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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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Amazing. It's as if four years of arguing about the 2020 election have left no impression on you, and you've made yourself totally impervious to what the other side actually believes. Vote counting stopped in several swing states simultaneously in the dead of night? Mail-in irregularities? Pandemic rules? Ballot "curing"? You must not have heard. I suppose, then, the only rational hypothesis is that everything other people believe is silly.

Covid-19 was a Chinese plot to screw with the US election or am I misunderstanding you?

Believing any of the things you mentioned amounts to sufficient evidence that the 2020 election was rigged as claimed by Trump and others, is silly yeah.

(Particularly in light of actions taken by Trump and co to actually screw with the election outcome.)

Various anti-Trump coalitions deliberately used the pandemic to push through new election procedures they believed would particularly disadvantage Trump. This is well-documented!

Did it meaningfully alter the outcome? Was it foul play?

For example, I can’t take seriously the whining over mailed ballots because I live in a red state that has long had them. I know there are other cases where “hey that’s not fair” was only brought up about some uncontroversial procedural change when it was judged to have perhaps disadvantaged Trump.

Does any of it remotely compare to the blatant, documented attempts by Trump and co to alter or evade the election outcome?

whining over mailed ballots

Expansion of mail-in ballots made it possible to generate mass quantities of votes with no verifiable chain of custody. This makes it trivial for political machines to generate votes. This is a very simple argument. It sounds like you don't understand the position you are trying to mock.

Anyways, many of these rules were changed last-minute exactly in anticipation of marshalling results against Trump. Instead of denying things that happened, try denying that they mattered.

Does any of it remotely compare to the blatant, documented attempts by Trump and co to alter or evade the election outcome?

If the election was stolen, everything Trump did was restoring the right outcome. Your frame presupposes that the election had a neutral "outcome" beyond dispute, when that's exactly what's under dispute.

I do understand the position I am mocking and I live in a red state that has long had mass mailing.

Doing fraud at scale leaves evidence. Where’s your evidence, not just the potential for fraud?

Actually, even if the election was stolen Trump’s actions were still blatantly illegal. Going through the courts is the proper approach, not calling up election officials to pressure them, or creating extralegal electors, or pressing your VP to use made up powers to simply deny the election result.

Doing fraud at scale leaves evidence. Where’s your evidence, not just the potential for fraud?

Show me the chains of custody for the ballots. Prove to me that these ballots were all cast by real live American voters, and not gathered up by a machine city postal worker spinning up a box of votes. This can be done in other countries. So why are so many of the chains of custody destroyed here?

or creating extralegal electors, or pressing your VP to use made up powers to simply deny the election result.

The entire federal government runs on made-up powers. What do you think the Necessary and Proper Clause does.

The constitution does not provide the VP the power to deny election results.

The fact you can’t agree on that when Pence could (god bless him) doesn’t bode well for your ability to evaluate something more nuanced like say election integrity and reasonable standards of evidence.

Your avoidance of presenting evidence, instead of theories about what could have happened or dissatisfaction with how the election was run, remains telling.

Your avoidance of presenting evidence, instead of theories about what could have happened or dissatisfaction with how the election was run, remains telling.

If you think he's arguing in bad faith, report rather than responding. Either he's arguing in bad faith, and you calling him out won't tell him anything he doesn't already know, or he's not, and you falsely accusing him will incense him for no reason.

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