceptable, "rule-breaking" sorts of behavior. Thus, to hold Donald Trump in particular contempt by comparison feels absurd.
"If we imagine a world in which society had "democratically" decided to enact overwhelmingly conservative preferences--for the sake of example, let's suppose the criminalization of any homosexual relations, also of abortion, a near-total ban on immigration, an end to no-fault divorce, and so forth and so on--then all the liberals who today love to harp on about the value of "Our Democracy" would be singing a different tune. Indeed we already witnessed this in the sharp ferocity with which our rulers turned upon "free speech" the moment they perceived that it no longer sufficiently served their interests."
Well, I mean, I support having the US Supreme Court strike down any bans on child sex dolls/robots that Our Democracy might push through, through either the ballot box or their elected representatives. Does that count for this? I don't want individual rights, especially those deemed vital, to be in the hands of majoritarian mobs!
Sure, that's a great example, because in the eyes of conservatives the left has already weaponized the courts long ago. Roe v Wade and Obergefell are two of the easiest examples of a subverted judiciary being used to bypass our heckin' "democracy." No one really believes in "the will of the people" when it comes to their most sacred values, whether they're left right or anything else.
Yeah, I mean, some of SCOTUS’s most notable decisions were extremely controversial when they were decided, so SCOTUS shouldn’t cuck on the child sex dolls/robots question, at least not in an ideal world. Denying minor-attracted persons that opportunity for a satisfactory harm-free sex life (specifically to those of them who are capable of being permanently satisfied by such dolls/robots) would be extraordinarily cruel.
This is also a major drawback with a cure to aging. For those of us who value social progress, a cure to aging would make social progress much harder since it would ensure the survival of past generations with backwards political views indefinitely. A lot of times, a population’s political views change as a result of generational change, not as a result of people changing their minds.
When voters aren’t required to show up to vote in person on election day ,when voting is conducted during a once in a lifetime pandemic, allowing for once in a lifetime voting procedures one might expect irregularities to occur.
When the sitting president’s legitimacy and competency are challenged from day one by all of the MSM with an abundance of bogus claims ( Russian hoax) etc. , one may understand the consideration of voter fraud in some circles.
Just saying.
> one may understand the consideration of voter fraud in some circles.
Yes. I understand perfectly the consideration of voter fraud: you are mad your guy didn't win and are fine with lying to pretend otherwise. More than fine - you prefer it! That's why Fox got fucked in the Dominion lawsuit, they were afraid of their viewers leaving to go watch more dishonest news sources if they didn't entertain the dishonest claims of voter fraud, so they ignored all their fact checkers telling them it was bullshit.
>you are mad your guy didn't win and are fine with lying to pretend otherwise
you're psychologizing is factually incorrect. neither Howard nor myself supported Trump in 2020. please stop doing this kind of thing.
This has got to be one of the dumbest election fraud apologisms I've read.
There's no need to do "election fraud apologism." There simply wasn't election fraud. That's why every single time you people have your feet held to the fire and asked to provide any substantive evidence, you can't.
> There simply wasn't election fraud.
Yes, there was.
> That's why every single time you people have your feet held to the fire and asked to provide any substantive evidence, you can't.
You mean aside from the synchronized stopping of the reported count across multiple states flowed by statistically impossible jumps for Biden, the numerous instances of observers being kicked or tricked out of the counting room followed by the count resuming, in one case the counters literally boarding up the windows of the counting room so observers can't see what the counters are up to, the video recordings of counters feeding the same ballots multiple times through the machines, the multiple eyewitness affidavits, the miscellaneous statistical irregularities, etc?
More generally, how the Democrats are constantly moving heaven and earth to try to prevent even basic common sense anti-fraud measures, like *making sure the voter is who he says he is*.
