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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   20544 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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“He Gets Us” doesn’t get it

[repost because server wipe, if that’s cool with everyone. Same post as yesterday, but probably some uncorrected mistakes from my note app]

The Christian advertising campaign “He Gets Us” aired two ads during the Super Bowl. The first ad asks “who is my neighbor?” interspersed with shots of mostly unsavory characters. The one you don’t value or welcome, the ad answers, to the drums of glitch-y hip hop. The second ad is titled “Foot Washing” and proved quite controversial. Among the scenes of foot washing depicted in the ad, the following have generated the most discussion: a Mexican police officer washing the feet of a black man wearing gold chains in an alley; a “preppy” normie-coded girl washing the feet of an alt girl; a cowboy washing the feet of aNative American; a woman washing the feet of a girl seeking an abortion (with pro-life activists sidelined, their signs upside down); an oil worker washing the feet of an environmental activist; a woman washing the feet of an illegal migrant; a Christian woman washing the feet of a Muslim; and a priest washing the feet of a sassy gay man. This last ad has tenfold the views on YouTube, in large part due to the negative response by Christians and conservatives, for example Matt Walsh and Babylon Bee editor Joel Berry. Joel writes,

There’s a reason the “He Gets Us” commercial didn’t show a liberal washing the feet of someone in a MAGA hat, or a BLM protestor washing an officer’s feet. That would’ve been actually subversive. Because they were strictly following oppressed v oppressor intersectionality guidelines.

I mostly agree with Joel. I think that this ad campaign is a failure.

The campaign fails to understand what brings people to a religion, or any social movement for that matter, or even any product, and as such it will not lead viewers to join their evangelical church or behave in the intended Christian manner. The audience of the Super Bowl is jointly comprised of people who care about what’s popular and cool, and people who care about remarkable feats of strength and dominance. These people are not going to be compelled to “love” their crack addict neighbor because you tell them to, because why would they listen to you? — there is no deeper motivation substantiated as for why they should do this. In the Gospel, Jesus doesn’t say “love your neighbor because it’s nice to do that and I am guilting you”, he says “love your neighbor so as to be a son of God whom created you, and obtain His reward, or else risk judgment from the eternal judge.” This is reward-driven and status-seeking behavior, the reward being administered by God and the status being administered by the church body. In its context, it requires a belief that the person saying it is the ultimate judge of both life and afterlife. (To behave Christlike, the required motivation is the totalizing significance of Christ... hence the name of the religion.) The starting point of the faith is the most dominant and powerful person telling you to care for the poor, not some cheeky “you should care about the poor because you should.”

Again, the Super Bowl viewer cares about what is popular and what is dominant. That’s normal, I’m not criticizing it. So could you not pull anything out of the religious tradition to depict the popularity and dominance of God? What, you feel bad playing off of FOMO to get people to your church? Jesus did just that on many occasions. 1, 2, 3, 4. Do you somehow feel guilty describing Jesus as glorious and powerful? What about the 72,000 angels he commands? You don’t want to tell the viewer that their prayers will be answered, when every 10 minutes there’s an ad for betting and gambling? Viva Las Vegas, non Vita Christi. So it has to be asked, what exactly is the purpose of the campaign? How is this getting people to your church, or even just getting people to behave better? “Jesus gets me” because… biker smoker and crack addict?

If the object of the ad is the instill a sense of pity to compel the viewer to behave morally, then there’s clearly more relevant subjects. Why not the focal point of the religion, the “innocent beautiful sacrificial lamb slain for our freedom” motif? The religion already comes with a built-in way to empower pity. You could say, “he gets us because he dealt with all our pain and temptation”, and that would make much more sense, while incentivizing the intended result of the ad. As is, I get the idea that the ad campaigners are afraid of any depiction of the life of Christ. I don’t get the sense that these people believe he is an essential ingredient of the moral life. And it’s fine if they don’t, that’s their business, but then dont make multimillion dollars ads that about it. If Christ is indeed essential, then your multimillion dollar ad campaign ought to be directed toward producing an image of Christ that is alluring, whether this be through scenes of pity or scenes of power. In an attempt to make Christianity subversive you should not be subverting Christianity.

Back to Joel’s critique of the ad: yes, the foot washing ad is problematic. Beside the fact that it is misinterpreted (explained below), it only works to further demean the image of Christianity to an irreligious America. “If I become a Christian, I’ll have to wash an old man’s feet?” The only viewers that will be compelled here are the foot fetish enthusiasts piqued by the alt girl. You are not going to convince anyone to join your social movement by promising them the opportunity to wash a man’s feet in an alley.

As was mentioned, the ad elevates the status of people who are not exactly Christ-coded, and those whose status is already elevated. During a Super Bowl, it’s not subversive to elevate the status of a vaguely athletic black man wearing gold chains. The half time show was Usher! Neither is it subversive to show an oil rig worker subservient to an environmental activist. In whose world is an environmental activist not more privileged than a dust-coated oil worker? And a wholesome girl washing an alt girl’s feet is not subversive in an event inaugurated by Post Malone’s national anthem. No, no; show me a wealthy and attractive CEO washing the feet of his fat ugly employee, if you must. But don’t just reinstitute the high/low status dynamic already in place by the world.

My last criticism I’ll try to keep short: the theological ground of these ads is spurious. There is indeed a scene where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, but the writer goes out of his way to clarify the meaning behind it. It begins by mentioning that Jesus “loved his own who were in the world”, namely his followers present and future. The students are shocked when their superior attempts to perform this subservient act, until it is explained to be necessary. “If your Lord washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do just as I have done to you. I am not speaking of all of you [not Judas]; I know whom I have chosen.” So, rather than being an act that a Christian is compelled to do to anyone, we have an act that Christians do to one another, to cultivate humility spirit and esteem for their brethren. They are told not to do it to merely self-labeled Christians, like Judas, let alone those of other faiths, as the ad suggests they do.

Foot washing was a culture-specific action that reflected the status hierarchy in a way that has no direct American parallel. An approximate American parallel would be for a boss to allow his employer to use his office, or for a boss to cook his employee’s family a dinner, or to clean his employee’s keyboard. The difficulty in understanding the event without careful study is the reason why it’s a mistake depict it as a means of propagating your worldview. Nothing is accomplished.

It’s an attempt to define the cultural place of Christianity. And that cultural place is one that is at the very least compatible with prevailing secular folkways, or rather, doesn’t require its adherents to push back on them very hard.

