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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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which may be described as ‘rigging’ if you prefer, although I would limit the use of that term to Anschluss-referendum-type ballot stuffing / just making up numbers

Sure, that sounds reasonable.

That is the key claim. No democracy is free of corruption or dirty electoral behavior of the type we’re discussing.

This is silly catastrophizing. That crooked behavior exists in every election doesn't mean I need treat all elections as equally crooked. There are clear and obvious theories for what made 2020 especially dirty: the mass expansion of unverifiable mail-in ballots! The simultaneous count stop in several swing states! These are elements unique to the 2020 election. Being suspicious of them does not require me to declare that every election must have been stolen, or to commit to some silly prediction about crooked behavior in the future.

Trump’s thin skin is relevant because it stops him doing what almost every other victim of dirty behavior in US electoral history ultimately did, which is take the L.

If you imagine that Trump could have had it rigged against it and should have conceded anyways, I find this silly again.