Name a single actual specific case of serious voter fraud. I don't mean some random guy pretending to be his grandpa, I mean serious numbers of votes being distorted. Do not list out ten things. I will then investigate this SINGLE, SPECIFIC case of election fraud, one wherein you provide enough detail for me to corroborate and look into details. If it is ACTUALLY fraud, I will change my opinion. If you do not do this, I will take it as a concession that there was no voter fraud and you're just a lying hack fuck.
> Do not list out ten things. I will then investigate this SINGLE, SPECIFIC case of election fraud,
And then you'll dismiss it as irrelevant because that SINGLE instance wasn't enough to swing the election.
I’m not doing any lying. I didn’t vote for Trump.
The consideration is fine. If people initially trusted Trump and decided to look into the evidence and changed their minds, I would be perfectly happy to respect them. But the total unwillingness to grapple with the facts or have any sense of self-reflection is galling.
It's not crazy to imagine it could have occurred. But it it had, there would have been massive evidence of it.
And there was.
Or do you have an innocent explanation for the synchronized stopping of the reported count across multiple states flowed by statistically impossible jumps for Biden, the numerous instances of observers being kicked or tricked out of the counting room followed by the count resuming, in one case the counters literally boarding up the windows of the counting room so observers can't see what the counters are up to, the video recordings of counters feeding the same ballots multiple times through the machines, the multiple eyewitness affidavits, the miscellaneous statistical irregularities, etc?
We know Trump filled the zone with shit, but none of it held up in court.
Rather the courts refused to even look at it. I suspect they didn't want to deal with the messy fallout, especially considering the left had just stage "fiery but mostly peaceful protests" in the major cities.
Hey, remember when a couple hours ago, you linked a source containing "evidence" of fraud, and its very first cite for a claim of fraud was "I made it the fuck up"? Did that make you consider even for a single second that you might be wrong?
Just because you couldn't find a document, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You don't understand.
The election was stolen because it's very clear from credible anecdotes that there was widespread fraud. The evidence did not hold up in court because the entire judicial system is corrupt, just like the DOJ, the media and the FBI.
This is the most simple and logical explanation: Occam's razor and all that jazz.
Relevant work supporting what Matthew just argued - https://youtu.be/k1NUXFfcoDs
I almost entirely agree. I think a big factor though is that he has *just* enough plausible deniability in all the well-known individual cases to make a semi-reasonable defense possible. E.g. he told the J6 mob to march "peacefully", or that "find
11,780 votes" can just mean trying to uncover that much genuine fraud, not a call to manufacture votes.
Overall, I think it's beyond reasonable doubt that Trump wanted and tried to stay in power based on mere allegations of fraud, and achieving this would amount to a coup. But this requires evaluating all of his actions as a whole, not because any one singular action passes the reasonable doubt threshold.
I think Republican ambivalence towards this has also been influenced by a certain amount of "crying wolf" about Trump in different areas, and low trust in media and institutions that is not entirely without merit. "Trump attempted a coup? Well, previously it was 'Trump is a Russian agent' and before that 'Trump is the next Hitler'. What's next?" Whereas if this has been 1974 again, where the media were more trusted and political rhetoric less hyperbolic and polarised, Trump's actions would have rightfully seen as far worse than Watergate.
I don't think the case against Trump is partisan. I agree with this article. I also think that Democrats are doing everything they can to make it seem partisan.
This is especially true regarding the case against Trump in New York. That case is partisan, I hope you'll agree. The Democratic machine throwing their support behind Bragg poisons the well.
Also after the history of the Mueller investigation, which turned out to be a nothing burger, the faith in the system is (justifiably?) eroded among the GOP base.
Then again, I have no doubt the Republicans would also abuse the system against their political opponents if they could, so I guess I can't blame the Democrats too much.
I don’t thank Mueller was a nothing burger. I think he found plenty of crooked stuff but he just didn't think it was his place to take it to it’s logical conclusion.
"Trump repeated the claim that more than 10,000 dead people voted, even after it had been investigated, and the real number was 12."
