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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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The expanse of mass-mail in voting is considered fraud by historical Democratic principals. Trump wins in a landslide without that.

And if the expanse of mass mail-in voting had caused him to win in a landslide, you'd be saying the election was illegitimate and stolen from Biden, yes?

At this point it is beyond proven that the FBI interfered with social media with regards to the Hunter Biden laptop. They knew it was real the entire time. The CIA helped cover that up.

I agree, and this was an outrage, and I said so repeatedly at the time and since. But this doesn't prove that the election was fraudulent - as pointed out by @2rafa, if media propaganda manipulating people to vote a particular way makes an election illegitimate, then every election since the invention of democracy was illegitimate. We'll never know the counterfactual where the Hunter Biden laptop story is allowed to freely circulate on social media - it might have swung the election, it might not. There are obvious parallels with Russiagate truthers constantly asserting that Trump only won because of sketchy Facebook ads from Russian accounts!!! targeting swing voters, something something Cambridge Analytica.

But this doesn't prove that the election was fraudulent -

What's this un-fraud of the gaps(analogous to god of the gaps)?

I don't get it

“And if the expanse of mass mail-in voting had caused him to win in a landslide, you'd be saying the election was illegitimate and stolen from Biden, yes”

  • yes. I’m autistic. I’ve flipped on positions before when the data points in that direction. Which does include flipping from Trump is a bad clown show POTUS only doing decent because McConnell is good to believing Trump has great judgement.

“There are obvious parallels with Russiagate truthers constantly asserting that Trump only won because of sketchy Facebook ads from Russian accounts!!! targeting swing voters, something something Cambridge Analytica.“

  • Perhaps I am wrong on this but when I looked at the data the Russian troll farms did not reach a lot of people and the people they did reach were mostly core MAGA. I don’t believe the quant argument is strong that it could flip the election.

This is also different because it’s external versus internal. It’s different when Russia plays some games we don’t have the tools to prevent and our own CIA decides to back candidate X. The CIA interfering in an election is bad. Especially when they are spreading known false information. They have done this during war times but during an election is different.