I don’t think these people love abortions and Muslims. I think they have standardly normie boomercon opinions about such things. I think instead they want an uneasy peace, and aren’t able to learn from the existing evidence that that’s not going to happen.

I'm not even Christian, but all that ad said to me is "Ha ha, we stole your religion!"

It came off exactly like the smarmy atheist who claims that Jesus really would have been an open borders communist. Not because he's studied the bible and the context of primitive Christians, but because it's a meme he chooses to believe and it pisses off equally ignorant Christians who can't argue against it any more than he can argue for it.

And so the ad spends it's time ritually humiliating Christians, showing them debasing themselves, subservient to people who hate them. All while making a facile claim that it's actually the true expression of their religion.

Trying to google who sponsored the ad, apparently the left maligned family behind Hobby Lobby did it? Which doesn't exactly mesh with my immediate reaction to it. But then again, plenty of religious organizations are acting as suicidal hollowed out zombies of late, so who knows.

It came off exactly like the smarmy atheist who claims that Jesus really would have been an open borders communist. Not because he's studied the bible and the context of primitive Christians, but because it's a meme he chooses to believe and it pisses off equally ignorant Christians who can't argue against it any more than he can argue for it.

Isn't your response in the same genre? You are telling a group that you are not a part of how they should feel about a particular issue on the basis of your beliefs about what that group believes.

I'm not an op-ed journalist. I'm not ranting on a conservative Christian message board trying to rally them to offense. I'm not on twitter stirring the pot for attention or rage-click/income. I had a reaction I kept to myself, and my wife, until it came up here. And here is notable as a place relatively removed from both the ignorant edgy atheist and the ignorant triggered Christians.

No, I don't think my response is the same at all.

I don't think so. If Coil is anything like me, he's had some experience fighting the Christian Right in his heyday before The Turning. We have a rough familiarity with what the average US Christian tends to value and believe because we spent years sparring with it. As outsiders, our understanding may have been necessarily imperfect, and our arguments motivated. But we could detect the general shape of the thing, and it did not include 'love poor migrants', 'the kids are totally fine', and 'kiss black people's feet'.

That may be a generalization (it is), and I may not be a Christian (I'm not), but it's not impossible for me compare where Christian status and power stood in my youth versus today. I can't NOT notice how that ad panders to so many modern lefty sensibilities, meanwhile actual churchgoers I know are decidedly on the Right, regardless of what their religious leadership decrees towards the purpose of modernizing the faith. Is there any cultural bone they could have thrown to social conservatives (y'know, the foremost representative group in US Christianity), or would that have been too icky?

Like... don't show me an ad full of lefty tokens with every group that's been earning side-eye getting their feet smooched and pretend my criticism is some sort of gatekeeping. It's disrespectful to my old foe, and I just feel bad for them.

I don't have a problem with the fact that it humiliates Christians - humility is a virtue in our religion after all. The first shall be last and the last shall be first and all that.

But I do share a roughly similar feeling about the ad in the sense that it falls into a genre of "non-offensive" Christianity that keeps all the love-thy-neighbour stuff but excludes the wages-of-sin-is-death stuff. An absolutely central part of the faith is forgiveness for repentant sinners, but again and again I've seen that twisted into outright acceptance or celebration of sin itself. And this ad pattern matches to that sort of thing.

The message of Christianity is "You are evil and deserve hell but Jesus loves you anyway". That first part gets interpreted as "hate" pretty often. So when I see something emphasising the "Jesus loves you" while distancing from "hate", while I agree with the literal message, it feels very much like a flavour of Christianity that is never going to get around to mentioning that sin is a thing and you're supposed to repent and turn from it.

He Saves Us is a response from Associate Pastor Jamie Bambrick that I think would have had more weight (though I question their selection choices, with more time\ I'm sure a team could come up with something more inspiring.)

Bambrick changes the emphasis to the transformation that Christianity demands and promises. Such an ad would also be countercultural because it implies it's not great to be a gang leader or a porn star, such that being a former gang leader or a former porn star is a step up.

The problem with that ad is that he just had to throw in abortion and LGBT stuff, when it was completely unnecessary. If the idea is to change the image of Christianity so it appeals more to liberals, you can't throw potshots at gays and abortionists when condemnation of gays and abortion is part of the reason that's keeping them away in the first place. It only confirms their suspicions. They also could have thrown a few people of color in there. I know conservatives don't like tokenism, and I know that blacks and Hispanics are already more religious than whites, but you have to know who your audience is. Otherwise, you're just preaching to the choir.

I really question his selection choices. I laughed when I saw "Dawkin's Former Right Hand Man" surrounded between "Former Gang Member" and "Former KKK Member."

The idea being that one of these things is not like the other? That's one of the basic disagreements, though.

For the past 25 years or so, Christians have, among the irreligious, had a connotation of being the kind of bible-thumping holy rollers who promote conservative politics. Even among a lot of actual Christians (Catholics in particular), the idea of subscribing to some explicitly Christian conceptions (like advertising yourself as a Christian bathroom remodeling company, Christian Rock, etc.) usually brands someone not as a regular guy that happens to attend a Methodist church, or whatever, but a megachurch-attending wackaloon. I think the idea of these ads isn't to convey some complex theological thought but to reassure the masses that faith in Jesus doesn't necessarily put you in this bucket. For all the complaints among conservatives that mainstream Protestants and liberal Catholics have gone off the woke deep end, this is only apparent to people who are already immersed in Christian culture; it certainly isn't represented in the media, except for maybe a few minutes at the end of the news if the story involves the Pope. It's certainly a ham-fisted, dumb, and probably vain attempt, but I don't think it's necessary to read too much into it. You may complain about how certain facets of the ads are on spurious theological ground, but as a Catholic I could argue that most of the Christian churches in this country are operating on spurious theological ground (and they'd say the same about me, of course).

I don't think you see a ton of laypeople off the deep end.

What you see is liberal clergy (often exacerbated by the conservative clergy going to more hardline denominations), combined with something more unconsidered among the people in the churches. Further, many of the mainline denominations are full of old people, who I'm guessing you aren't exactly as likely to run across. Not sure what'll remain of them in a generation's time.

