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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33689 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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I think it's possible to criticize the article for potentially harboring a barely detectable prejudice in favor of Abrams

This would seem barely detectable a few years back, but it's absolutely glaring at this point. A similar article about a Republican candidate would absolutely spam phrases like "falsely claimed", "conspiracy theory", and "election denier" to describe Abrams and her refusal to admit that she lost in 2018. I guess I'm glad the NYT is at least giving a neutral-tone report on Abrams funneling millions of dollars to her buddy to do nothing much, but the difference in valence is unmistakable.

I feel like election denialism for the GOP is a bit like hazing or burning your boats.

People on the right are tired of being bullied online and in politics as racists white supremacists……

So they want someone they know will fight with them and play for their team. By getting politicians to agree to something that’s completely false it’s a sign that they’ve burnt their boats and can’t back down. They are now on your team. Gangs do this by having beat downs. Or in the mafia a murder requirement. Or frats had ritualistic hazing. Or Caeser crossed the Rubicon. It’s like a loyalty oath now and by defending a fraudulent election you prove that you will fight for your voters interests.

I think some ideology has similar oaths now that serve a purpose of confirming membership in the group.

I’ve long since decided I like election denialism. I think there’s a similar argument that the 2020 election was rigged but I don’t think votes were manipulated.

And of course religion has examples - Catholics calling a piece of bread God. And they turned the world upside down like no movement in the history of the world.

Makes sense to me. I realized recently that my judgement of people has simplified right down to "how likely is this person to stab me in the back or watch a mob burn my house down the second it becomes socially encouraged." And it's something you can pick up from social cues before you even see their "in this house, we believe" yard signs.

If someone believing in lizardmen running pizza-based midichlorian-harvesting conspiracies makes them less likely to do that, I'm not going to discourage them, weird and unreasonable as I find it.

"Does this person have rational methods for forming their beliefs" is the third or fourth most important quality I look for in an associate, tops. It's often correlated with trustworthiness, but not always, as following various people's takes on Reddit proved.

It's still trying to reverse an election after the fact, which feels like the relevant category IMO. The time to protest voting procedures is before the vote is cast.

The time to protest voting procedures is before the vote is cast.

No the issue isn't ripe then.

It's necessarily ripe then, because it isn't justiciable afterward.

Nope, it's not ripe before and not justiciable afterwards. No injury has been suffered until the election takes place, and no remedy is possible afterwards.

So any example of a court intervening in election rules would disprove your hypothesis?

No. A slightly different method was used for the ballot dating rules last time; the appeals continued until a favorable one was received for the side which wanted to count, the counting happened, and when the higher court took up the case it was too late.

I don't understand: are you saying that undated ballots are being counted, in violation of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's order?

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I agree but it seems like a lot of courts don't.

Since I don't really read articles from news websites anymore, could you please give some examples of similar NYT articles using such phrases for Republican candidates?

To try to capture the spirit properly, I arbitrarily picked Don Bolduc and archived the first hit for him from searching "New York Times Don Bolduc". I get this article:

He continued to falsely claim there had been fraud in the election but acknowledged that the outcome was not in question.

...

Ms. Hassan’s campaign responded quickly to Mr. Bolduc’s reversal, sharing a series of videos and quotes of the many times Mr. Bolduc had promoted the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Almost every time I see NYT refer to claims regarding the 2020 election, they seem to be preceded by something like "falsely" or "promoted the lie". The second one is particularly striking - it can't even be that Bolduc is incorrect, it has to be that he's promoting the lie. These could easily be written identically by just saying "the claim" without respect to whether it is true or false, which makes me think that it's an editorial decision.

thank you!

would absolutely spam phrases like "falsely claimed"

I thought the phrase is "falsely claimed without evidence"

I actually like "asserted, without providing evidence" most of the bunch because of the implication that no evidence exists, while actually only stating the individual didn't provide evidence at that moment. This is a fun rhetorical trick that can be used any time someone says something that's generally accepted in their circle, but not believed by all parties that might read the quote later.

I felt similarly when I read this fivethirtyeight piece:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-happened-to-stacey-abrams/

Wow, apparently the only reason Abrams might be struggling in Georgia is incumbent advantages, sexism, and racism. Maybe a side of voter suppression.

Not even gonna mention her refusal to accept the 2018 loss, her horrible reputation on Covid-19 mask mandates for kids (think this infamous photo), her frankly embarrassing attempt to lobby to become Biden's VP.

Fine, I guess.

This is what passes for even-handed these days.

They're still handling her with kid gloves, but one gets the sense her star is fading due to complete inability to actually advance politically.

I'm not sure how to make this observation tactfully, but any inventory of Abrams' electoral weaknesses seems lacking without at least acknowledging that she is also extremely fat and ugly. Whether we might wish it so or not, politics is at least in part a contest of personal popularity.

I don't see being fat or ugly as true impediments to electoral success. At least, not on the state-level.

But when you put it that way it is funny they didn't add fatphobia to the list of explanations.

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