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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31616 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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I suppose you can defend the heavy-handedness if your overriding priority is primarily to tamp down on the handful of actual voter fraud that takes place.

Perhaps we can gain some insight into Desantis' mindset by looking at the 2018 election:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_elections

Desantis won by the veritable skin of his teeth by 33,000 votes out of 8 million cast.

Rick Scott won his Senate race by about 10k votes.

Nikki Fried, the ONLY Democrat to win an executive office, won by 6,000 votes.

These are outcomes that could be swung, potentially, by one county in the state being manipulated or screwing up a count.

And guess what happened in Broward County in 2018?

https://archive.ph/Qc9Tt

Half of Broward County’s election precincts reported more ballots cast than the number of voters. Backlogs in processing mail ballots snarled reporting of results.

Confusing ballot design may have led thousands of voters to inadvertently skip an important contest.

Money was wasted on unneeded blank ballots, which weren’t adequately tracked and were eventually destroyed.

After election day, auditors found the recount was plagued by poor planning, inadequate staffing and equipment, and poor quality control.

And the money quote:

“We conclude that the November 2018 election was not efficiently and effectively conducted,” Melton wrote in to county commissioners. “Based on the totality of these issues, we are unable to provide assurance over the accuracy of the November 2018 election results as reported.”

Oh, and lets not forget that Rick Scott very directly claimed the election was being stolen. He and Stacey Abrams were two years ahead of Trump on applying this tactic.

Broward singlehandedly delayed the final outcome of multiple races and from the look of things had gaping holes in their system that COULD have been exploited. Oh, and it's heavily and reliably a blue county.

Actually, Palm Beach County also delayed it. Also another heavily blue area.

One of Desantis' first actions upon taking office was removing and replacing the Broward and Palm Beach County Election supervisors.

And, 'strangely,' Broward and Palm Beach County had no discrepancies or delays in the 2020 election. Further, Florida went more heavily Republican than usual, including more towards Trump than expected.

Broward County has almost 2 milllion citizens, this is not a small podunk area that we're talking about. Palm Beach has 1.5 million.

And while Desantis is going to walk to an easy victory this time, I can't imagine he wants to allow ANY room for doubt in the sanctity of the election should any races come down to the wire.

So in light of all this, perhaps it makes sense why Desantis might conclude that arresting 20 people is worth it for the possible upside of dissuading electoral shenanigans throughout the state?

Is dissuading a handful of bad actors worth putting some innocent people in jail? Worth dissuading large swathes of the population from legally voting? If so, say so.

I dunno. I think he cares very little that those twenty guys got misled, but cares a lot about ensuring he doesn't have to worry as much about catching electoral fraud after the fact.

So this action is a cheap way to possibly pre-emptively solve an issue that could arise.

Going along on the premise that because voter fraud has not been detected in the past and therefore is not likely to occur in the future seems like an unwise tactic in an environment as adversarial as this one.

It's not like there's not ample historical precedent of organized efforts to fraudulently influence election outcomes. Oh, also recent precedent.

In June 2022, the defendant admitted in court to bribing the Judge of Elections for the 39th Ward, 36th Division in South Philadelphia in a fraudulent scheme over several years. Myers admitted to bribing the election official to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections. Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons. Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as “consulting fees,” and then use portions of these funds to pay election officials to tamper with election results.

Just because it's 'rare' doesn't mean, when it happens, it won't have significant impact.

Can't imagine why you'd want to chance it in a state where races can be extremely close.

I haven't denied that election fraud by either side sometimes occurs in local elections, I don't think ymes has either. But - how on earth does arresting people who were told by the govt that they could vote help, at all, with that?

Also, the motte is "sometimes politicians tamper with the ballots, bribe election staff, etc". The bailey is "lots of illegal voters are tipping elections". You provided evidence that the former might've happened - desantis's actions only affect the latter.

It's probably also worth mentioning the 1997 Miami mayoral election, which was found by a judge to be fraudulent enough to throw out the election results. From that article:

In his written decision the judge said the absentee ballots cast in the election included those from people who did not vote, did not live in Miami or the district in which their ballot was cast, and did not qualify as unable to vote at the polls. Several ballots were even doctored to alter a vote for Mr. Carollo into one for Mr. Suarez, the judge noted.

