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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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You insist on viewing this from a moral perspective, but I'm speaking from a consequentialist one. "War" is a rational choice if and only if the expected value of starting a war is higher than the opportunity cost. And given the massive costs of war, the only way for your EV to be positive is if you are SURE you will win. War is the extension of politics through other means. And in that same vein, politics are an extension of war through other means. If you exist in an equilibrium where you can win a war if and only if you can win a political conflict, it only makes sense to start a war if you already have an overwhelming political advantage. And given the scenario in question here is Trump losing an election while he's already president, it's clear he lacks that overwhelming political advantage. Either his grasp on the levers of power is so weak as to allow a palace coup, or his grasp on the population is so weak as to guarantee a loss in a civil war, or both.

Refusing to certify an election is exactly isomorphic to claiming, "I'm going to stay in power because my faction would win a civil war." The specific details-- whether the election was actually stolen, whether you have convincing evidence of that, the actual vote totals, etc-- matter only insofar as they make your claim more or less believable to the other party. If your claim to power is sufficiently believable, you might get lucky with your opponents backing down. All the logic about the EV of starting a civil war applies to them too.

But self-evidently, Pence did not have convincing evidence of election theft, and did not have an expectation of winning a civil war. It would have been stupid for him to refuse to certify the election, and it would have been just as stupid for JD vance to refuse to certify the election.