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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   22401 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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I mean, it's all about the definition of "legitimate". Democrat anti-legitimacy arguments were, as I understand, grounded in the theory that a foreign country allegedly deliberately manipulating the timing of media events (and/or Comey's actions) will mislead gullible Americans and thus decrease the "fairness" of the vote. That is, it's "illegitimate" in the sense that a counter-factual vote without intervention would have had a different outcome. I've always thought this was pretty darn weak, but I also think it's important to describe it accurately. It's a "illegitimacy" born of bitterness, even to people who use the word, not an "illegitimacy" as a factual debate. In popular parlance these are different meanings. I don't think that's slimy wordsmithing, it's just how people use the words, in a descriptivist sense.

Now, is claiming "illegitimacy" (in the two meanings) the same as "election denial"? No, mostly? Election denial, I feel like, is a meaningless phrase, even if I've used it once in a while as a sort of general gesture at a concept. Some people use it as "I would have won", an ego-saver among other things, while others use it as "I did win", and the two must be separated. Plainly both can be considered "denialism"! But both do not mean the same thing. I chalk this up partially to word-confusion. As I said, there are two separate concepts going on that are distinct, that our words aren't capturing very well, so I view this argument as silly (and the upvotes/downvotes as tribalism)

Stacey Abrams is a different issue, with a different debate about "voter suppression" that is much closer to the Trump case, and doesn't to me seem to be the same thing as Clinton-style denial.

But you don’t win by 3 million votes and have all this other shenanigans and stuff going on and not come away with an idea like, ‘Whoa, something’s not right here.’ That was a deep sense of unease.”

Why do you think Clinton talked about 3m votes? What another other shenanigans? It’s quite clear she is strongly hinting without saying that she did in fact win.

Also, keep in mind Clinton knew the Russia shit was bullshit that her own campaigned came up with and that she signed off on.

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