Those who identify as Christian among conservatives are more likely to do so in a meaningful sense. More "you are a sinner, but Christ died for sinners; follow him" and less "Christianity's about being nice to people." (Not that we shouldn't love our neighbor; we should. But if that is what Christianity is to you, you don't understand Christianity.)

the theological ground of these ads is spurious

Does this actually matter to anyone? Religion as practiced by most adherents is a loose collection of rituals and superstitions that serves chiefly as a tribal identifier; to the extent that such people follow their own religious doctrines, they tend to pick and choose what already fits their values while selectively ignoring anything that doesn't. This is why, for example, you can have an explicitly pacifist faith that decries the accumulation of wealth serve as the official religion for a bunch of bling-obsessed warrior aristocrats without everyone's head exploding or decamping to a better aligned belief system.

In the last iteration of the thread, someone articulated the point that right now Christianity is very heavily right-coded and enjoys a fairly poor reputation with young people (not unrelated). These commercials seem best understood as attempts to challenge both of those perceptions. It may not be true to some platonic ideal of Christian theology, but you can say that about most Actually Existing Christianity (it's only relatively recently that they mostly chileld.

Does this actually matter to anyone?

Yes, theology matters quite a lot to many people. In general though Protestant denominations care much less than Catholics or Orthodox Christians.

Is this really true? Perhaps I'm just in the "really cares about theology" corner of denominations. But I know a bunch of other laypeople besides me who I know have read at least a thousand pages of theological writings, not counting the bible. (one I directly know, at least four more whom it would be inconcievable for them not to have done so, many more who I'd be surprised if that weren't the case, and still more who I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was the case)

Actually, yeah, maybe I'm in a subculture, that's definitely less true broadly across protestantism. That said, what with preaching being a larger emphasis, I'd expect that that would push a little more towards caring about teaching. I guess you definitely see it in the end-times things, in some groups.

My sense was that Eastern Orthodox Christians were often there for the vibes, or maybe due to their ethnicity.

My feeling is that there’s a pretty big division between ‘serious’ or ‘hardcore’ Catholics who do things like have big families and refuse to go to gay weddings, who really care about theology(the actual IRL tradcaths are a subset of this group), and ‘Sunday’ Catholics who go home after church and don’t think about it all that much until next weekend. I kind of assume it’s the same for Eastern Orthodox because there’s similar dynamics.

Now, disclaimer that this is just IME, but IME evangelicals don’t care very much about theology, even very religious ones. They’re more interested in ascertaining a minimum level of commitment and piety than they are in the details of theological beliefs and surveys tend to show that they really don’t know a lot about their own theology, either.

a pretty big division between

Yeah, this seems pretty true. (And the further divide, I assume, between those who call themselves Catholic but don't even attend regularly.)

evangelicals don't care very much about theology

I think this varies, but after rethinking it, yeah, you're generally right. Doctrine can be seen as a barrier to unity (which it can be, all too often!), and as relatively unimportant compared to caring about Jesus, the basics of the gospel, etc. They will have some beliefs that they're committed to, but it's not as central.

Yes! Though I don't think you have to appeal to Theology as a dogma to make this point. I'm atheist/agnostic and I can still see that the gospel was onto something with game-theoretic, social, and causal merit here. Christianity gained dominance in the real world at a time when there were plenty of other people preaching their own versions of Judaism. It was a competitive memetic environment. It matters to people in the sense that if you fail to convey the things that actually made the gospel powerful, you won't touch anyone. And part of that was definitely the radical proposition that those of higher status ought to perform actual care for those of lower status.

if you fail to convey the things that actually made the gospel powerful

I am positing that this had little to do with the details of Christian theology, most of which weren't even settled until after a particular sect of Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire and resolved its disagreements in the traditional way. Conveying the good vibes is more important to attracting converts (or just avoiding deconversion) than being theologically sound. Is the ad in question theologically dubious? Yeah, probably. Is it any more theologically dubious than other modern (or ancient, for that matter) variants of Christianity? Probably not.

(Also, you're producing for an American audience. The Good News is not news for most of them them, so that's not a very strong angle of attack).

Theology and soteriology (study of salvation) have always had a push-and-pull relationship. How much of what is true about God must be believed accurately for a saving faith? (Not much.) Does knowing a lot of theology before being saved actually reduce the likelihood of conversion? (Probably.) Is the underlying reality of God, the afterlives, and the spiritual realm(s?) able to be modeled by human minds? (Comic books have tried in fascinating ways, from DC’s The Source to Marvel’s One Above All to Cerebus The Aardvark’s asymmetrical Light and Dark.) What does it matter if nobody believes on a gut level anymore?

So yes, please take it back to first century Roman-occupied Judea. Take it back to an era where reading the future in the guts of animal sacrifices was official Roman decision-making policy and the high priest of Israel transferred the sins of his people to a ram before running it off a cliff. Take it back to the era when “love your neighbor as much as you love yourself” was simple, spiritual, subversive, and called “atheistic” by the polytheists who ran the Mediterranean world. Take it back to when we didn’t have Superman and Wolverine returning from death whenever the comic sales slumped, like Greek heroes escaping the clutches of Hades.

And if you want to see what such a simple, awe-filled faith looks like, watch The Chosen. It’s a bingeable dramatization of the gospels, in prestige TV format. It shows how a simple rabbi from the rural hill country overturned the world. And it’s making white Baptist-flavored Christians invite their neighbors to watch Brown Jesus unironically.

You know, it’s important to acknowledge how much of a minority the ‘dissident right’ position (not just, like, Moldbug and BAP, but the tradcaths and the paganlarpers and the HBDers and Fuentes and so on) is. Even Tucker, obviously he’s popular, but to a lot of his viewers he’s popular in a shock jock way, they don’t necessarily agree with his WASPish affect, ultrarealist Buchananite foreign policy and with all his other stances all the time.

There are a lot of flyover state Republicans who will vote for Donald Trump this November but who - largely - agree with social justice theology within a Christian framework. They may not like Critical Race Theory™️ and take a skeptical view of Black Lives Matter®️, but they’re not reactionaries. They largely agree with the New York Times worldview with minor disagreements about gay marriage and abortion.

There are a lot of flyover state Republicans who will vote for Donald Trump this November but who - largely - agree with social justice theology within a Christian framework.

...with the exceptions, as you note, of CRT, BLM, Gays and Abortion, which between them comprise the majority of Social Justice's most visible ideological commitments. As my father was fond of saying, if we had ham we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.

Christianity is, to put it gently, an awkward fit for actual racism and misogyny, though humans are certainly capable of the contortions necessary. Opposition to such things does not imply a yearning or even an acceptance of progressive "social justice". What Christians are is civil. They are not, generally speaking, revolutionaries, and they try to fit in and live in peace with others to the extent that doing so does not require disobeying their understanding of God's commands.