''This scheme to defraud, literally and figuratively, stole the ballot from the hands of every honest voter in the city of Miami,'' Judge Wilson wrote.

In a similar case in 1993, a state judge also threw out the results of a mayoral election in the nearby city of Hialeah and ordered a new vote.

I don't have particular evidence that serious fraud has happened in the last decade, but the idea that American elections have always been sacrosanct and nobody could ever question their validity is IMO laughable.

This is the part that really gets me.

No, the United States is not a Banana Republic where incumbents routinely win with 105% of the vote.

No, most elections in Florida are not ultimately decided by 'the margin of fraud.'

But it is not a deniable fact that some elections in the U.S. HAVE been decided by fraud. Florida has had its share of pain in this regard.

So what possible justification is there for ignoring the risk that a fraudulent election could pop up in a key race and throw it all into doubt?

Disagree with the methods used, fine. But deny the underlying problem? Silly.

Can't imagine why you'd want to chance it in a state where races can be extremely close.

I don't disagree that this is the motivation behind the current system. Black voters are much more likely to be disenfranchised because of a felony record, and that demographic heavily votes Democrat. It's true that in total, there are way more white voters who lose their right to vote, but the voting pattern of the ex-con in general is not as lopsided as it is for the black demographic. So there's good reason to suspect that allowing felons to vote would benefit democrats, even slightly, but as you note there were enough close-call elections for that to be a real risk for republicans. Therefore, it made sense for the Republican legislature to do as much as it did to kneecap the implementation of the 2018 felony voting restoration amendment. Given the demographics, it was better for the republican party to keep as many felons disenfranchised as possible than to take a gamble with election results.

As for the rest of your post, I struggle to understand how it's relevant. You post about some election precincts in Florida having problems around keeping track of ballots. Assuming these were legitimate issues, I don't see how you solve that problem by targeting individual voters who are mislead by election officials. If I understand your argument correctly, you believe that prosecuting individual felons who were mislead by the government will have a collateral dissuasion effect on other (potentially higher-up) voter fraud that could happen, right? If so that seems to me to be needlessly attenuated. Why wouldn't these investigations just focus directly on the election officials responsible instead? What kind of messaging is sent by the government taking random nobodies to jail because they were dumb enough to believe something the government told them? I don't get it.

If so that seems to me to be needlessly attenuated. Why wouldn't these investigations just focus directly on the election officials responsible instead?

What makes you think they won't, or haven't?

Perhaps they've identified possible suspects but lack sufficient evidence for prosecution?

The Electoral Crimes Unit has only existed for LESS THAN A YEAR. This is the first election they'll be able to investigate directly while it happens.

How about this, if they DO make broad arrests of various public officials based on voter fraud allegations in 2022, would you then agree that this process was justified?

I am actually predicting the opposite, I expect very little fraud to occur in 2022.

But if it does, doesn't this, by your own standards stated herein, show that Desantis was doing the right thing?

What makes you think they won't, or haven't?

Because the problems with how voting restoration works are not going to go away, as they're baked into the system the Republican legislature intentionally chose to implement. The problems that exist with tabulating the records are also not the result of any malicious behavior. The 20 people who were arrested were given faulty information by local election officials. All those local officials did was rely on faulty information that the state gave them. And as far as I can tell, the people working for the state appear to be doing the best they can in tabulating this information. For an ex-felon to get erroneously registered to vote, no one involved in the chain needs to have acted maliciously. Again, the record-keeping problems are inherent with the system DeSantis and the Florida GOP wanted to see implemented, so there's absolutely no surprise that mistakes were made, this was precisely the issue that was litigated! Again, here's the 125-page court opinion that details the problems on Pg 53:

The case of one named plaintiff, Clifford Tyson, is illustrative. An extraordinarily competent and diligent financial manager in the office of the Hillsborough County Clerk of Court, with the assistance of several long-serving assistants, bulldogged Mr. Tyson’s case for perhaps 12 to 15 hours. The group had combined experience of over 100 years. They came up with what they believed to be the amount owed. But even with all that work, they were unable to explain discrepancies in the records.

