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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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Elections are by their nature a contested environment not just between the individual candidates, but as Tom Scott touches upon in this video on electronic voting, between the candidates, their respective voters, and those administering the election. You seem to be approaching this issue as though it were a criminal trial where the election must be presumed legitimate unless proved otherwise in a court of law, but that's not how this works. You need to understand that 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. [some spelling corrections]

So one side gets a Heckler's Veto until they are convinced of the legitimacy of the election? If they're upset enough, then the government needs to alter procedures until they are satisfied? No evidence is required, merely a sense of disquiet among some portion of voters? What procedural changes would produce a "legitimate" election for those people?

So one side gets a Heckler's Veto until they are convinced of the legitimacy of the election?

This, but unironically.

The primary goal of an election is convincing the losers they lost to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. Selecting a winner is a significantly less important goal. If a large portion of the population doesn't believe the election (and therefore the government) is legitimate, that's the road to a coup or civil war. Or at least lower level societal dysfunction as more people reject government authority. It's still a problem even if their reasons appear to be nonsense.

Yes. that's literally how democracy works.

You have to convince the other half of the country they lost fair and square, or give up on peaceful transition of power. There is no third option.

If you find the other half to be unreasonable, that's a problem, but they still need to be placated or fought.

Too bad nobody can provide an elephant.

“There’s a huge elephant in here you aren’t addressing but don’t ask for specifics.”

Vibes -> tall claims -> shoddy evidence -> vibes -> …

It’s a self-sustaining cycle of BS until good evidence can be provided, instead of dancing around that elephant-sized gap.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/outrage-erupts-after-windows-covered-up-in-detroit-during-ballot-count-officials-release-statement-on-alleged-reason-behind-decision

There is an elephant. Conservative election observers were kicked out of the room, and the windows were covered up so Democrat's could count the ballets in secret. Whatever the just so reasons given to justify this action, they are unacceptable. It's impossible to trust anything that occurred in that room now.

Were you aware that your own link says that there were 134 republicans in the room during counting?

You'll note that even this article quotes this:

"Both political parties had surpassed the law-mandated maximum of 134 challengers with more than 200 each, and when election workers told GOP challengers the party had hit its limit, some began shouting about the unfair process and lack of transparency. An unidentified election worker shouted back the group was at its maximum size."

Poll watchers were kicked out (or not allowed to enter) because there were already in EXCESS of the legally mandated 134 challengers inside the room.

How is it impossible to trust when there were more than 200 Republican poll watchers INSIDE. How many before you would trust it? 300? 500? 1,000? There has to be some maximum that is enforced.

The elephant is that this was not enough! You can let more people in to challenge than the legal maximum and still people are not happy. Votes were not counted in secret. There were 200 Republican poll watchers inside the room. Even that article does not claim there were none. The biggest claim there is:

"“There were some pretty tense moments inside of this room. Basically some poll workers or some of challengers told us that there was not an equal number of Democrats and Republicans in this room throughout the entire process,”"

That's it. Not that there were no watchers, not that they were kicked out and the ballots were counted secretly. Just that the numbers were not equal.

Whatever the just so reasons given to justify this action, they are unacceptable.

You don't kick out election observers and board up the windows, period. I'm entirely uninterested in whatever facile justifications they give. If there is a problem, at best, you pause the counting until a satisfactory solution to all parties is agreed upon. Not kick people out, board up windows, and then plow on ahead in the chaos.

More over, I don't know what kind of weasel words these claims of the GOP having the "maximum" number even means. Did the dems have more? Then how is it a maximum? How large was the facility? Is the "maximum" some generic statute, related to the fire code, for that specific facility?

But this is exactly the back and forth that always happens. Some shit goes down that any person can plainly see is suspicious, and some just so explanation is given that we are supposed to automatically trust.

No.

You don't kick out election observers and board up the windows, period

You sure do, if the number of obsevers is in excess of the legal limit. What is your alternative? Break the law simply to meet your personal standard of credulity? Such an action would be just as likely to be highlighted as one of the "irregularities" that "proves" the steal as assuage your concerns.