It is probably true that many Christians consider themselves to largely be in agreement with the New York Times. This is because the New York Times, like most media organs, is a purpose-built propaganda machine designed explicitly to manufacture consent and to present itself as the voice of reasonable civil society, and that it has a long history of routine deceit about where we as a society were, are, and are going. That does not change the fact that a very large chunk of serious Christians are fundamentally opposed to the Times' actual aims and goals, and that a wildly disproportionate percentage of the opposition the Times faces in those goals comes from Christians.

...with the exceptions, as you note, of CRT, BLM, Gays and Abortion

And trans.

The entire framing of this ad points to an unseriousness about Christ on the part of its creators. There is a growing tendency in protestant circles to believe that our mission is to shepherd the path to individual and societal self-actualization. This is clear in mainline denominations, where in my town only coffee shops are more likely to prominently display price/transgender flags. But it's seeping into "evangelical" denominations as well. Even doctrinally sound churches sing insipid lyrics about Christ as our friend (rightfully lampooned by South Park), are pastorally lenient on premarital cohabitation and divorce (even protestants are supposed to consider marriage covenantal), and are quite squishy around women ordination.

We are trapped in the culture's post-Christian milieu, and we like it. We just want to be a little more recognized within it.

"He gets us". What narcissism! God needs nothing outside of himself. God is the almighty, the Triune, omnipotent, without whom nothing would exist and without whose ongoing sustenance nothing would continue to exist. The Spirit hovered over the face of the waters, and creation began. The Word was in the beginning, was God, and spoke through the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament; and became flesh and dwelt among us. Christ came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, the very laws and prophecies that he inspired. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts." Our response is not to bloviate banalities on national TV. Our response is to fall on our knees in holy fear, reverence, and repentance.

about Christ as our friend

While I don't like that genre of music either, calling Christ our friend isn't necessarily wrong (and has a history). The scriptures at least called Abraham a friend of God.

On the whole, though, yes. The attempting to promote soft forms of Christianity doesn't work well.

I like that your observation does not constrain itself to the mainline liberal denominations. The abandonment of church discipline is not without precedent (see, e.g. Europe pre-Protestant Reformation), but is certainly not healthy, and this is one serious concern I have about the increasingly prevalent non-denominational-style Christianity today.

There's a difference between humility and humiliation.

The CEO of a McDonalds choosing to spend a day at the fryer getting shouted at by customers is humbling himself; so is the Pope washing feet. He's the Pope! Even now, one of the most powerful men on earth. Likewise if, say, JK Rowling were to anonymously attend a writing group and read my awful prose because someone did the same for her once upon a time.

Jesus Christ, the son of God, part of the Trinity, letting himself be crucified by a mob is humbling himself. He is deliberately not taking the position that his nature entitles him to, but taking on our burdens because he chooses to.

In this day and age, Christianity does not enjoy a high reputation among the mighty. The sassy gay man can get any Christian he likes fired at any time, purely by accusing him of saying something homophobic. Silent prayer near a girl getting her abortion can get you arrested. Under such circumstances

a Mexican police officer washing the feet of a black man wearing gold chains in an alley; a “preppy” normie-coded girl washing the feet of an alt girl; a cowboy washing the feet of aNative American; a woman washing the feet of a girl seeking an abortion (with pro-life activists sidelined, their signs upside down); an oil worker washing the feet of an environmental activist; a woman washing the feet of an illegal migrant; a Christian woman washing the feet of a Muslim; and a priest washing the feet of a sassy gay man

does not show the mighty being humbled, it reifies the social pecking order. And it throws Christian teaching and Christians themselves under the bus to do so.

Christians are commanded to humble themselves regardless of their station, and are commanded to accept humiliation in service to their Lord, in addition to other forms of mistreatment, imprisonment, torture and death. Not all Christians are good at doing this, but the instructions are quite clear. Whether the sassy gay man can or does get a Christian fired, Christians are still required to love him, to repay evil with good, to not take revenge. That's a mouthful to put into an ad, hence the washing of feet.

it reifies the social pecking order.

Christianity does not aim to overturn the social pecking order through a revolution of the pecked. It accepts being pecked upon, and declines to peck back. That is Christian teaching, which is why most of the complaints from actual Christians are not about Christians being humiliated, but about whether the ad is condoning sin. It is not, in my opinion, but the concern is an understandable one.

repost because server wipe, if that’s cool with everyone

For what it's worth, I consider "the server got wiped so I'm reposting it" to be 100% justified.

. . . even if it makes naraburns's job a little harder from having duplicate copies of quality contributions.

Reporting my reply from before the wipe:

The purpose of a Christian ad in the Super Bowl is to reach non-Christians.

So could you not pull anything out of the religious tradition to depict the popularity and dominance of God?

From a non-Christian perspective, the Christian God is neither dominant nor popular, and it's not clear to me how one would change that through the medium of a Super Bowl ad.

What, you feel bad playing off of FOMO to get people to your church? Jesus did just that on many occasions.

Yes, and the successor culture has long-since made memetic antibodies to such appeals ubiquitous: Any talk of hell, sin, or damnation is simply assumed to be an expression of hate and intolerance. If you are attempting to communicate the message of Christ to the world, you need to engage with the fact that the world you're speaking to is not merely unaware, but actively armored against your message. Now, it's an interesting question where a Christian's responsibility goes from there, but it seems to me that interpretations of Paul's answer are at least colorable:

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.

Jesus also told people that his yoke was easy and his burden was light, and that they would find rest for their souls. He told people that the poor and the suffering were blessed, while the rich and prosperous were destined for woe. This is not to say that the Gospel message can be reduced to a message of naive love-as-the-world-understands-it, any more than it can be reduced purely to hellfire and damnation. Both damnation and love-as-it-actually-is are integral, and different people need to hear different parts of those elements at different times.

Do you somehow feel guilty describing Jesus as glorious and powerful? What about the 72,000 angels he commands?

No, but such descriptions are meaningless and pointless to people whose understanding of Jesus amounts to a cartoon.

How is this getting people to your church, or even just getting people to behave better?

I think it's aimed at saying "we do not and will not hate you." Given the considerable effort by the faith's opponents to paint sincere Christians as fundamentally hateful, and given the nature of the society we find ourselves in, this seems to me to be a plausibly-valuable message.

