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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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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

Yeah, that's politics. Politicians have said what they need to to get elected since the dawn of time. If you don't do that, you don't get elected.

it is not possible to verify those districts have not engaged in fraud

This has always been true to an extent. It's hard to say it's more true now than at any other time, though - I have trouble saying 20162020 was in any way worse than the machine politics in america's history or the 2000 election in that regard.

I'm pretty sure similar issues, with similarly convincing evidence, can be raised about 1 in 2-3 US elections. Like bush v gore, or the 2004 voting controversies. And picking random elections + googling "fraud" gives headlines like "Thousands of voter registration forms faked, officials say", "Election Fraud in the 2008 Indiana Presidential Campaign: A Case Study in Corruption", etc.

The same goes for other countries. Do politicians there make self-serving, dishonest statements less? Really?