I don't know what kind of weasel words these claims of the GOP having the "maximum" number even means. Did the dems have more? Then how is it a maximum? How large was the facility? Is the "maximum" some generic statute, related to the fire code, for that specific facility?

These are all great questions that have a large bearing on whether or not anything untoward happened. Unfortunately you seem ignorant of the answers to them, despite the fact that this case was brought by you as evidence of your position. That you should then try to parlay this ignorance into further "evidence" is, charitably, wild as hell.

Some shit goes down that any person can plainly see is suspicious,

We do not all "plainly see" that something suspicious is happening, hence this discussion.

Michigan law allows one challenger per party, per absentee counting board. There were 134 absentee counting boards ergo 134 of each party should have been allowed in the room. They have to take an oath, have an ID from their organization etc. You can't just walk in. Normally, they don't get close to that, so they weren't keeping count until the room got crowded and when counted they realized they had 570 observers which included at least 227 Republican observers. At this point they elected to not let anyone else in (both Democrat and Republican) until some of those had left. That is what triggered the situation.

Your claim that there was secret counting is false. Your OWN evidence showed that (because they had reports from poll watchers inside the room). So now your claim is that there weren't enough let in. That may be true (depending on how many observers you think should be allowed in) but it is not the same thing as ballots being counted secretly.

Now obviously you can doubt the numbers provided, but just as a check, if you were shown evidence that there were 227 Republican poll watchers inside the room watching the ballots being counted AND you were sure that this was accurate, would that be enough to at least walk back the claim that ballots were being counted secretly?

If there is a problem, at best, you pause the counting until a satisfactory solution to all parties is agreed upon. Not kick people out, board up windows, and then plow on ahead in the chaos.

In a similar case in Philadelphia, Trump's campaign filed for an emergency halt to the count because they claimed it was proceeding without Republican observers present, but then their lawyer had to admit to a judge that actually there were "a non zero number" of Republican observers in the room. This is part of a common pattern around that time where they'd make explosive claims only to have to walk it back significantly once they were in court where lying carried penalties.

Based on the number of blatantly frivolous claims that were credulously trotted out, I believe the concerns over electoral safeguards were generally not earnest. Instead, the overwhelming motivation was upset that Trump was losing and so they used election integrity as a pretextual facade. That's why there has been such a flood of low-quality claims (remember Sharpiegate? Italian satellites? Bamboo ballots? Dominion algorithm?) that would get dropped as soon as they fell apart, only to move on to the next thing.

IIRC this was the one where the observers were 'in the room' but kept behind barriers quite far from the actual counters, so that they couldn't actually monitor or object to anything the counters were doing -- there were photos at the time that made this quite clear. Observers who tried to approach more closely were kicked out because covid.

I'm fairly sure I've brought this up with you more than once before, and have a vague memory of you acknowledging that it was bad on one occasion -- now you are triumphantly bringing it up again as an example of Repulicans being unreasonable, and writing blog posts about it. It's a good example of what Dean has been complaining about -- you are coming off as a dishonest interlocutor here to anyone who followed events at the time and maybe went to the trouble of digging up links for you.

If the claim in court, where you do need to be very specific, was that people weren't allowed in, but they were and just kept far away, then the claim should reflect that, right?

The blog post is dated Nov 5, 2020 and it was just a copy of one of my motte reddit post. I don't recall the issue with the Philadelphia observers being kept behind barriers, but either way that's not the claim the Trump lawyers went with in court. I also don't recall what exchange you're referring to, I was able to dig up this conversation where I tried to ascertain the worst-case scenario from the Georgia water main incident, but that doesn't seem to be what you have in mind.

It's a good example of what Dean has been complaining about -- you are coming off as a dishonest interlocutor here to anyone who followed events at the time and maybe went to the trouble of digging up links for you.