@reactionary_peasant brings up the salient point about how each era pretends that one virtue is the only virtue that exists. This is very true. He further quotes C.S. Lewis' observation that the current era's virtue is charity, and again, this is true. It seems to me that there's two other points that should go along with it, though. First, Lewis made that observation more than half a century ago, and it seems to me that our society is very clearly and quite rapidly moving away from Charity as the virtue du jour, toward Justice. The old days of universal license and freedom and live-and-let-live liberalism have largely gone away, and now we are all hurtling toward the opposite extreme, toward authority, laws, demands, and vicious enforcement. And secondly, to the extent that Charity is still over-played by the culture at large, the value of actual, balanced charity is not thereby reduced. It is still both good and necessary to maintain proper charity in balance with the other virtues, regardless of how the broader culture behaves.

God is love. Christianity is defined by emulation of God's love. Our message is not hateful, and there is no room for hate of other humans within it. Walsh argues that washing the feet of sinners and enemies of the faith can be seen as affirming their sin and opposition. While such misinterpretation is obviously possible, it does not seem to me that it is inevitable, or indeed, strictly speaking, avoidable. We are, in fact, explicitly commanded to love our enemies. We are, in fact, explicitly commanded to repay evil with good. It is true that the Gospel does not record Jesus washing the feet of non-believers; it does record him dying in humiliating, wretched agony to secure their salvation, which is a rather more extreme form of submission than washing feet. Showing kindness to defiant sinners does not necessarily concede approval of their sin, and showing kindness to real or presumed enemies is the direct command of our savior. Misperception of such kindness as approval of sin requires either willful blindness, or a complete absence of meaningful communication.

Christians, also, need the reminder that we cannot hate. We may oppose our enemies, and perhaps we may even fight or kill our enemies, but whatever we do must be compatible with love for those on the other side. It seems to me that this requirement is much less restrictive than many in the world would presume, but I do not believe that this makes it any less meaningful a restriction. The civil war killed more than half a million Americans, but when it ended, the winners did not exterminate the losers, nor even enslave them. Instead, they made peace, and many soldiers who had spent years earnestly trying to kill each other laid down their arms and lived together. Our modern society spits on that idea, furious that the wicked were not sufficiently punished, that injustice was merely greatly reduced rather than entirely eliminated. I do not, and it seems to me that Christians should not. Humans will always sin, and many of them will always embrace their sin defiantly. Nothing we do or say will change that fact. Our job is to attempt to reach them despite their defiance, and that requires contact, communication, personal connection. Given the current climate, "We refuse to hate you" seems like a reasonable attempt at a start.

The purpose of a Christian ad in the Super Bowl is to reach non-Christians.

Is it? The purpose of this one appears to be trying to reach Christians and explain to them why the Christian thing to do is submit themselves to the left.

I disagree, for reasons explained in the rest of the comment.

Christianity demands a balance between loving the sinner and hating the sin. Non-Christians seem determined to insist that we only do one or the other, as their short-term-preferences dictate, but we will continue to do both regardless.

As another poster mentioned below, "We are, in fact, explicitly commanded to love our enemies... Christians, also, need the reminder that we cannot hate." Nietzsche was correct that Christianity is a slave morality, and the right-wing tradcaths will never be able to make it anything else no matter how many angels Christ is said to command.

Right-wing Christians do indeed need the reminder that they cannot hate, as commanded by their messiah.

...And the reply to you, of course, is that "not hating" does not obviously preclude burning cities to ash together with their occupants. Christianity is not a pacifistic religion.

Just so I can understand, if Christians were burn down a city, you'd say they had a moral requirement to do so from a place of sorrow and concern, not hatred?

I don't think "Sorrow and concern" cover the full range, but they are at least a start.

I do not think Christianity necessarily implies pacifism, and war sometimes involves burning cities, together with their occupants. If I'm correct about that, then the Christian thing to do is to try to keep it to a minimum, and on a tight leash. It would be dishonest to pretend that war is not war, though.

The correct balance will always be criticized by the bloodthirsty as cowardly and slave-like, and by the pacifistic as bloodthirsty and merciless. There is, in fact, a balance, and we should keep to it. Does it seem otherwise to you? Do you object to the morality of the examples above?

[EDIT] ...of all the aspects of being a mod, the absolute worst is fat-fingering the "remove post" button while trying to talk to people. I don't know if removals and reinstatements show up in a log or if people notice, but please take this as a pre-emptive apology to you and anyone else in case it comes up.

I am fine with the idea that Christianity doesn't require its adherents to be pacifist. Nor do I oppose the idea of collateral damage, though there are substantial requirements, in my view, on who is allowed to claim the victims of their attacks qualify.

Tangentially, I also do not agree that the examples you gave constitute something morally acceptable.

Tangentially, I also do not agree that the examples you gave constitute something morally acceptable.

Do you think they are questionable, or obviously unacceptable?

I can definately agree with the questionable, and I can at least recognize the arguments for completely unacceptable. I see the picture of the woman and child burned to charcoal in the Tokyo firebombing article, and i think of my wife and my daughter plausibly suffering a similar fate. Death is the common lot of all humanity, and Christians have subtle but important disagreements with non-Christians about the nature and importance of particular forms of death.

Obviously morally unacceptable. There are arguments for doing it, but they are dwarfed by the power of the arguments against bombing population centers without some kind of impending mass disaster. As far as I know, there was never a time where the danger posed by more selective bombing (or just not bombing) was so immediate and high that it could justify destroying entire cities.

The love for enemies is a Christian love, an imitation of what Christ does. This includes, for example, warning the uncharitable wealthy of the eternal hellfire that awaits them, as Jesus does on many occasions. It may include insulting some by calling them children of Satan, for the purposes of hopefully awakening an obstinate soul. It also means, in some cases, “showing mercy by fear, hating even the garment stained by their flesh”, while still loving the person’s soul. It means that if someone in your church sins against you without apology or listening the church’s correction, the whole community severs all ties with them completely (Matthew 18:17). Historically, perhaps the best example of Christian love is the execution of criminals: allow them the dignity to confess and speak to a priest, then execute them quickly without needless pain. Hence the death penalty was justified by Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, in a framework of Christian love.

There seems to be a translation issue

  1. Schmitt aptly recalls that the Christian `love your enemies' reads, in Latin, diligite inimicos vestros, not hostes vestros (1976: 29). Here the distinction between private inimicus and public hostis stands out neatly. foot note to The Essence of the Political in Carl Schmitt

The distinction also occurs in Greek: πολέμιος versus ἐχϑρός

The issue is occasionally discussed at length (Search for "hostis" to jump to the discussion).

