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2020 stolen election time! There's been some rather big developments with my favorite cute little hobby horse. I haven't had the time to make a deep-dive write-up, but it's has already been extensively reported on elsewhere (e.g. this post by Jacob Sullum). To summarize, Dominion voting systems sued Fox News (and Newsmax, and OAN) for defamation. Dominion has been past the discovery stage for more than a year now but their filings only recently became public and, no way to say this lightly, it's been extremely humiliating for Fox. Tons of text messages from the big names (Carlson, Hannity, etc.) either talking shit about how crazy Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani are, or (especially for Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo) credulously accepting and repeating the stolen election theories.
One especially funny example involved Sidney Powell credulously forwarding an email to Bartiromo from a complete rando claiming they had "Election Fraud Info". In that same email, the anonymous rando claimed that they got their information from their dreams, that the wind tells them they're a ghost, and that Justice Scalia was murdered during a human hunting expedition. As evidenced by the filings she submitted to court, Powell's skepticism faculties appear to be basically non-existent, and the fact that so many people took her seriously at first is a good illustration of the pitfalls of siloed reasoning.
Maybe the most damning revelation of how Fox was operating (from both a legal liability as well as a journalistic ethics perspective) is how they treated their fact-checking process. When Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich tweeted on November 12 that "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised" Carlson texted Hannity "Please get her fired. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke." If Dominion needed to prove the actual malice (and it's not yet clear if they would need to) in a defamation case, they couldn't have asked for better evidence.
There isn't much for me to say that I haven't said before. My operating theory has long been that some people seemed to earnestly believe the crazy theories they were spouting about Hugo Chavez or whatever (e.g. Powell, Giuliani, maybe Dobbs) while many others were just pretending to entertain it because it was in their best financial interests (e.g. Carlson, Hannity, Murdoch, etc.) and the text messages confirm this. To Carlson's credit though, he endured a lot of negative pushback from his criticism of Powell.
I've already done my hand-wringing on how the media seems to love shooting itself in the foot, except it was framed in context of how liberal outlets fucked up the Covington debacle from four years ago. The Dominion lawsuit demonstrates the problem behind audience capture; Fox pundits and reporters had to deal with a credible financial pressure to cater to the crazy fringes of their audience for fear of losing them to their less scrupulous competitors. If so, it would be a demand-side problem. I'm not sure if the problem with liberal media fuck-ups follows the same framework, but I'm open to arguments. My general impression there is that the call is coming from inside the house: liberal journalists too afraid of their fellow cohort to break ranks. I suppose a good test-case scenario would be to see how NYT's current "trans youth reporting controversy" plays out. They obviously already got a severe amount of criticism from the activist fringe, but would a significant portion of their audience care? And if so, where would they go?
One last question: has anyone here changed their opinion on the 2020 stolen election theories?
one of the replies or sub-replies to this might be a strictly better target for this comment but from reddit to here you've been loudest on the subject. i understand why some people can't see it, i understand why my brother can't see it. he doesn't understand how a person can be deeply cynical and deeply hopeful. i don't blame him for choosing the latter, i don't blame most people. but most people don't come to this place, or places like it, few as they must be. this is a place to say truths, like how your hope has lead you astray. i don't have a strict stance on fraud, i don't know what happened. i know what not to assume, and i can reason from that.
in american politics it is unjustifiable to assert and then operate from a presumption of governance in good faith, ethics, and lawful behavior. ours is a capricious leadership, rapidly shifting between utilitarianism or deontology depending on political utility. there is no enduring standard for ethics, "democracy" or even "constitutionality." what's right is ours, what's wrong is theirs.
key high-population elections districts lack methods of independent hard audit; it is not possible to verify every ballot has a unique corresponding voter.
for (2) it is not possible to verify those districts have not engaged in fraud.
the two previous major american elections saw those key districts experience bureaucratic mishaps and procedural issues the US state department has historically identified as hallmarks of fraud and often thereby used to justify sanctions on foreign states.
american politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, and pundits commonly express (a) earnest belief their oppositions' victory poses a threat to life itself.
for (1; 5) claims of adherence to law in elections are dubious.
owing to the seriousness of the allegations of (5a), if (¬5a) and their expressions are rhetoric and sophistry, claims of adherence to law and ethics in any pursuit may be assumed as the falsehoods of the profoundly antisocial.
(2; 3; 4) if fraud is possible, (1; 4; 5; 6; 7) it is probable.
for all, the burden of proof logically falls on elections officials. elections are presumed fraudulent unless proved authentic.
So the default dial for the central way of putting someone into power in the West should be set on fraudulent until proven otherwise.
What do you suggest as the practical consequences of an election not having successfully cleared the threshold to being authentic? Should we just leave those in power at time t do what they want for however long they wish? Or do we default on anarchy instead? Or something else (maybe draw [classes of] politicians by lot)?
While I can see where you are coming from, it seems to me that your idea would be most likely severely impractical, and at worst trigger the mother of perverse incentives.
The USA is not a hive mind, and it is possible to question election results without descending into anarchy. Who is 'we' in this "Should we"? Who is the final judge as to whether an election has "cleared the threshold to being authentic"?
These are not nitpicks. In ancient Rome, the person who decided whether elections were legitimate were the outgoing consuls for that year (consuls are like co-presidents who serve for one year terms, Rome had two). Pompey and Crassus were the consuls overseeing the elections for 55 BCE. When it looked like one of Pompey's enemies would win his election, Pompey would suddenly discover bad omens and cancel the vote. Then his men would go around the voting pens having 'discussions' with people, and when the vote resumed the outcome would be the way Pompey wanted it to be. This wasn't technically illegal. Consuls did have the right to cancel public events when the omens were bad. A partisan in ancient Rome could argue that there was nothing fraudulent about the outcomes of those elections.
A few years later, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched an army into Rome.
Not long after that, Pompey was beheaded in Egypt.
Not long after that, Julius Caesar was assassinated on the floor of the Senate.
Not long after that, a special election was called. A centurion stood at the gate of Rome and said, "If the Senate will not make Octavian* a consul, this will," resting a hand on the hilt of his sword.**
A few years after that Octavian became Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. So it goes.
Octavian wasn't legally old enough to run for consul, but that didn't mean anything anymore. The laws that were supposed to guarantee fair elections had been destroyed in spirit. Elections weren't fair. Given that, who can blame the centurion for demanding his own brand of fairness? Julius Caesar was, to the thousands of men who served him, their man in Rome. He was the only person they could trust to stand up for their interests. The Senate tried to put him on trial for treason, rewrote laws to stop him from running for office, and ultimately assassinated him. Who can blame the centurion for doing with the sword what the Senate had already been doing for years with paper-thin legal justifications, and ignoring Republican tradition to put his picked man into office?
Thus the Roman Republic was destroyed and the Roman Empire created in its place.
*By this point Gaius Octavius had legally changed his name to Gaius Julius Caesar, but we call him Octavian to avoid confusing him with his more famous uncle. We could just as easily call him Caesar II, though. It does highlight the fact that, after the Senate assassinated Caesar, Caesar's army returned to Rome with another Caesar to replace him.
**This exchange probably didn't actually happen. Ancient historians tended to make up speeches and conversations to highlight important events.
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