I take allegations of dishonesty very seriously! That's why I keep offering my full motte archives for others to scrutinize. If I'm ever being dishonest or whatever (as Dean constantly insists I am) then it should be effortless to demonstrate this. You're citing an exchange that you claim to be a good example of my dishonesty, but it's based off your memory. If you're remembering correctly, then I will acknowledge error and issue a public apology. But if you're misremembering, I would appreciate an apology from you.

I bet pauses in counting wouldn’t arouse any suspicions…

The mistake you’re making is conflating “suspicious” with “malicious” and “impactful.”

Here, there was intense scrutiny over the counting and too many observers causing issues such that an election official took action to resolve things. The intense scrutiny led to an irregularity that you are treating as conclusive evidence that shenanigans were afoot.

It’s a bit of circular reasoning that you can’t be pulled out of unless you acknowledge that the strangeness did not stop observation and that there is no evidence showing actual misdeeds with the ballot counting.

Is there any actual evidence the count was done wrong or ballots tampered with? Were any follow up investigations done?

Is this one instance of suspicious behavior enough to justify claiming an election was rigged or stolen?

My daughter has been in a sneaky mood lately. She likes to take things she's not supposed to, hide them behind her back, and then yell that there is nothing behind her back. I do not plan on allowing election workers to behave in a similar manner. "Actual evidence" is just goalpost moving when they are violating the norms (and in many cases the law) in a direction of preventing "actual evidence" from being collection. That's why those norms and laws exist.

There is suggestive evidence and then there’s definitive evidence.

Was there a recount of those ballots? An investigation into anything being done behind the curtain?

It’s not moving the goalpost to point out you’ve identified smoke and not a fire, because the position of any reasonable person is not that nothing strange, improper, or illegal happened in 2020. It’s that such irregularities were not of sufficient scale or coordinated to rig or steal the election from an incumbent president.

There was a bit of cheating and wonkiness, but trust us - no more than usual.

It's not that I can't believe Trump lost fair and square. It's that I have no reason to trust that claim from people who regularly lied (or insinuated falsehoods) to me repeatedly in the run-up to his ousting. I can't expect then be honest about praising Nazis, I can't expect them to be honest about Russian collusion, I can't even expect them to be honest about feedish fish in Japan. But I'm supposed to buy the narrative that everything wasn't just above-board for the 2020 election, but even so much better than historical standards, no ifs or buts. That is until these conversations play out, and that S-ranked election integrity gets downgraded - but don't worry, not downgraded enough to suggest anything was questionable.

FWIW I think you're being super reasonable in your demands for evidence. And it's highly probable that that the general Right's refusal to concede this matter is a product of their pattern recognitions producing an error. Just because they were lied to about 10 other things doesn't mean media and political organs aren't telling the truth about lack of evidence for fraud and shenanigans. Unfortunately, when they all decided to sacrifice their integrity and honesty, they took my charity with it. I don't think this is a reactionary position, but an informed one.

Who cares any more, any way. As if anybody at this stage is going to change their mind based on the verdict of some tribunal or investigative body. The ship of legitimacy sunk well before all of this, and I can't believe anybody thinks it can be restored with some official paperwork. What awful stewards our leaders are, for putting us in this position

It’s not “trust us”

It’s “where’s the evidence to confirm the suspicions”

There was intense scrutiny of this election. Plots leave evidence. Extraordinary claims were made.

You can ignore the narrative and simply examine the cases.

Pattern recognition is great until it becomes immune to counter evidence or ceases to even require supporting evidence.

I get the same feeling and employ nearly the same responses when I deal with the right on elections or the left on systemic racism. So much smoke, so little fire.

With Russiagate, there was a lot of smoke and some actual fires, just not any fire that matched the level of rhetoric about Trump himself. So the left was wrong to overhype it as a bonfire, but the right is wrong to pretend that the level of coziness Trump officials and associates had with certain Russians was unprecedented, inappropriate, and in some cases illegal. Republicans used to recognize the threat from Russia and I miss those days.