When I first came across this, I was puzzled. Tyndale published the first English bible in 1535. Why did nobody complain about translation issues until 1932? On the other hand. I'm so old that I studied Latin and Greek for O-level in an English Grammar School. I'm guessing that the educated elite in England learned a decent amount of Latin as recently as 1900. If they cared about what Christ meant by 'love your enemies', they would read the Vulgate, find "diligite inimicos vestros", then go off to fight in the Boer War, happy that shooting at a 'hostis' was compatible with Christianity.

Hizzoner Eric Adams, Mayor of New York, has filed a lawsuit in California court against TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and Facebook accusing them of "fueling a youth mental health crisis".

Among his particulars are

Using algorithms to generate feeds that keep users on the platforms longer and encourage compulsive use.

Using mechanics akin to gambling in the design of apps, which allow for anticipation and craving for "likes" and "hearts," and also provides continuous, personalized streams of content and advertisements.

Manipulating users through reciprocity – a social force, especially powerful among teenagers, that describes how people feel compelled to respond to one positive action with another positive action. These platforms take advantage of reciprocity by, for example, automatically telling the sender when their message was seen or sending notifications when a message was delivered, encouraging teens to return to the platform again and again and perpetuating online engagement and immediate responses.

I dislike social media as much as the next grouch, but this to me seems like it should be booted out of court for "Failure to state a claim, and if you did have a claim it would be precluded by the First Amendment, and also I fine you 1 million dollars for using out-of-state courts for political posturing."

It also strikes me as frivolous and far too general, and weirdly anachronistic. Even by politician standards, more grandstanding than substantive.

Might as well Cancel the Internet at that point. From search engines to the aforementioned sites to porn to online shopping to online gambling to vidya to The Motte. The Motte, as a sinister hive of scum and villainy, uses algorithms and likes, even if sometimes the algorithm is just sorting by new. Nefarious techniques such as meatbag-informed casual reinforcement learning is deployed via moderation and monthly “Quality Contribution”s.

Such a lawsuit, even assuming there’s sufficient standing or whatever among other issues, feels ten maybe even twenty years too late.

There's a bit of a motte and bailey with algorithms. People grandstanding against social media conflate algorithms intentionally tweaked to manipulate users with algorithms that simply give users what they want. TikTok, as far as I can tell, largely does the second. Google Search, on the other hand, extensively does the first. However, the sort of people who complain about 'algorithms' tend to approve of Google's goals in information curating.

To be clear, both types of 'algorithm' might be bad, in the same way cocaine might be bad whether a user snorts it on their own or an unsavory corporation slips it into their carbonated beverages. But banning the former is a harder sell given the moral justification for our current civilization is still technically supposed to be liberalism.

According to the articles about the enshittification of the net by Doctorow et al (on Wired and Substack), TikTok's algorithm no longer really gives users what they want anymore.

That's an interesting read, thanks. Though it sounds like TikTok is tweaking the algorithm to appeal to content creators rather than to manipulate users per se.

Cory Doctorow is an interesting cat. I remember him from the failed hamartiology of 'free culture' back in the day, so maybe I never had a good read of the man. So many of his hobby horses tag him as gray tribe, but when he talks normal politics he's as blue as lapis lazuli.

I think something of a grey tribe existed back in the day -- though I think it was really more of a self-selection of weird, intellectual men who used the internet rather than something that existed in person. But the more I really think about it, the more it seems obvious that this cohort has divided between blue-sympathetic people and red-sympathetic people, with those on each side finding more common ground with former enemies than with former friends.

So, you see grey tribe atheist types re-evaluating their views on Christianity (like you see often showing up in religious discussions on the motte) or even converting (as I did), because they started bumping up against the blue tribe in ways they didn't expect, or were directly repelled by the views of the blue tribe on cis-het-straight-white-men, who mostly made up the grey tribe. And you see the opposite too -- grey tribe people like Doctorow who have always been more into the "weird" side of the grey tribe (he's a science fiction author, after all) finding more common ground with the reformist blue tribe, or pushed that direction by a cultural, class, or regional dislike of Trumpism.

This doesn't mean these internet people go full red or full blue, but it does, I think, make people lean more in one direction or another.

I wonder if there are any parallels between this case and lawsuits against tobacco companies where those companies had been covering up the health risks associated with smoking. I'm not very familiar with the cases. I'm thinking there is probably some precedent that if you have internal data showing something is dangerous/addictive and then you continue to present it as not dangerous/addictive then that opens you up to legal liability.

Since social media companies collect tons of data to optimize engagement on their platforms they probably have something that shows they know social media is addictive. If you have that internal data then you put out something that says, "Facebook builds its products to create value, not to be addictive" https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/What-The-Social-Dilemma-Gets-Wrong.pdf then I could see how this case has some legitimacy. It could also be strategically correct. They know social media companies will settle out of court to avoid a discovery process that would expose the internal documents showing that social media is addictive.

There isn't really a coherent definition of addiction here. Are people addicted because they use Facebook a lot? Can we distinguish that from people just enjoying using Facebook but not being addicted? Probably not.

That’s a good point, but I think the court can ultimately conclude if something is addictive. This would be similar to how the court can conclude if something qualifies as a religion. They use a list of characteristics common to established religions and say these things indicate something could be a religion, but at the same time realize that not every religion would meet all the criteria.

Furthermore, people can become addicted to video games, gambling, or porn and there are some established criteria for what those addictions look like. In the DSM-5-TR Internet Gaming Disorder is included in the section recommending conditions for further research:

  • Preoccupation with gaming

  • Withdrawal symptoms when gaming is taken away or not possible (sadness, anxiety, irritability)

  • Tolerance, the need to spend more time gaming to satisfy the urge

  • Inability to reduce playing, unsuccessful attempts to quit gaming

  • Giving up other activities, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities due to gaming

  • Continuing to game despite problems

  • Deceiving family members or others about the amount of time spent on gaming

  • The use of gaming to relieve negative moods, such as guilt or hopelessness

  • Risk, having jeopardized or lost a job or relationship due to gaming

It's highly unlikely that Facebook has data indicating that users are experiencing these symptoms.

Target was algorithmically detecting pregnancy over a decade ago.

If Facebook doesn't have data regarding these symptoms, it's either because they haven't bothered or because they actively are trying to avoid it.