Just playing devil's advocate here, but shouldn't it be concerning that any dead people voted at all? If 12 cases were able to be definitively proven, couldn't there have been many more cases that weren't detected? Any proveable fraud, no matter how small, makes it seem possible that it occured on a larger scale and just wasn't detected. I would argue that when even miniscule levels of fraud are found, that the burden of proof is to prove the election was actually genuine, not to prove it was fraudulent.
> Any proveable fraud, no matter how small, makes it seem possible that it occured on a larger scale and just wasn't detected.
No? This is the same argument for "we've flipped over less than 5% of the Sahara, therefore there could be a secret highly advanced lost civilization there" or "we've only explored a tiny percentage of the ocean, so Megaladon could still be alive." The fact that a very small number of cases were found is evidence there was not a large number of cases.
If you adopted that standard no election would be valid ever.
> "Trump repeated the claim that more than 10,000 dead people voted, even after it had been investigated, and the real number was 12."
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
Do you think any of the dead people voted for Trump? Or is 100% of the fraud in one direction?
Most of it certainly was.
And yet, when you had a discussion about voting for Trump with Richard Hanania, who has been slagging Trump in multiple posts, he expressed his intention to vote for Trump for boutique reasons.
What is the matter with people like Hanania? It's like when al Qaeda attacked us on 911 and the president referred to them as "folks" and then "criminals" when what they were was *soldiers* of a religious military order like the Teutonic knights (i.e. Islamic crusaders) who had *declared war* on us.
I actually think importing millions and giving them the vote is a much worse threat to democracy.
Looking from far away:
it is disturbing that US has unreliable election process
no one sane in Britain, France, Germany , any EU country, and a large number of normal countries in global South is satisfied with the level of election process in US
no observers
no credible paper trail that allows recount
Again, no observers either from opposing candidate or from foreign organizations /states e.g. EU, UN, Russia, India, BRICS.
it is very disturbing to witness almost unanimous efforts by deep state to openly support falsehoods, lies aimed at one candidate
several well known examples like Hunter Biden‘s laptop
it is also disturbing tham mainstream media are unified in supporting one side only, resorting to psychology warfare instead of reporting
Conclusion from a European:
it is possible that significant efforts were invested to manipulate mail votes,
and it is possible that majority for Biden was a result of these efforts.
Can we call it stealing an election ? Yes.
We are now a few weeks before the equally important election, and all the problems that make result look suspicious to honest observer have not been solved.
Nowhere in developed world can a person vote without identifying her/himself.
US is becoming a third world country,
There were observers (e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/11/us-election-international-observers/617017/), there were multiple recounts (e.g. Georgia https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/politics/georgia-recount-recertification-biden/index.html). This stuff you are saying is simply not true.
Observers
In civilised countries EACH voting position, has a team of people working on organising election, AND observers from both political parties, guaranteeing that there can be no election fraud.
Recount
How do you do a recount with voting machines?
How do you do recount if you do not have
A. a list of voters, who have identified themselves, and
B a corresponding exact number of votes
US does not have it.
It doesn't mean that elections have been stolen, it means one can never say whether the election has been stolen.
At each and every voting station? In the third largest country in the world, with the third largest population in the world?
In my state, voting machines print paper ballots that you can physically check and hand over. Dunno about the rest of the country.
Don't know what you mean to suggest with the 'exact number of votes' stuff. Votes are by secret ballot, so there would be discrepancies between number of voters who showed up and votes, period, no matter what (guy comes in, gives name/ID, submits invalid ballot, boom, one more identified voter than vote).
These are just bizarre claims which don't seem to have been checked before being made. The US goes to great lengths to ensure the integrity of its election.
> In the third largest country in the world, with the third largest population in the world?
How is population size relevant here? A large population means more people who could potentially be observers.
> Votes are by secret ballot, so there would be discrepancies between number of voters who showed up and votes, period, no matter what (guy comes in, gives name/ID, submits invalid ballot, boom, one more identified voter than vote).