And I'm saying it's a futile game to play at this point - to 'produce evidence' that would be inevitably rejected by arbitrary standards that align with political convenience. I agree that evidence for fraud is lacking, and I'm also of the opinion that no quality or quantity of evidence would matter, either. I could no more produce evidence for election shenanigans than I could for whatever Hillary Clinton may have been up to after she Bleachbit her files, yet I find it perfectly reasonable to assume she's a crook because of the nature of her transgression, regardless if I can't find the evidence that was deliberately destroyed or withheld.

My issues with the election have more to do with last-minute changes to rules and procedures, specifically with regards to mail-in voting. But I recognize that because these changes were officially approved by local governments and are therefore 'legitimate', I have no standing to complain. I also know it has a plausible defense in COVID safetyism, so I really can't push against it without seeming like a callous asshole. But at the same time, said safetyism was also of their own making, and it increasingly looks like they had no idea what they were doing or its potential consequences while they forced their decisions through anyway. And while US political media has always been a circus, their conduct during Trump's presidency rose to the level of mentally poisoning the electorate IMO - to the point where I seriously question the legitimacy of democracy when in its inputs are perverted in such a fashion. I don't think it works (at least to my satisfaction) when the media engineers half the country into believing the president is a Nazi and Putin's puppet.

Some people seem to think all of that is just kind of a backdrop for the real meat and potatoes discussion of election legitimacy; like vote counts. To me, it is the primary thing. The background is the foreground. Whatever process is borne from it is tainted with it. Whatever procedural fuckery may or may not have happened in the aftermath, I can't really asses because I am reliant on institutions I can trust in order to parse them. They revealed themselves untrustworthy, and now all I can do is shrug in suspicion. And that's what it is: a suspicion, that I will probably have for all my life, but won't actually do much with. It's certainly not a high-ranking factor in my 2024 decision making.

I feel like people are trying suss out legitimacy with data tables, tabulations, rulers and metrics. Those aren't worthless, but I think what seals the deal is a magic trick: doing a good job and not deeply alienating your political opposition. In a world where Biden is addressing the border crisis, not mindlessly going along with LGBTQ politics, not selecting an idiot for VP, and speaking more like he did in 2008 than he does now, nobody is harping about his vote counts. People broadly would have moved on. Counterintuitively, the obsession with proving MAGA dummies wrong on this topic reveals how little else is on offer from that platform, and deepens the suspicion. "Any man who must say 'I am the king' is is no king at all" and all that.

I'm not sure if this is clarifying or frustrating to read. I'm self-aware enough to recognize that I sound like I'm intentionally closing myself off from evidence, but I don't think I am. It's just that nothing really turns on this, and I'm fine if it's never conclusively settled because I have plenty of other reasons to doubt Biden's 'legitimacy' any way.

I also accept that this dynamic was also true for Trump. For his antics and speech, he was deemed illegitimate by half the electorate despite winning fairly according to the rules.

More comments

You need to understand that the purpose of an election isnot to produce a "true" or "accurate" result. It is to produce a clear result that the candidates (and thier voters) can accept as legitimate, including the ones who lost. This is why we use paper ballots with documented chains of custody, this is why we have laws requiring that the counting be witnessed by representative of each candidate/party.

This is an incoherent pair of sentences. What function does having a paper trail or bipartisan autiding have except for helping to establish that the reported vote count is true and accurate (or it's degree thereof)? A paper trail will not make someone accept an election as legitimate, if they are not interested in obtaining (or respecting, as a process for determining who wins) the factual truth of the vote count.

The simple thing that after 4 years of this conversation you still don't seem to grasp is that you aren't going to convince anyone the election was legitimate by arguing the niggling technical details of individual cases and motions. You need to actually address the elephant in the room

"You aren't going to convince anyone the election was legitimate by arguing and evaluating specific factual claims". Quite right! It was clear in 2020 and even more clear now, that most who believe the election was stolen did not come to that belief through a sober consideration of the facts.

