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Notes -
The problem I've always had here, particularly looking down at some of the below comments, is the way that there seem to be several concentric circles of mottes on this question, none of which actually correspond to what Trump or some of his partisans claimed.
Thus, for instance, sometimes there's an argument that US election security could be significantly improved. I wholly agree with this. There are many ways that US elections could be made more secure, transparent, and responsible.
We also sometimes see the argument that the institutional landscape, particularly re: media, academia and 'experts', civil servants and bureaucrats, etc., is so thoroughly slanted as to systematically misrepresent the positions of right-wing or Republican figures. No election held on such biased terrain can be considered fair. The entire institutional ecosystem is soft-rigged against the GOP, regardless of whether there was any direct voter fraud. This is an argument that I have a lot of time for - if one faction has a huge advantage in political communication, and its credibility is laundered by all the major epistemic institutions of its society, then it's hardly a free and fair contest of ideas.
However, these were not the actual arguments made by Trump and allies, nor were they the arguments voiced on January 6. Those arguments were much more clearly motivated and false. I'm thinking of arguments like 2000 Mules. It may be true that US elections aren't run well, and that the media landscape is biased to an extent that calls into question democratic legitimacy, but neither of those make D'Souza's specific claims true, or even plausible. Likewise with other claims.
Often I run into defenses like "take Trump seriously but not literally", or "Trump lies like a used car salesman, Democrats lie like lawyers", and to an extent I think the points those defenses are making are valid - Trump's communicative style relies heavily on deliberate exaggeration, but the audience is 'in' on that exaggeration to an extent; and there are more subtle and effective ways to lie that don't involve stating identifiable untruths.
But at some point, I think, that eventually turns into "I believe Trump's lies communicate a larger truth" and from there into "what Trump says is false, but I support him because I associate those falsehoods with something else that might be true" and from there to "I ignore what Trump actually says and substitute something else, and I support that something else". At some point you're just too far away from the candidate himself or his campaign.
But isn’t the problem “the IC was willing to lie to try to influence the election for one candidate and if they were willing to break that norm why would they simply stop there instead of changing votes.”
And for that I don’t have a convincing argument that THAT would be a bridge too far. Now that’s not proof they did something but when they know by and large they won’t be caught because of institutional advantages — why not cheat?
Further it seems the latest in Georgia shows that the dominion machines are far from safe (I don’t understand why we need machines instead of simply paper ballots).
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This seems like some sort of reverse-motte-and-Bailey on your part. Some crazies yell extreme theories, therefore the moderate theories are not worth considering?
It also seems like an effort of sophistry to avoid the question of “how to get Republicans to accept the election results” by playing around with definitions until the people with legitimate reasons to distrust the election don’t count as Republicans any more, ergo dusts hands job done.
On the contrary, I just said:
I said myself that I agree with the mottes! I just sometimes feel like the mottes, and my agreement therewith, are used to try to justify baileys that I find much more doubtful.
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If those other issues were dealt I would bet enormous sums of money that support for stolen election claims would deflate slowly like a balloon over the course of several years.
Opposition to very commonplace and common sense election security measures is legitimate dry tinder for ever wilder rungs of supposition. And every day it’s not implemented the plausible deniability of the worst, least charitable takes about trumps enemies shrinks until we are at the point we are currently at, where the conspiracies start to seem more plausible even by people like myself who are naturally skeptic and repulsed by woo and snake oil salesmen.
I agree entirely.
Unfortunately I think the terrain at the moment is such that, because any questions about those issues are right/Trump-coded, those on the left will reflexively oppose any of those reforms, because any movement towards the right is seen as presumptively Trumpist, and you can't negotiate with insurrectionists, and so on. Extreme polarisation has made it harder to solve the causes of polarisation.
And all this does is push people further to the extremes and strengthen the con men.
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