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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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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.

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.

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.