As such I would suggest that in the event that the above safeguards are broken/removed or other irregularities appear (and I don't think you can deny that there were irregularities) it is only fair, dare I say it rational, to ask "what gives?".

What gave, of course, was COVID-19. It was responsible for the unusually high proportion of mail-in voting, which is certainly less secure due to chain-of-custody issues. Elections being a contested environment, this gave rise to a slew of legal challenges both before and after election day about exactly under which circumstances mail-in ballots are counted, implicating election statutes and the vagaries of interpreting them that had previously been uninteresting. Many jurisdictions also had inefficient processes for counting mail-in ballots; this was not a problem in prior years, but in 2020 it sometimes incurred multi-day delays in the tabulation process.

This all made the election less crisp and well-executed than before, which does decrease confidence in its legitimacy. However, none of these events themselves are suggestive of votes being systematically over- or under-counted in favor of a particular candidate. If irregularities only contributed noise and not signal, and they're unlikely to happen again now that the pandemic has passed, then it's only fair and rational to ask "who cares?" We could have run a tighter, more confidence-inspiring election, but what we got was serviceable given the unique circumstances of 2020,

Only in pattern matching the irregularities to a specific conspiratorial frame do they gain enough significance to be talking about them in 2024. The electorate is due basic assurances that elections are fair and accurate, but conspiracies theorists are not due overwhelming evidence before their claims can be dismissed on ordinary epistemic grounds.

So everywhere has rolled back the mail in votes? Because I was told they were the way of the future. If 2016 had been run like 2020 there would have been at least the same amount of drama. The only reason there wasn't is because it was considered too ridiculous. Mail in voting tipped the scales (along with, obviously, the candidate who campaigned on being ridiculous losing) from "voting is probably a useless scam" to "voting is definitely a ridiculous scam" for a significant chunk of the population.

Also the idea that irregularities won't happen again is lunacy. Irregularities happen every single election. The only difference is that now everyone on both sides is certain the other side will do it.

No-excuse mail-in voting has been available in many states for a long time, it just wasn't as broadly adopted before the pandemic. About a quarter of all ballots cast in the 2016 election were mail-in, compared to about half in 2020. This dropped down to about 30% in 2022. Eight states have made mail-in the default going forward, but generally not swing states. Overall, the voting landscape has changed somewhat, but 2020 remains an outlier in terms of poorly-prepared swing states dealing with a flood of mail ballots under duress.

Obviously all elections have irregularities, we just won't be experiencing the ones that made the 2020 election messier than usual. It's true that increasing political polarization and paranoia means that future elections might get picked apart even if they're run to ordinary standards, but this is an indictment of our political culture and not our ability to accurately count ballots.

Do you remember the 2016 election? Were you politically active for it? My gut says no, since you mention the mid terms like they tell us anything, but I also get the impression you were just trying to be patronising so I thought I'd ask. How do you think the fact that democrats need more voters and republicans need less voters plays into the situation?

Do you remember the 2016 election? Were you politically active for it?

Yes, I was.

My gut says no, since you mention the mid terms like they tell us anything

Midterm voting behavior is different over all, but the percentage of mail voting has been roughly similar to major election years (e.g. ~25% in 2018).

How do you think the fact that democrats need more voters and republicans need less voters plays into the situation?

If more people participating in democracy is bad for Republicans, so much the worse for Republicans. They can and will adjust.

Yes, I was.

So you remember that the election came very close to being declared fraudulent by Hillary Clinton, the most qualified presidential candidate in the history of the universe.

Midterm voting behavior is different over all, but the percentage of mail voting has been roughly similar to major election years (e.g. ~25% in 2018).

Still no source, and no explanation of why the percentage of mail in votes means anything over different demographics (which the midterms and pe have always had).

Let me guess, you don't care because go blue team! Blue team good! Red team bad! Democracy good! Don't think about it, democracy good! Full stop! Conversations bad! Talking points good!