There's no external validation for someone being addicted to Facebook like there is for someone being pregnant.

In any case, as you suggested, there's no reason for Facebook to even gather this data. If it turns out there's no addiction (whatever that means), nobody will believe them anyway. If there turns out to be addiction, it's a liability.

IANAL but I also don't think much of the complaint. It does a good job avoiding the issue many social media lawsuits have where they sue based on the content third parties have posted. However the algorithmic delivery of content is, as far as I'm aware, protected first amendment activity. Nowhere does the complaint identify what first amendment exception the described conduct falls into, or even mention the fact that it may be protected.

Another oddity that strikes me as a laymen is the way the causes of action and prayer for relief are phrased. The causes of action are "NEW YORK PUBLIC NUISANCE", "NEW YORK NEGLIGENCE", and "NEW YORK GROSS NEGLIGENCE." The first paragraph in the prayer for relief also reads:

Entering an Order that the conduct alleged herein constitutes a public nuisance under New York law;

Are state courts often called upon to apply the standards of other states? Is this a totally normal thing I'm reading too much into? Seems odd. I would think the relevant standard in California court would be California public nuisance/negligence/gross negligence.

Thoughts on Consumption, Ethical and Otherwise

TLDR: As costs have changed with automation/globalization/etc the status implications attached to items or forms of consumption have changed, despite the costs reflecting less or even opposite directions of status. Why have the implications persisted beyond the mechanical reasons for it?

A discussion elsewhere since lost, and that acid-trip TEMU ad at the Super Bowl, had me thinking about a statistic I saw in a WSJ article that has really stuck with me.

American’s average spending on apparel has declined from 14% of expenditures in 1901 to 10% in 1960 to 4% in 2002. For the most part, we can see that as early industrialization in 1901, when many things were still tailored, to full factory industrialization in 1960, to early globalization in 2002. In 2023, with full globalization, expenditure on clothing declined all the way to 2%.*

My wife and I are probably a little fancier and more enthusiastic about clothing than the average on the Motte, if asked I would say that I spend more on clothing than I need to and own too much and too expensive of clothing, but we were absolutely blown away by the idea of spending 10% of our annual income on clothing. We agreed that we could probably do it, and have fun doing so!, for one or maybe two years, but after that the budget that would create would just be insane. The idea, as an upper-middle class professional couple, of spending something like $30k-$40k on clothing per year every year is insanity! Buying the best and starting with nothing, I don’t really see how a man in my position could spend more than $10k on clothing, once, with less than $1k/yr spending after that to maintain/freshen, unless one gets deep into really truly strange and expensive frivolities. Yet we still talk about clothing items as status symbols in the same way, despite clothing making up a decreasing percentage of spending, despite the obvious fact that if a lower income American spent like a 1960 American they could easily afford to look like a modern upper class American. Clothing just isn’t actually expensive anymore.

And this got me thinking of how many status symbols have changed so thoroughly in their cost, while remaining essentially the same in their perception. I own a 25 year old BMW 3 Series, which had a $27,000 msrp when new, which I like driving around casually; I also have a 2008 Chevrolet Avalanche which I drive for work, which had an MSRP of $48,000 new. ((For those of you following along at home, I never got around to actually buying a new-er manual car to replace it)) Persistently, people will give me “rich kid” jokes about the BMW, while the Chevy is treated as working class. Not only that, guys driving new pickups that retail north of $60k will give me the same guff about the BMW! The branding still gives credibility or prestige, even long after the relationship of cost has evaporated or reversed. Small “sporty” BMW = rich, pickup truck = blue collar.

I’m utterly confused as to how people around me spend their money, and I’m fairly certain they are equally confused by how I spend mine. I have friends with similar incomes to mine, who are in credit card debt, but also don’t have the things I would expect a person with my income who is also in credit card debt to have. The money seems to evaporate into nights out, travel, concerts, and house renovations. They look at things I “waste" money on, and I can’t say they don’t have a point: I could probably reduce my clothing budget significantly, I own too much expensive assorted strength training and fitness crap, I could reduce my grocery/food budget considerably if I cooked more from scratch. But then I equally look at their spending, and they invite me to go on a trip, or out to a bar, and I look at the price and say I’m not spending $2k on travel, or $100 on a night out. Though I’ll equally admit that my own travel habits are extremely cheap, and my own tastes in food and especially alcohol relatively light and plebeian.

We’re factually in the same social class, we make similar money in similar positions, but our consumption patterns are different. And what fascinates me is that one set of consumption patterns is judged as normal, even blue collar, while another is judged as fancy, bougie, aristocratic. And the meanings of these symbols of upper-class taste have endured beyond and transcended the actual cost-balance of the activities. The expensive microbrewery play-acts as industrial space. Expensive travel is normal, even treated as normative. Housing, education, healthcare are ruinously expensive but treated as normal, invisible even. I’m not sure I know who is right and who is wrong, or even if someone is right or wrong, in terms of what form of spending will lead to The Good Life. But I’m sure we’re both going wrong in reading into status symbols in the way people once did, when the meanings are so twisted and confused.

*Obvious confounding factor here is children. Children grow out of their clothing, ruin their clothing etc in ways that adults don't. This probably accounts for several percentage points in the decline, though that becomes its own discussion about natalism and children as cost and children as status symbol.

I expect this is balanced out by the usual cost saving measures available to families in 1900- namely, every woman could sew, and children weren’t expected to have multiple nice outfits, just one that was decent.

That, and you only really have to buy kids clothes once per gender; even today most families with 3+ kids are generally saving old clothes for the next sibling. The 1900 fertility rate was higher than it is today, but it’s not that much higher to balance this out.

The detailed underlying statistics are available here.

Regarding the footnote: In year 2022, the proportion of income spent on "apparel and services" was 2.7 percent for all consumer units, ranging from 2.1 percent for single people to 3.3 percent for units consisting of five of more people (on average, 5.7 people, including 2.7 children, 0.2 person 65 or older, and 2.8 other adults).

I don’t really see how a man in my position could spend more than $10k on clothing, once, with less than $1k/yr spending after that to maintain/freshen, unless one gets deep into really truly strange and expensive frivolities.

Really? I'm not saying it's advisable, but it's pretty easy to spend a couple grand per suit, a couple hundred per shirt, and hundreds each on sweaters. Throw in some expensive jeans and fancy socks. Spend another couple grand on Tracksmith running gear. If we're counting shoes, I go through like $500/year in running shoes alone. Don't get me wrong, I don't personally spend all that much on clothes in aggregate, but it's pretty easy to spend a lot as soon as you're into bespoke clothing or just high-end materials.