And see page 65 about the workload the state estimated for itself:

Even without screening for unpaid LFOs, all the Divison’s caseworkers combined can process an average of just 57 registrations per day. The LFO work, standing alone, is likely to take at least as long as—probably much longer than—the review for murder and sexual offenses and for custody or supervision status. Even at 57 registrations per day, screening the 85,000 pending registrations will take 1,491 days. At 261 workdays per year, this is a little over 5 years and 8 months. The projected completion date, even if the Division starts turning out work today, and even if screening for LFOs doesn’t take longer than screening for murders, sexual offenses, custody, and supervision, is early in 2026. With a flood of additional registrations expected in this presidential election year, the anticipated completion date might well be pushed into the 2030s.

So this is a system that can eat up dozens of hours from experienced staff for a single registration and still give the wrong information. There's no connection to actual voter fraud here either, because so much resources are incinerated towards a doomed mission of trying to make sense of a mess that was entirely man-made. There's no reason for me to expect criminal conduct from officials to be at play here, so there's no reason for me to expect any officials to be arrested.

The only honest response from DeSantis here should've been to admit the problem. Any of the system's supporters should be willing to defend it on its merits, and explain why the headache is worthwhile and what important interests are advanced. Instead they're taking out their frustrations on random nobodies and putting them in jail.

So if we see arrests of actual public officials, with actual evidence that said public officials were involved in voter fraud schemes, would that be something you would support?

Would that justify Desantis' actions thus far?

Just saying. This is the first year the Election Crimes Unit will be active during an election.

If they're decent at their jobs, and some amount of fraud occurs, one would expect them to catch it.

Do you think they're going to keep on arresting only Felons who got misled about their voting status?

What is your prediction, here?

So if we see arrests of actual public officials, with actual evidence that said public officials were involved in voter fraud schemes, would that be something you would support?

Sure, but I don't see any reason to believe anyone related to the felony voting restoration process acted with criminal intent. So I don't see why this should be the focus of a law enforcement agencies. Arresting random nobodies does not advance the goal of addressing voter fraud. DeSantis is using the spectre of voter fraud as a pretext to scare a portion of the electorate he does not like away from voting.

What is your prediction, here?

I predict that the voter restoration process for felons will not get appreciably easier. I predict the backlog for processing felony registration will continue to pile up. I predict that out of the million or so felons who are potentially eligible to have their voting rights restored, very few will even bother to apply, and even fewer will get approved. I predict that even the ones that do get approved to vote, even fewer will bother voting because they'll have the threat of prosecution dangling over their head. I believe all these effects are intentional.

I'd be curious to know how other aspects of the felon demographic intersect with its racial makeup. Although they are disproportionately black, it's also disproportionately male and not college-educated. I suspect it'd still solidly favor Democrats, but less lopsidedly than someone might imagine.

[I'll just repost a comment I wrote on this]

There have been multiple studies, but it's difficult to get a clear picture because every state is different and there are a host of confounding variables.

It's relatively straightforward to get a good perspective from Vermont and Maine, because those are the only states that allow people currently incarcerated to vote from prison. The Marshall Project surveyed that population and did not find that they leaned heavily Democratic.

Elsewhere however, a common problem is that it is very difficult for felons to know exactly their right to vote is restored, so many of them don't bother trying even if they are legally allowed to. If you asked me right now to answer without looking up whether felons can vote in my state, I literally have no idea whether they regain their right upon release or after a judge restores it, and I'm a public defender who has processed hundreds of guilty pleas! All I know is that felony convictions take away your right to vote, and you get it back "someday".

Besides the lack of knowledge, felons face higher hardships (finding housing, finding employment, not committing more crimes, etc) than the general population, and their appetite for voting is a fairly low priority. You can see why something as heavily publicized as a referendum on a constitutional amendment for voting right restoration would draw a lot of attention and get people with convictions coming out of the woodwork to register. In a state that is as purple as Florida and with razor-sharp electoral margins, this is bound to be a catastrophic risk that just isn't worth it for the party that expects the short-end of the stick.

Vermont and Maine are ~95% white. Their state prison populations are overwhelmingly white. It's not reasonable to infer that the same political preferences follow for the nationwide prison population.

If you read the article, the prison population was 'roughly half' nonwhite. It also claims the POCs were "20 percent identifying as black, 14 percent as Latino, 17 percent as Native American and 19 percent as Asian or other races" (which adds up to 70%?), and that they polled at 20% trump / 30% novote / 50% dem, while whites 40% trump / 25% novote / 35% dem.