Hey turnabout is fair play right? Alternatively you could stop the partisan shit and engage with the actual arguments. You don't have any reason to believe that future elections will be any more secure, you just have faith they will be. But the entire fucking problem hlynka brought up is that a third of the country doesn't. You just don't give a shit.

As such I would suggest that in the event that the above safeguards are broken/removed or other irregularities appear (and I don't think you can deny that there were irregularities) it is only fair, dare I say it rational, to ask "what gives?"

Sure, I don't disagree with this. It's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of claims of legitimacy, but if the skepticism is primarily/only deployed in one direction, or if it is immune or implacably resistant to evidence, then it's also reasonable to conclude the skepticism is either the source of delusion or some other form of motivated reasoning. If someone is a perennial believer that the election was stolen, I have no ideations that I would be able to convince them otherwise with evidence, because it's unlikely that evidence got them where they are in the first place. I'm not equipped to make vibes-based arguments, and I don't know any other topic (except maybe trans gender identity?) where this is seen as an acceptable basis to hold a belief.

I prefer actual evidence. All I know how to do is to dig into specific claims with specifics, and I picked one that's fairly unambiguous. TTV showed up in court and said they didn't have evidence they claimed they have — there's no way to spin this any other way. I understand that if someone is particularly attached to believing in the belief that the 2020 election was stolen, then claims about TTV present an uncomfortable and inconvenient threat to their preferred narrative but that's not on me.

I'm not equipped to make vibes-based arguments, and I don't know any other topic (except maybe trans gender identity?) where this is seen as an acceptable basis to hold a belief.

I prefer actual evidence. All I know how to do is to dig into specific claims with specifics

To build on @HlynkaCG's perspective flip and attempt to provide actual evidence and specific claims with specifics to what is fundamentally, we can agree, a "vibes-based argument" (because I take @HylnkaCG's perspective flip to be that the vibes of legitimacy are, in fact, fundamental), I would point to a couple comments I've made here about the importance of secrecy in voting, including specifics of how it has been minimized or cast aside entirely in the "new normal", as well as specific claims from a plethora of international pro-democracy, pro-election-legitimacy-methods organizations.

I will again freely admit that the conclusion of such specifics are cashed out in vibes. One of the international organizations that I quoted concluded:

Ballot delivery, marking, and counting systems used in postal voting present considerable and unique challenges to the integrity of elections. There are several commonly used procedural safeguards for voting by mail, such as ballot secrecy envelopes, witness requirements and signature verification. However, these technical solutions may not be enough to instill confidence in postal voting if there is diminished public trust in electoral processes and administration.

That is, the end result of what you do, of any specifics that you discuss, must be measured in the extent to which it "instill[s] confidence" or "diminishe[s] public trust".

Would you be interested in a further debate concerning specifics of how voting secrecy works, why we have it, what methods are commonly used to ensure it, specific things that have been done which violate the specific demands of voting secrecy, etc., even though the end conclusion of that discussion necessarily cashes out in terms of vibes/confidence/trust?

if the skepticism is primarily/only deployed in one direction, or if it is immune or implacably resistant to evidence, then it's also reasonable to conclude the skepticism is either the source of delusion

Whereas this, I'm not sure if @Amadan would say it violates the rules this week or not. It might be interpreted as implying that your opponents are simply blind, irrational, partisan haters.

Would you be interested in a further debate concerning specifics of how voting secrecy works, why we have it, what methods are commonly used to ensure it, specific things that have been done which violate the specific demands of voting secrecy, etc., even though the end conclusion of that discussion necessarily cashes out in terms of vibes/confidence/trust?

Sure, that's an interesting topic with lots of areas of discussion. I think I made it clear that there's nothing wrong with discussing how to instill confidence in a voting system even in response to suspicions that end up being unfounded. The problem is when the suspicion is a pretextual excuse for "my candidate didn't win ergo this was a fraud"

It might be interpreted as implying that your opponents are simply blind, irrational, partisan haters.

There's nothing forbidden about presenting evidence and drawing conclusions from it. If someone's skepticism is indeed immune to evidence, what other explanations are there?