1) So also report the number of spoiled ballots.
2) In the US you don't have to give ID.
> Trump lost the 2020 election fairly.
Lol. If you actually care about democracy, the worst thing you can do is try to pass off a brazenly stolen election as "free and fair".
I've generally been of the opinion that Trump was the lesser of two evils. But articles like this are really making me feel like I'll be sad and concerned no matter the outcome.
If it took an article like this to make you realize this about Trump, you're an idiot.
Realize what about Trump, exactly?
I've never particularly looked into the facts around Jan 6 (I'm a US citizen but grew up in Sydney and live in London).
I prefer Trump's policies, and have been willing to deal with his moral failings for that reason. But his stance towards the government is a pretty important policy in and of itself.
Realize that he tried to overturn a free election, and how that fact should be disqualifying.
If you think Trump is the lesser of two evils, you probably should pay closer attention.
Did you read my last comment?
I think Trump is clearly less dangerous in some ways and seems to be more dangerous in others. But the point of my first comment is that I'm finding it harder and harder to choose a lesser of the two evils.
I ready your last comment. What's your point?
The relative danger of the two candidates/parties isn't even close. The fact you still don't get that means you're about 1/1,000th as smart you seem to pretend to be. I say this as someone doesn't like Kamala or the Dems. I'm just not a fucking idiot.
Be smarter and pay better attention. Read this piece a second time if necessary.
You provide lots of assertions and insults, but no arguments. That's not persuasive.
I don't think Trump thought he lost. I think he was just egocentric enough and delusional enough to think he won. You can see this, for example, in how he's continued to spend large amounts of money on trying to prevent election fraud in the 2024 election, which is a big waste if you don't think there's fraud going on, and harmful to his own interests.
I still think January 6th was very bad, but everything looks like a less crazy path of action if you're acting under the assumption that there actually was a ton of fraud, that the electoral counts were totally illegitimate, etc. Now, that assumption was false, but I think Trump thought it was true.
Likewise, I'm pretty sure he had his lawyers pushing for him that this was the proper plan to contest the fraud. (And there has been some (probably dubious) precedent of alternate slates of electors in a handful of previous elections.)
Merely saying that people debunked his statements does not prove that he believed their debunkings. People generally have a hard time being convinced of things that they're invested in not being true.
> I don't think Trump thought he lost. I think he was just egocentric enough and delusional enough to think he won.
This is equally, if not more so, disqualifying. If you have a close group of advisers you trust who all tell you the same thing on an issue of fact, to continue to believe the opposite is insanity if you have no other evidence. It's the upholding of dogmatic belief over any rational consideration of fact. That is not a trait a leader should ever exhibit.
> Merely saying that people debunked his statements does not prove that he believed their debunkings. People generally have a hard time being convinced of things that they're invested in not being true.
This is not a workable standard. It invites left-wingers to do precisely the same thing w.r.t mental states i.e claim that they were unconvinced by all contrary evidence and then carry out crimes in service of left-wing ideologies. It would fundamentally render the law weaker and increase the violence we can realistically expect in our lives.
It actually doesn't matter at all whether he knew it was 'true.' He lost. This defense of 'oh, well he is dumb enough and irrational enough to believe it was stolen' is not even a defense. It boggles my mind to see people make it. Just stop. Jesus.
> I don't think Trump thought he lost. I think he was just egocentric enough and delusional enough to think he won.
Because frankly he did.
Bingo, rationalist types often demonstrate (as here) a model of how (other) people believe (even propositional) things that is just not true, but is just subtly enough wrong to not be obvious. It's funny; there are LW posts from The Sequences describing beliefs as more of a network and as motivated by many things, yet when it comes to characterizing Trump (for example), they forget all that, and model him as simply believing-or-not, instead of a much fuzzier thing driven by his narcissism.