Then at least one of three possibilities must hold true:

  1. The interviewed population was far broader than Vermont and Maine state prisoners.

  2. Serious cherry-picking of interviewees took place.

  3. Vermont and/or Maine have diversity quotas for their prisoner population; gangs of New England slavers roam the country to fill said quotas.

Seriously, I have a hard time picturing any state except maybe Alaska with that kind of minority breakdown in its prison population.

I agree, and would never claim otherwise. It might still be a useful sample if compared against that specific state's average. But besides that my main point is that we don't know much on this topic, and finding out more information is very hard.

Half of Broward County’s election precincts reported more ballots cast than the number of voters.

I stopped reading here because I had to look this up.

This is not "there are 4000 voters in this county, but 4100 ballots were cast."

This is "212 people were logged as submitting a vote at this voting center, but 213 ballots were in the machines."

So someone goofed up, or someone stuffed a ballot. This is distributed across 293 precincts, with a total of 885 extra ballots.

'strangely,' Broward and Palm Beach County had no discrepancies or delays in the 2020 election

It sounds like Florida fixed the problems. Which is what is supposed to happen when an auditor shows problems! That is not "strange" at all!

The systems to keep the books aligned have gotten much better. The election I observed in Florida (very boring!) had numbers on each ballot so if one just "showed up" it would be recognized. Was it someone playing games or was it normal human error? Good question. The new system stops both accidentals and purposeful unaccounted ballots, so either way I am happy it is in place.

Oh, and lets not forget that Rick Scott very directly claimed the election was being stolen. He and Stacey Abrams were two years ahead of Trump on applying this tactic.

This is important to remember.

It sounds like Florida fixed the problems.

Uh, specifically Desantis fixed the problems. He probably would have done more investigation into what actually happened but he didn't take office until months after the fact.

Which is why the current measures shouldn't be surprising in the least. Because if an election does get compromised sufficiently, it is extremely hard to fix things after the fact.

Which Florida knows full well from the 2000 election.

Desantis has taken a series of seemingly low-cost steps to prevent some potentially VERY high cost issues from arising.

Desantis has taken a series of seemingly low-cost steps to prevent some potentially VERY high cost issues from arising.

...and that is precisely why I suspect the word has gone out on whatever the current iteration of Journo-list is that DeSantis must be undermined at every opportunity. He is the potential nightmare scenario what many were warning about back in 2017, a "Trump" without Trump's baggage.

Its weird because while the Dems seem to correctly identify that Desantis is their single largest threat in 2024, they also seem to focus on his popularity and Trump-like qualities as the biggest danger.

They seem HORRIBLE at actually modelling him as a threat. Because if they could, they'd realize that what makes him really dangerous to them is the fact that he doesn't just do things for their object-level effects. He wants to win on the meta level, and isn't just focused on pumping his personal image or winning the next election. He is explicitly NOT Trump-like in this specific way, which is to say he won't make the same mistakes as Trump.

The lack of apparent baggage, of course, means their normal tactics are likely to fail, too. Ironically, their biggest hope is that a Desantis- Trump battle fractures the GOP and prevents either from getting the nom.

My impression is that Desantis first needed to be undermined because he bucked the narrative on Covid policy. No mask mandates, no vax mandates, he didn't close schools and businesses. Maybe it's just b/c I'm in public health, but I first remember hearing about Desantis when the consensus was that Florida MUST be cooking the books on their Covid numbers because his reckless leadership was obviously killing Grandma. And if the data disagree, the data must be lies..

surely desantis is being 'undermined' because democrats dislike republicans, as usual, similar to how republicans 'undermine' biden, not specifically because of voter fraud?

Any evidence here? Did the past journo-list leaks have any instances of "this guy is cracking down on voter fraud! better get him, we depend on illegal voters!" or even something vaguely similar to that?

These are outcomes that could be swung, potentially, by one county in the state being manipulated or screwing up a count... It's not like there's not ample historical precedent of organized efforts to influence voter outcomes. Oh, also recent precedent. Can't imagine why you'd want to chance it in a state where races can be extremely close.

Those are, of course, organized efforts. Individual acts of fraudulent voting don't seem to be a major vector for attacks on election integrity; although they certainly happen, it's always marginal and doesn't have a huge partisan slant. The actual vector, both historically and in the present day, is actions by election officials and professionals.