Sure, that's an interesting topic with lots of areas of discussion. I think I made it clear that there's nothing wrong with discussing how to instill confidence in a voting system even in response to suspicions that end up being unfounded.

So, uh, would you like to discuss it? Maybe make a contribution to the discussion?

There's nothing forbidden about presenting evidence and drawing conclusions from it. If someone's skepticism is indeed immune to evidence, what other explanations are there?

I'm trying to understand this very thing right now, so we'll see if the mods agree that this is a thing that you can do.

My apologies, I thought you meant discussing voting secrecy on the podcast. I read your post about the Arizona secrecy litigation and largely agree with your position that the original purpose of using secrecy to safeguard against coercion appear to have been completely forgotten. That and a broader discussion on how to maintain confidence and public trust in elections would be interesting, I just don't have much to add to the subject on my own at the moment because I haven't looked into it. I'd be happy to bounce off against other people's proposals/concerns.

Whereas this, I'm not sure if @Amadan would say it violates the rules this week or not. It might be interpreted as implying that your opponents are simply blind, irrational, partisan haters.

You are not doing yourself any favors by claiming we make up the rules weekly and then tagging me to make sure the dig is seen.

So the first thing I notice is that you cut off the end of the quote you are claiming "might be" interpreted in a certain way.

The full quote is:

It's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of claims of legitimacy, but if the skepticism is primarily/only deployed in one direction, or if it is immune or implacably resistant to evidence, then it's also reasonable to conclude the skepticism is either the source of delusion or some other form of motivated reasoning.

That seems like a reasonable statement to me. It would require a disingenuous, bad faith reading to interpret it as "You're saying your opponents are simply blind, irrational, partisan haters." No, he's saying people who only deploy skepticism in one direction and are resistant to evidence are either deluded or using motivated reasoning.

There are a lot of caveats and qualifiers in that statement. You can disagree with how he framed it or his wording, you can assert that that does not describe people who are taking the specific position he is arguing against, you can take issue with his argument, but in my judgment (which does not change "weekly"), it is not like just calling someone a victim of "TDS" because he criticizes Trump.

If you want to engage the mods in a reasonable discussion about whether the rules are being applied fairly, snide jabs like this aren't your best strategy. I just took the time to explain to you why "No, really, TDS is real and Trump's critics really are deranged, Psychology Today says so!" is not an appropriate excuse for calling someone deranged. Once again I conclude that taking the time to write long paragraphs explaining my reasoning and trying to be fair to people who are only here to take cheap shots is a waste of my time and charity. I will not make this mistake with you again.

Thank you for explaining your reasoning. I just wish I could understand it better.

So the first thing I notice is that you cut off the end of the quote you are claiming "might be" interpreted in a certain way.

Combined with

No, he's saying people who only deploy skepticism in one direction and are resistant to evidence are either deluded or using motivated reasoning.

I think my first hypothesis for this explanation would be termed "Disjunctive Relief", and I don't think it would fly elsewhere. I don't think if someone said, "...and the conclusion of my argument (which assumes that my opponents are using motivated reasoning) is that my opponents are Nazis or using motivated reasoning," one would be so generous as to say, "But they did say 'or using motivated reasoning', so maybe they're just saying that they're using motivated reasoning." Nah. It would be interpreted as a way to simply call your opponents Nazis. Of course, if you would like to correct this hypothesis, I will update my understanding of the rules accordingly.

I think my second hypothesis would be that you simply view "TDS" as a slur, which is then subject to the unwritten slurs policy, which "has always" taken into account tone or "vibes". Paired with that, you think that "delusional" is not a slur. Instead, it's just the proper word to describe the conclusion that some people have literal delusions, things that their minds just made up. This is perhaps reasonable, and it would also jive with this comment not being modded, as it uses the slur, but gives enough negative vibes to both sides so as to have the appropriate ethereal balance.

My third hypothesis is that you take specific umbrage with appearing to say that a particular person has TDS. As you put it:

it is not like just calling someone a victim of "TDS" because he criticizes Trump.

