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The idea that Trump has done anything wrong ever, in his life, is a baseless, unproven conspiracy theory put out by bad actors with a reckless and wanton disregard for the truth.
This is what some people sound like.
I do sympathise with our own ymeskhout on Trump and his supporters - okay, I grant that certain claims of malfeasance might be false or overstated, but the instinct to defend him, the requirement to defend everything no matter how corrupt or absurd, is profoundly humiliating.
Just making fun of the reflexive, incessant, PBUH-style "without evidence" quoted in one of the linked articles. Like 10+ arrests and police reports in the first few days for attempted or successful vandalism.
FWIW, I think ymeskhout made quite a few good points in his crusade against MAGA election rhetoric, and think he provided an extremely valuable service about it. I still suspect there was quite a bit of fuckery to one degree or another, and would not be surprised if there was an eventual Johnson-style historical conclusion that at least one state was steelman stolen, but there was definitely a shitton of irresponsible claims and rhetoric being thrown around.
To @Bartender_Venator, I generally think @gattsuru is one of the best posters on this site.
I disagree with this in the strongest possible terms.
Personally, I found his approach to discussing the election to be one of the biggest factors in transitioning me from a "I'll be back when woke calms down" Democrat to an actual Republican.
He was a good poster but on the topic of the election he went full Darwin+Lawyer fusion. I watched him to willfully misrepresent people, ignore good points and ignore and reframe to where he had more, he refused to accept the possibility that concerns were in any way valid and so on. He acted like a trial lawyer in court. That can be convincing but it's hollow.*
It was also tremendously inappropriate.
One of the major points I (and others) was making is that this not a situation where you can rules lawyer your way out of it. Democracy requires consensus, you need to be persuasive and to make everyone feel like the elections are free and fair.
You needed to allow audits without complaint and go "see, this was fine" you needed to patch some of the common sense problems with the way the election was run so it doesn't happen again. He refused to engage with these ideas and the Dems refused to do these things and now we have a situation where both side barely accept when they lose and the fabric of our country was hanging on by a thread.
Ymeskhout chose this hill to die and crashed out over it. He was also wrong, but factually and meaningfully.
*And later we know him to be wrong about some matters of fact.
He did. And in so doing, revealed that a lot of the specific claims being made had little to no evidentiary backing. The "consensus" argument you're making is a final defense after many other ill-concieved efforts failed.
I remember a lot of exchanges like this.
"None of the complaints had any merit." "Well this example had merit, but it was dropped by the judge because of standing." "Well if it didn't have standing it didn't have merit."
Many of the complaints were not investigated because of legal mumbo jumbo. Now that legal mumbo jumbo exists for a reason, but appealing to it instead of on the grounds of merit is not especially convincing.
I agree that there was a fair bit of that. But it's been 6 years. If there was strong evidence to produce in court, where is it? Why not just publish it after the standing stuff? It can't all be hidden behind a missed chance at discovery!
That's a reasonable argument now, not six years ago.
It's a damning argument now. Six years ago, it was still reasonable to ask, and the lack of a good answer was not nothing.
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