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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   21703 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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and I admit at having ongoing puzzlement as to why 2020 stolen election claims retain so much cachet among republican voters and officials.

Yeah, it's a mix of things. I think the main way people end up believing it is due to deep amounts of distrust in mainstream sources and in the political system, combined with a lack of skepticism and maybe some motivated reasoning towards appealing propaganda. When you have Trump promoting this, it gets followers. Combine that with some purported evidence (I think there was some graph of a bunch of new votes added at once in some state), and people think that they're right.

At least, that's the way it comes across to me, when talking about ordinary voters. I'd assume there's some of that for politicians, etc., but that there's more of that for the sake of the political benefit. I remember that being a thing in the lead-up to the 2022 election, of people being more likely to consider/endorse the theory in the hope of gathering support from Trump and so winning the primary.

I think part of it is the way the mail-in ballots swung the vote; you went to bed while the count was going on and Trump was leading, you got up in the morning and suddenly Biden had won the state. That seems odd, if you are disposed to think that all the hysteria over Orange Man Bad, and the main plank of support for Biden's campaign being "we can't let Trump win because he is the AntiChrist!", meant that the opposition would do anything and everything to make sure he lost.

Yeah. This was pretty expected because many states counted mail ballots last, which would be leaning Democrat because Republicans were discouraging mail in voting, but it might not feel that way to many voters.

Two additional things to consider:

  1. "They" did in fact "interfere" with the election, and publicly admitted to it (see: "fortifying" type claims). This may not count legally as election tampering or whatever but may feel that way to the right and disgruntled moderates.

  2. Many voters know someone who hates Trump enough to do this and feel justified doing so. I have several family members and friends involved in government, some of whom I straight up asked "if you had the ability to stop Trump from being elected would you do it?" to which the answer is "yes absolutely, he's literally Hitler." It doesn't take much to believe that some people in the position to do something had the same thoughts.

I earnestly believe that anyone who doesn't get why people have concerns is being obtuse.

see: "fortifying" type claims

"I fortify, you gerrymander, he tampers" with elections, then?

As to point 2: personal belief, any presidential candidates would be a fool not to include federal laws requiring higher pay for nursing home aids in his platform. If you think the people who work in nursing homes aren't going to alter the delivery of ballots significantly based on political party, or just fill them out themselves...

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