In this case, my sub-hypothesis is that this is a version of, "Why use few word when many word do?" My comment was vastly too short on explicitly stating that Ashlael deploys his skepticism in only one direction, is immune or implacably resistant to evidence, and evinces a disgust reaction to Trump that does not correlate to any pre-Trump political commitments. Rather than bulk accusing anyone in the thread who doesn't meet his specific demands for how to respond, I assumed some knowledge of the vast history of a particular poster, without recounting it, to make my conclusion. Therefore, if I had simply explicitly stated the implicit qualifications that went into the conclusion, it would have been considered acceptable.

Finally, as for

I just took the time to explain to you why "No, really, TDS is real and Trump's critics really are deranged, Psychology Today says so!" is not an appropriate excuse for calling someone deranged.

and its precursor

I am not impressed by citations from Psychology Today. You may recall that back in the late 90s and oughts there was something of a cottage industry of articles from psychologists and linguists and others arguing very soberly that, essentially, conservatives are all mentally ill and/or fascists whose mommies didn't love them enough. I'm sure you would not be receptive to someone "shorthanding" this concept in such a way as to simply label conservatives crazy.

I think you misunderstand the point of citing PT. PT is almost certainly not pro-Trump. They are almost certainly maximally skeptical of the concept of TDS and maximally likely to portray it in the least charitable light possible. Citing them is the opposite of support for my interpretation. It is saying that even if you start from the most skeptical position possible, my interpretation still captures a phenomenon that is coherent. This is a completely different attempt than, say, citing some random psychologist in a left-wing publication who criticizes a right-wing politician or vice-versa.

Finally, if I can fully combine them here now, I would like to respond to:

"Anti-Trump partisan" will do.

I think this completely fails to engage with the entire paragraph I wrote on the topic:

I think one could be an anti-Trump partisan without having TDS. Primarily, if they don't experience a higher-than-typical (for his or her self) level of political disgust about Trump. I don't get that sense from AshLael. I don't see him posting about, say, anything in Aussie politics in a way that oozes disgust for the spectacle.

In your follow-on, you say:

If you want to make the much longer argument you made above - that "TDS" is actually a thing and represents more than simply hating Trump - then you will have to do so, by making that argument (and explaining why it applies to the OP).

I think I best interpret this as hypothesis two, that you currently think that TDS is just a slur and that every usage of it either must therefore balance the ethereal vibes or come with a full explanation of the complete meaning, every time. That's fair enough, but it doesn't address what I had actually asked for - a shorthand way of saying that concept without having to copy/paste an entire explanation every time. Perhaps none exists, and I will simply end up having to copy/paste every time, but that none exists does not actually mean that "anti-Trump partisan" will do.

EDIT: Also, I'd like to make a note on your comment:

I just took the time to explain to you why "No, really, TDS is real and Trump's critics really are deranged, Psychology Today says so!" is not an appropriate excuse for calling someone deranged. Once again I conclude that taking the time to write long paragraphs explaining my reasoning and trying to be fair to people who are only here to take cheap shots is a waste of my time and charity. I will not make this mistake with you again.

I would like to submit the timestamp of my comment here at 9:30AM EST, while your nice explanation is timestamped at 9:08AM EST. I was on a rush out of the house yesterday morning. I don't have the clearest memory, because I mostly remember trying to get out of the house, but I don't believe I had seen your 9:08AM comment at the time that I started writing or posted my 9:30AM comment. I believe I did click refresh and saw it before I left the house, but definitely didn't have time to respond to it yesterday. I think you worrying about "making this mistake with [me] again" would, itself, be a mistake of fact.

one would be so generous as to say, "But they did say 'or using motivated reasoning', so maybe they're just saying that they're using motivated reasoning." Nah. It would be interpreted as a way to simply call your opponents Nazis. Of course, if you would like to correct this hypothesis, I will update my understanding of the rules accordingly.

It's possible for facts to be congruent with more than one hypothesis.