Imagine a world where instead of this fiasco, DeSantis investigated Palm Beach County officials and came up with a ream of evidence that they manipulated the election. Would that have been more significant than this showboating, both in terms of ensuring election integrity and in terms of securing his political future?

Imagine a world where instead of this fiasco, DeSantis investigated Palm Beach County officials and came up with a ream of evidence that they manipulated the election.

Given that he's formed a branch of the State Law Enforcement specifically to investigate election crimes, I'd guess the odds of such an investigation both taking place and finding evidence if fraud did occur is substantially higher than it was before.

Likewise, this would imply that any officials who might have been considering it are much less likely to try it.

It'd be a bit hard for him to order an investigation into such a problem if it occurred in 2018 seeing as he didn't take office until months after the election.

Firing the Palm Beach County Election Supervisor was a measure he took to reduce the risk of it happening. So was the formation of the election crimes unit. So was the announcement of these arrests.

Not sure why this is hard to grok.

Maybe it works maybe it doesn't, but I don't find the motive behind it 'bewildering' at all.

Given that he's formed a branch of the State Law Enforcement specifically to investigate election crimes, I'd guess the odds of such an investigation both taking place and finding evidence if fraud did occur is substantially higher than it was before.

I mean, the motivation behind forming this agency was as a response to completely delusional claims of voter fraud that are unfortunately held by a significant portion of the electorate. I get that DeSantis is a politician that has to cater to the people who vote for him (no matter how crazy they are), so I can't fault him too much on this point. However, it does undercut the notion that this necessarily means it's an earnest and non-crazy investigative endeavor. It's possible that it was just put in place for the sake of appeasing the louder loons. Of course this doesn't mean that the agency is incapable of doing honest police work, but it definitely doesn't augur well that they chose — as their opening salvo — to go after random nobodies who are guilty of being misled by their government.

but it definitely doesn't augur well that they chose — as their opening salvo — to go after random nobodies who are guilty of being misled by their government.

The Election Crimes Unit has been in existence for LESS THAN A YEAR.

If they're going to take down Public Officials, (which, being honest, I do not predict will happen!) it behooves them to build a very strong case, which means gathering evidence, which takes time. And of course this election would be their first chance to catch it in action.

So taking an easy early 'win' in hopes of deterring other actors makes sense as an opening salvo in this context.

I responded to this here.

I don't see the win here (aside from improving DeSantis' electoral chances), because the problem with faulty record-keeping was the main argument against how Florida decided to implement Amendment 4. None of the issues are predicated on criminal behavior by the officials. The fact that the system made mistakes about voter registration was exactly what was predicted, and it's rich for the government to take out its frustrations on the victims of this system.

I mean, the motivation behind forming this agency was as a response to completely delusional claims of voter fraud that are unfortunately held by a significant portion of the electorate.

Objection! Low effort consensus building which you have not only failed to demonstrate, but you have failed to uphold in this very day's update regarding Desantis's domestic political context, in which multiple contemporary contexts of conspiracy to commit voter fraud, potential evidence of fraudulant voting, and systemic weakness for fraud have been noted without sufficient rebuttal. That you, and even a significant portion of the American electorate, insist that claims of voter fraud are completely delusional and dismiss other people's reasons and perspectives does not, in fact, make those other people unreasonable or completely delusional.

Given your past ruts on this topic with similar tendencies of not acknowledging contrary evidence, I would submit you are not objective on this topic, given your frequent shills for your private substack and the financial interests in catering to your desired target audience I would submit you are not impartial, and given some of your past clunkers on understanding other people's viewpoints even when described to you, I would submit you lack the credibility to be a trustworthy evaluator of the motivations of your outgroup, especially on topics in which you have both past bad history and current financial incentives to defend dumping on your outgroup.

That you, and even a significant portion of the American electorate

Most of the american electorate on both sides wouldn't know a motte from a pot, so that's a weird objection. Most voters vote for a combination of 'my friends/family vote this way' and really strange idiosyncratic reasons, and their positions on any specific issue are much worse. I don't see what that has to do with ymeskhout's precise and very long arguments

I would submit you are not objective on this topic, given your frequent shills for your private substack and the financial interests in catering to your desired target audience

Wouldn't he just not post on what a journo could call a "alt-right dogwhistle reactionary forum" in that case?

you have failed to uphold in this very day's update regarding Desantis's domestic political context, in which multiple contemporary contexts of conspiracy to commit voter fraud, potential evidence of fraudulant voting, and systemic weakness for fraud have been noted without sufficient rebuttal

But I did, in the same post above you're replying to. If DeSantis was serious about actual voter fraud, I don't have an explanation for why he'd choose to make a public spectacle of people who were misled by his administration and dragging them to jail.

