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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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From the smarter deep conservatives I know IRL, there's either margin of fraud issues('Trump only won by five points but republicans need ten') which might not happen this time, or the political machines that are actually rigging the elections aren't as onboard with Biden as they were, or 2020 was exceptional and the deep state dropped the ball on faking a global pandemic this time, etc.

You can have as many epicycles about history as you want. What matters is epicycles about the future. You can believe that the the JFK assassination never happened, that the moon got where it is as an alien death star to wipe out an advanced ancient civilization, stonehenge was built by aliens, there was an ancient nuclear war that destroyed Mohenjo-Daro, the Nazis built pyramids in Antarctica before their base was destroyed by American nuclear weapons disguised as a test, cats were domesticated by the Annunaki to implant cameras in and spy on the progress of civilization, the earth is 6,000 years old, the printing press was invented in 800 AD but suppressed by the inquisition until Gutenberg, the last prince of Wales reached north America and that's why the Cherokee are white-looking, the Incas were regularly in contact with China, Atlantis had a Mars colony, the Olmecs were the original black people who colonized west Africa, Eleanor Roosevelt was transgender, whatever, and still be a smart, well functioning person who accurately predicts what's going to happen in the future, even on related subjects. And the guy who told me the cats theory was a physics professor. Why? Because those are matters of fact, not function. Kind of like scientific theories- it's a term to describe processes. Denying whats doesn't matter. You're simply factually wrong about something that happened once, and it probably doesn't affect your day to day life if black people originated in Mexico instead of Africa, nor does it really affect anything in the future. Denying hows does. If you believe elves built your car you can still fix it. If you believe elves power your car by running in hamster wheels inside of it in exchange for gasoline, you can't.

Elections are a lot like that. It's not hard to come up with a just-so story as for why the deep state can rig the election in 2020 but not 2024. It doesn't even have to make sense. What's important is that it doesn't impinge on future processes.