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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   21700 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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Very briefly, because there is more to legitimacy than the strict letter of the law, most notably when "the letter of the law" is so obviously dependent on adversarial interpretation. A number of laws were broken in the leadup to the election, and a number of misdeeds were committed that were very real, but were not adjudicated as crimes. My assessment is that the collective result of those actions is that rule of law and the democratic process were breached, and that those victimized by such actions should adjust their expectations and commitments accordingly.

I am pretty sure that @ymeshkhout is correct that many and perhaps all the dramatic claims of ballot fraud are either spurious or intentional lies. On the other hand, the FBI really did break the law to illegally spy on an opposition candidate, and the broader set of the FBI and their close associates coordinated with journalists to lie to the public about this and many other facts, in a direct attempt to influence the outcome of the election. That seems like fundamentally illegitimate behavior to me, and the fact that it happened undermines the legitimacy of the subsequent election process. When enough such incidents accumulate, as I observe they did in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the democratic process is not only threatened, but has in fact been compromised.

I think a lot of the support for dramatic fraud theories comes from people recognizing that something is badly wrong, and defaulting to the scripts that society and the media have provided them for what "wrongness" looks like. "election was illegitimate" > "ballot stuffing makes elections illegitimate" > "ballot stuffing happened." This combines with a fair amount of grifting by people seeking to exploit this tendency, along with the general tendency of large, complex, contentious issues to generate considerable amounts of FUD as a simple consequence of mass human friction, distrust, misinterpretation and bias. It seems to me that this tendency is entirely worthy of criticism; you have to have some way of separating the wheat from the chaff, or tribalism will devour you completely. If you are going to discuss the issue with people on the other side, that requires some measure of common ground, and actual, observable facts seem as good a place to start as any.

Trump was certainly not an opposition candidate in 2020.

The amount of fraud necessary to ensure victory in a national election requires a level of coordination that is basically impossible to pull off without generating significant evidence. Doing this against an incumbent using the organs of government is not remotely realistic at any scale.

It’s particularly ironic to compare your sentiments here against documented behavior by Trump explicitly looking to manipulate election outcomes, let alone all the other ways he flouted law and convention. Caring about “legitimacy” above the letter of the law consistently would not lead to a positive view of Trump even if you were entirely correct about the misdeeds against Trump.

The fraud is alleged to have taken place in a handful of counties administered by democrats.

A national election does not turn upon a mere handful of counties.

Somewhere purple like say Maricopa County has tons of conservative voters and government workers; large plots are hard to hide and small ones aren’t enough to matter as claimed.

  • -12

Trump lost by 40k votes, which could easily be delivered in only a few counties. The 2020 election was extremely close and Georgia or Michigan having been swung by fraud in 1-3 counties is extremely plausible, but not proven.

The real trick is knowing which counties in which states will do the swinging in advance, and setting it all up to just lightly tweak the results.

You can’t just look with the benefit of hindsight and think it’s easy to set up a coordinated plan to just barely win.

In countries with rigged elections, it’s not exactly subtle because it’s harder to set up a close victory than a big one.

I think a lot of the support for dramatic fraud theories comes from people recognizing that something is badly wrong, and defaulting to the scripts that society and the media have provided them for what "wrongness" looks like.

This is likely the interpretation with the highest amount of charitability I'd be willing to co-sign on. But I do have a quibble about "the FBI really did break the law to illegally spy on an opposition candidate", are you talking about Trump? Edit: I got confused and forgot you were talking about 2020 instead of 2016, so I don't know what you're referring to here.

He walked back his claims about his campaign being wiretapped, claiming he didn't mean it literally. He said "I used the word ‘wiretap,’ and I put in quotes, meaning surveillance, spying you can sort of say whatever you want" and also that his allegation wasn't really based on any actual evidence but more on "a little bit of a hunch". His DOJ confirmed in a court filing they had no evidence of wiretapping.

But I do have a quibble about "the FBI really did break the law to illegally spy on an opposition candidate", are you talking about Trump?

Him and his campaign collectively. Does that seem like an unreasonable usage?

The distinction is valid, as I'd straightforwardly assumed that if they were wiretapping his associates and campaign staff, they'd wiretap him as well, but a quick googling of "Trump FISA" reveals that the warrants were actually for his campaign advisors, and don't list Trump himself. I'm also informed by CNN that the investigation of an opposition candidate merely involved "significant errors"; would you likewise argue that the FBI did not break the law in their surveillance of Trump's campaign staff? I certainly don't believe I can point to anyone going to jail over these events; I'm unaware of any convictions, nor even prosecutions, certainly not of anyone senior in the administration or the bureaucracy. Can it really be said that what they did was illegal, in that case?

Edit: I got confused and forgot you were talking about 2020 instead of 2016, so I don't know what you're referring to here.

I was talking about 2016. I am now quite confused. If I'm misinformed, I'm open to being corrected.

I haven't looked into this in a very long time so I don't know if and what part of the FBI's conduct was illegal. The "illegally spy on an opposition candidate" part was too ambiguous for me to parse, compared to "several members of Trump's campaign were surveilled". Everyone is entitled to editorialize, although I would caution about using verbiage that leaves a misleading impression because the involvement between Trump associates and Russia that kickstarted the surveillance is very well-documented and resulted in multiple convictions and didn't come from nowhere. You're of course still absolutely and completely free to argue it was politically-motivated persecution.

Fair enough. I do actually appreciate the precision, and working from memory is difficult.

Not “his DOJ”; the Deep State’s DOJ.

I’m being a bit snarky but I believe I am accurately representing the stance of those who won’t concede that say a lifelong Republican or Trump-appointed official can be a reliable source of anything that contradicts Trumpian vibes.

I also forgot we were talking about 2020, not 2016.

FC flipped between describing his issues with both elections and I believe he was referring specifically to 2016 on that specific issue. Your lawyerly need for precision is getting in the way of understanding the vibes.

I was actually just trying to point out that “Trump’s X” where X is any government entity or official led by / appointed by Trump is rarely convincing to those who think that Trump was done wrong.

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