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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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The Democrats acted in a way that was indistinguishable from how you would act if you did do something wrong.

As did the Republicans as I showed you an example of.

In a democracy run by rationalists with good faith politicians and rational voters, the responses should be "let's audit" I agree. That is not the world we are in. So it is not the response you should expect. Because it is not what Republicans would do in return as they demonstrated perfectly. That is the the framework everyone's actions need to be interpreted within.

But your point was all about the fact that persuading had to be done, not anything beyond that. And Republicans failed at that harder than Democrats did.

And you may well not fix flaws! They might be too expensive to fix or have other trade offs. Remember there are two competing axes of voting legitimacy, maximizing legitimate voters and minimizing illegitimate voters. Those trade off against each other. There is no objectively correct answer. It's a values choice. And within our non-good faith framework, Democrats would be crazy to do anything to reduce turn out even fractionally if they think high turn out helps them. Likewise Republicans would be crazy to do the opposite.

As PA demonstrated, Republicans took an act they erroneously thought would help them, then flipped on it as soon as they discovered it would not. That is the framework our democracy operates within. No-one is operating in good faith. They are all acting for what will help them most. Expecting the Democrats to rise above when Republicans do not is an isolated demand for rigor.

Your good faith framework might be nice (I'd surely prefer it!) but it is not the world we are in and both Democratic and Republican politicians need to act accordingly. And they largely do.

I think you are massively over-estimating the "future death of America" issue here. Democracy will continue, politicians will continue to be conniving rats (in my direct experience of working with national level politicians!) and that the best we can do is set one group of conniving rats against the other such that they broadly even out, by attempting to out connive each other.