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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   21700 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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If you want a peaceful transition of power, you need to be able to convince the losers that they lost fairly and that they have more to gain by continuing to work within the system than they have to lose by checking out of it or blowing it up.

Is there a responsibility, in your view, for the losers to examine if their real objection might not be principled, but literally over just losing?

I think you two might be talking past each other. Whether or not the losers should have good objections is a normative statement. Whether or not their objections are a problem is a descriptive statement. If the losers refuse to accept the result of an election no matter how fair and transparent it is, you don't have a functioning democracy.

In other words, no matter how fair an election might be that both sides had previously agreed to, the loser should be catered to with negotiations and compromises simply because they refuse to accept the outcome.

I reject that idea entirely. If Trump supporters and other election truthers need to have refuges from the rest of the American nation, I'm willing to accommodate that, but I'm not going to accept their claim that they just have a principled concern about election security.

I'm not giving a "should". Maybe Hlynka is, but there's certainly multiple options how you deal with people not recognizing the legitimacy of a government. Simply ignoring them is the default, and works just fine if there aren't too many of them or they aren't particularly interested in taking action. On the other extreme is civil war. I think the US is leaning a lot closer to the former than the latter.

I recognize you didn't give a "should", but Hlynka very much would agree with the absurd position I detailed in my previous comment. That's his position, unless he draws some line based on how many people actually disagree.

What does it mean for an election to be "fair" or "legitimate" if it doesn't mean having buy-in from both sides?

Consider an unopened box. You and I agree that whatever is inside, we will share equally between ourselves. We open it, and it happens to be your favorite candy bar. I go to split it equally, but you grab one side of it and insist that actually, you want the whole thing and I should re-negotiate over it.

Would you say you are acting in bad faith?

As much as there’s responsibility for the winners to examine if their belief in the legitimacy of their win might not be principled, by verifying the methods with the same scrutiny as if they’d lost.

I agree. But if you want to go down the route of saying the losers are refusing to be rational because that would cost them energy and momentum vs. the winners who don't, then just say that.

No because that's not how Democracy works.

You want Democracy? You need buy-in from the démos.

That means you don't really even want elections, right? You just want negotiations over policy. Because if the losers, as I suspect, are a bit more motivated by losing than they claim to be, then no amount of proof would work because they don't care about proof in the first place.

That means you don't really even want elections, right? You just want negotiations over policy.

Perhaps this is the Leviathan-shaped hole in the discourse rearing it's ugly head again, but "negotiations over policy" (or rather who gets to set that policy) is exactly what an election is, is it not?

Otherwise, I refer you to @DuplexFields' response above.

Perhaps this is the Leviathan-shaped hole in the discourse rearing it's ugly head again, but "negotiations over policy" (or rather who gets to set that policy) is exactly what an election is, is it not?

No, my point is that you and anyone else who takes this viewpoint is essentially claiming that you don't care about proof over whether the election was stolen in the first place. You just want a guarantee that your policies are enacted.

Suppose the Democrats were to offer a guarantee that they'd quash any attempt at enacting laws which would shift the government's stance to be more socially progressive in exchange for Republicans (including the MAGA ones) never bringing up the 2020 election again, and that this would hold for the next 10 years. God himself comes down and says they're not lying about what they'll do. In this scenario, I would expect people complaining about the election losers to largely come down against this deal on principle. Instead, I suspect the losers would actually, seriously debate if they should accept.

you and anyone else who takes this viewpoint is essentially claiming that you don't care about proof over whether the election was stolen in the first place. You just want a guarantee that your policies are enacted.

Isn't this, like -- strictly way better than relitigating 2020 in excrutiating detail over and over again? The evidence is what it is, we aren't getting more, and even outside of partisan hacks pretty much everyone has made up their mind.

"I don't care about 2020 proofs and never want to hear about it again -- but we need to bake accountability for following voting procedures and anti-fraud measures into the system so it never happens again" is at least actionable -- and something that is difficult(ish) for either side to object to. (and no, "it doesn't matter, those dumb MAGAs will protest anyways" is not a valid objection)

Why would it be better? It's a flat-out rejection of the idea that the truth should inform action. I have no problem with litigation over the facts of the 2020 election, but the frustrating part is that the election truthers don't ever give me confidence that they care about the truth for its own sake, but more because they think it's impossible Trump could have lost in the first place.

You are describing hardcore truthers though -- isn't it way easier to engage with people who say 'I can't be sure whether fraud had an impact (and therefore the results should stand) but it would be better for everyone if the system were such that it is possible to be sure that fraud can't have an impact'?

Who is objecting to that on the "2020 wasn't stolen" side? Put simply, if you open your argument with "I don't think 2020 was stolen, but here are cases where we need to tighten election security", I think you'd find earnest discussion in even the most pro-Biden/left-wing spaces.

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Why would it be better?

Because "Elections are by their nature a contested environment"

Because "the purpose of an election is not to produce a "true" or "accurate" result. It is to produce a clear result that the candidates (and their voters) can accept as legitimate, including the ones who lost."

To paraphrase you earlier comment, it sounds to me like you don't really want elections. You just want to dictate terms.

Because "Elections are by their nature a contested environment"

So is capitalism. I don't see that getting in the way of two competing rational capitalists being unable to agree to facts.

Because "the purpose of an election is not to produce a "true" or "accurate" result. It is to produce a clear result that the candidates (and their voters) can accept as legitimate, including the ones who lost."

You misunderstood what I was saying. I wasn't arguing about why we have elections, I was arguing about how we understand if the procedure/process was followed conditional on our agreement to such a process. Basically, I reject the notion that the election process' outcome doesn't need to be truthful just because the real contention is the policies both sides want.

Traditionally, even the losers in the US have been quite principled and put country over party, and their own specific interests.

Even Nixon stepped down.

You’re trying to justify a race to the bottom instead of calling out unjustified behavior.

No non-authoritarian system of government is going to do well with unprincipled, unreasonable behavior at scale.

You’re trying to justify a race to the bottom instead of calling out unjustified behavior.

No, those objecting to the election shenanigans are trying to call out bad behavior. Those excusing them on the grounds that it's bad to question elections are attempting to elevate the appearance of legitimacy over actual legitimacy.

You’re doing the motte n bailey between “were things perfect” and “was the election rigged/stolen.”

Instances of bad behavior can be acknowledged and we are still nowhere near what was claimed by Trump or TTV.

Nobody is even "acknowledging" "bad behavior".

It does not follow from "The election has not been demonstrated to hostile adjudicators to be as bad as was claimed by Trump or TTV" that "The election may not have been perfect but it was good enough".

Well there’s a great deal of evidence from all the recounts and investigations that in fact it was good enough.

We have a ton of procedures in place so that the baseline is supposed to be “good enough.”

Hanging chads and glitches and Covid issues can all still happen, even low-level fraud, but that’s pretty far away from the claims made that 2020 was illegitimate.

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