Given your past ruts on this topic with similar tendencies of not acknowledging contrary evidence...

We've been over this so so many times by now, and this exchange from May 2021 remains the most illustrative. I ask questions and your response is along the lines that it's not your job to educate me. Ok, fine, I accept that it's not your job, but I have no idea what exactly you expect of me. I have no idea how I'd even try to parody your position if I wanted, because you repeatedly refuse to state what it is besides a generalized complaint! If I said "Trump's election fraud allegations were true, or at least were made in good faith" you'd accuse me of strawmanning or whatever and then darkly hint that I am somehow missing the point or that I am intentionally ignoring the real and totally valid election fraud theories that apparently exist somewhere out there.

I get that you don't like it when I talk about the 2020 election fraud theories, you've made that abundantly clear! What I don't get is why you keep wasting time on this beat. You either have specific arguments to make or you don't. If you don't have any, or you just refuse to make them out of principle, vaguely complaining is not going to accomplish anything. I'm not a mind reader, and you can't expect me to respond to arguments you choose to keep cloistered in your head.

given your frequent shills for your private substack and the financial interests in catering to your desired target audience I would submit you are not impartial

Well, you caught me. The dozens of subscribers paying $0 a month pose a grave liability to my impartiality. I hope my reputation can someday recover.

But I did, in the same post above you're replying to. If DeSantis was serious about actual voter fraud, I don't have an explanation for why he'd choose to make a public spectacle of people who were misled by his administration and dragging them to jail.

This would be credibility-boosting confession of failure, were it not intended to pretend to humility.

Given your past ruts on this topic with similar tendencies of not acknowledging contrary evidence...

We've been over this so so many times by now, and this exchange from May 2021 remains the most illustrative. I ask questions and your response is along the lines that it's not your job to educate me.

Oh, hey, look- linking to an argument that charged you with conflating information sets to dismiss the grounding of other people's prior arguments as non-existent...

You either have specific arguments to make or you don't.

...to conflate information sets to dismiss the grounding of other people's prior arguments as non-existent.

When the charge is you dismiss previous arguments and treat them as having never existed, dismissing previous arguments to treat them as having never existed is certainly illustrative, but also demonstrative.

I get that you don't like it when I talk about the 2020 election fraud theories, you've made that abundantly clear! What I don't get is why you keep wasting time on this beat.

Raising attention to your poor conduct and worse competencies on this topic is not time wasted.

Your projecting your opinions onto other people's evaluations is one of your consistent analytic flaws that deserves noting to warn others not already familiar with your tendencies.

If you don't have any, or you just refuse to make them out of principle, vaguely complaining is not going to accomplish anything. I'm not a mind reader, and you can't expect me to respond to arguments you choose to keep cloistered in your head.

Based on your past- and still present- conduct, I don't expect you to respond to arguments in good faith at all, and I consider it sound reminder to newer members of the community to be aware of this for the same reason the best advice to give anyone during the Julius saga was to warn those unfamiliar to move on.

given your frequent shills for your private substack and the financial interests in catering to your desired target audience I would submit you are not impartial

Well, you caught me. The dozens of subscribers paying $0 a month pose a grave liability to my impartiality. I hope my reputation can someday recover.

This, too, would be credibility-boosting confession of failure, were it not intended to pretend to humility.

Also, you're a lawyer.

Your responses, more so than anyone else's in this community, continues to be the greatest source of inscrutability for me. Besides the vague and generalized discontent, I continue to have no idea what you're talking about, and I don't understand if this is just a language issue or an indication of a less obvious chasm or something else entirely.

If anyone besides Dean is capable of summarizing to me the specific concerns he holds, that would be really helpful.

Edit: I've been trying to organize a Bailey episode about the 2020 election with Shakesneer for a few months now. If you think a real-time discussion would be helpful and want to team up with him, let me know!

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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