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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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150 million people could have died and the measures would still be tyranny.

A government's mass seizure of power from the people, for any reason, is evil. Governments can do evil things from necessity, using nuclear weapons against Japan was evil even as it saved millions of lives. The failure in discourse is people who either downplay the tyranny of coronavirus policy or else employ the non sequitur of "It was necessary, so it wasn't tyranny." The relevance here is the usage of terms: they care about tyranny when convenient; they care about the constitution when convenient; they care about the law when convenient.

As for Carlson, this picture does some heavy lifting. What we have came via Dominion who had Carlson fired as part of their settlement, they're untrustworthy. If the full communications are available in raw I'd read them to see what he actually said, and if what Dominion released was fair enough it'd ratchet up "Carlson's a grifter." But first, the Trump circle still looks highly on him so they clearly don't consider the communications meaningful, and second, he's the most effective individual political commentator in the US, if this is his "grift", be afraid of when he plays the game for real.

... are they? I know some people in the Democrat Establishment. Mostly, they follow the law and the rules and try to do what's right. I don't think this is good evidence against election fraud, but it is strong evidence against them being moral mutants who hate truth and all that is good. Are my enemies innately evil?

So do I. I like them and I care about them but I wouldn't call them "good" except in the sense of the greengrocer. They do what is expected of them, they are obedient. They are not specifically righteous or moral as their morals are not meaningfully distinct from or independent to their political alignment. They're good members of the herd, just like pretty much everybody who's ever lived. They aren't deliberately seeking ill ends, but they believe what their superiors want them to believe and so they think they're being moral and philanthropic when they don't truly know what good is or what it means to love their fellow. As to their superiors, the politicians, just about all of them are moral mutants. Bernie Sanders probably not, Thomas Massie probably not. Exceptions otherwise few and prove the rule. The desire to have power over people, from the pettiest internet bureaucrat to highest office, is intrinsically inhuman and necessarily evil. It's pretty ancient wisdom that nobody who wants power should be allowed to have it, and equally how the best leaders never want power and are often only spurred to taking it to fight against the former. Or to directly answer your rhetorical question: bureaucrats and politicians are my enemy, for they are innately evil.

If tyranny is necessary to prevent half of a nation from dying, the tyranny is of course justified? You wouldn't let your wife and children die just because it'd be tyranny to prevent it. You might be claiming tyranny isn't actually useful in those cases, but that isn't the same thing.

(although as I noted the lockdowns weren't particularly useful)

As for Carlson, this picture does some heavy lifting. What we have came via Dominion who had Carlson fired as part of their settlement, they're untrustworthy. If the full communications are available in raw I'd read them to see what he actually said, and if what Dominion released was fair enough it'd ratchet up "Carlson's a grifter." But first, the Trump circle still looks highly on him so they clearly don't consider the communications meaningful, and second, he's the most effective individual political commentator in the US, if this is his "grift", be afraid of when he plays the game for real.

I don't think this makes sense. Carlson didn't deny the texts or provide a meaningful clarification, something he could've easily done. The "trump circle" is a hot mess anyway, and would keep him around because of how popular he is however disloyal he was. Your last sentence is just ... not even denying the claim, I'm not a left-winger and am not afraid of him, I'm not sure what you intended that to mean.

As to their superiors, the politicians, just about all of them are moral mutants. Bernie Sanders probably not, Thomas Massie probably not. Exceptions otherwise few and prove the rule.

If this is equally true of Rs and Ds, or of all politicians in history, is it really evidence of election fraud or that someone will or won't be convicted? Like there do seem to have been not-particularly-rigged elections in US history and often politicians or people of influence get convicted of crimes and sometime go to jail.

Getting into the weeds of English, "justified" most literally means "to make right." Deontologically, evil deeds cannot ever be right. My usage of "necessary" was deliberate. Murdering a hundred thousand Japanese civilians in two flashes was necessary to prevent a million from dying in a war on Honshu but it wasn't right. Tyranny can be necessary but it is most philanthropic to understand it as always evil lest we put ourselves on the path to endless destruction as we think we can do evil that good may result. The Nazis, Soviets, and Mao China (and still Xi China) were evil for what they did, not who they did it to or why.

The second part of the issue of Carlson was in my original comment. The right would be ecstatic if every grifter had his competence. As for "be afraid", it's me trying to subtly make people recognize calling him a grifter isn't the criticism they think it is. If he can explicitly say "I hate Trump" and then be welcomed in their circle and eyed for VP, his having ulterior motives would mean he's playing a vastly different game than simple profiteering and that would make him the most terrifying political actor in this country.

Finally, I said in my original postulation many months back I'm not certain of what happened, I'm only certain elections would be stolen if possible. Because of that the burden of proof rationally falls on those conducting the elections. As elected officials and public bureaucrats vested with certain powers of the people, they are specifically bereft of the right to claim a presumption of their acting in good faith (this even before but obviously intensified by the rampant corruption and general criminality), they must be able to prove it; so if they can't prove they didn't cheat, the presumption is they did.