I’m utterly confused as to how people around me spend their money, and I’m fairly certain they are equally confused by how I spend mine.

Yeah, I remain persistently puzzled by how people making anything north of six-figures wind up broke. It is just not very hard at all to look at how much money you're taking in and elect to spend less than that.

Really. Though it may be that my definition of "strange and expensive frivolities" is doing a lot of work there. The tough thing isn't spending money once, it's spending money every year. I've always been a big second hand shopper, and I fell for the BIFL/Heritage Fashion/Investment Piece trend of the early 2010s, and the problem is you buy all this great stuff and it doesn't wear out. I like Allen Edmonds shoes, they can easily run $500-600, and those are quality American made leather shoes. But I really liked them, and pretty soon I had five or six pairs from picking them up at thrift stores, and I still have them all eight to ten years later. Same with suits, same with quality shirts (albeit less so). I'm wearing a lot of the same stuff I bought years ago.

If I were to budget $10k+, for a year or maybe two, I could buy a lot of the things I bought second hand brand new, which would be fun. I can easily go buy a few $900 suits, and a few really great $1k winter jackets, and some $500 pairs of shoes to match. But then I'd have all that the next year! And the year after that! The cost of that high-quality wardrobe is high to start, but the maintenance cost is low, you can't just keep buying suits every year or you're going need impractically large closet.

Yeah, I remain persistently puzzled by how people making anything north of six-figures wind up broke.

I've seen literal brain surgeons be very financially clueless.

If you're not educated in how to manage and invest, that sort of thing can get away from you very quickly.

I have literally never in my life seen a shirt or sweater that costs $200+. The most expensive shirts I can get cost $100 each, and those are dress shirts (which most people will only ever need one or two of). Everything else is less, often significantly less. The most expensive jeans I have ever seen are Levi's that sometimes cost upwards of $100/pair, but you don't need many and they last years and years. Most people only need one suit, two if they're really feeling fancy and want different colors (and again, those last for years and years).

I'm definitely with @FiveHourMarathon on this one. I can imagine someone who is trying to spend massive amounts of money might spend $10k+/year, for sure. But I can't imagine how someone might have normal clothing habits where they spend that kind of money without even meaning to.

dress shirts (which most people will only ever need one or two of)

The first result on Google for the query "how many dress shirts own":

Generally, it is suggested that men own around 8–12 dress shirts if you wear them every day for work, or just 3 if you only wear them for special occasions.

Yes, and most people don't wear dress shirts every day for work. There's a reason I said "most people".

I'm someone who's both fairly frugal and has no issue purchasing clothing/items second hand with the plan to wear them until they fall apart. This, combined with being patient, means I've acquired some choice deals over time.

It's also lead to moments where I realize that I'm out and about for outdoor chores while wearing clothing(shirt, pants, shoes, watch) that, had I bought new, would be edging toward a thousand dollars. So... shrugs helplessly

You've never seen a $200 sweater? Take a trip to the mall today.

https://www.nordstrom.com/s/7542724

I have vintage cashmere sweaters that cost $500+ new, but once again though expensive they lasted the original owners some period of time, and have lasted me years and years since. You can buy several of them but you can't do that every year without amassing a ridiculous collection.

You can buy several of them but you can't do that every year without amassing a ridiculous collection.

Or you can sell the old ones to you and buy nice fresh ones!

People do do this; seems crazy to me as well but it's a thing.

There are definitely people who do just that, though, and they sell their old clothes or donate to thrift stores.

Buying nice "vintage" clothing at thrift stores, both living near the sort of thrift store that regularly has nice things, and having the knowledge and patience to find the nice things also comes across as extremely bougie, with a bit of hipster thrown in. More so than just buying the sweater new, something someone who makes a lot less might be proud of, and see as an accomplishment. I remember someone commenting about how she bought nice boots once, and realizing she was an adult now, and could buy a $200 pair of boots she had always wanted now! Which was empowering for her.

Very true. Second hand shopping is a true High-Low barber pole activity. The Boston Cracked Shoe. The middle class is defined by discomfort with their status, which comes out as a sense of discomfort with buying second hand clothing. Where the poor have no pride to harm, and the rich are comfortable enough with their status that they feel no threat from telling someone they bought a suit at Goodwill. My father in law could not stop laughing about how, in a wedding of two one percenter families, we had a tiny wedding and my wife thrifted her gown while I had an old tux from Goodwill I dusted off for the occasion (though I did buy a pair of new pants for the occasion.

Though I do think more sanitized, online operations like Poshmark and TheRealReal might be changing things around.

I confess that while I've been in a Nordstrom (and other mall stores), I haven't actually been shopping there. I am normally just sitting in the husband area while we all dick around on our phones waiting for our respective wives to finish shopping.

This is a human rights issue that needs to be improved upon: the lingerie section at Nordstrom needs a better husband waiting area. My wife always takes a million fucking hours while she gets fitted, is upset that her rib cage didn't get any bigger so the size is still so weird they'll only carry it in three bras, the sales woman digs through the back to find the one weirdo Barbie doll size, then tries all three on until she settles on the one that looks least orthopedic. But the waiting with my credit card area is too exposed! I want somewhere no one sees me!

To be fair, there’s a brigade of women who buy entirely new wardrobes every year to keep up with fashion. That crowd might spend 10% of income on clothes- I’m doubting they all have 6 figure incomes, so maybe more like $6k/yr on average. That seems like a thing that could be true.

Walk into a Brunello Cucinelli, a Hermes, a Thom Browne, or similar and you'll find hundreds of pretty normal looking clothes selling at 1k+ prices each.

I think one thing missing from the clothes discussion is that real disposable income has exploded over the covered period. So much so that the 2% people are spending in 2023 is more in real dollars than the 10% in 1901. Americans spend more real dollars on clothes now than they did in 1901, it's just a smaller fraction of income because income has grown even faster than clothing expenditures.

My thought with ethical or conscious consumption is a very basic principle of being frugal about purchases while trying to do as little harm with those purchases as possible especially in areas I personally care deeply about.

Now by frugal, I mean that I tend to try to not buy things I don’t need and when I do, I aim for things that last and aren’t going to be obviously out of style or obsolete quickly. My style hasn’t changed all that much so it doesn’t matter if I don’t buy brand new clothes all the time. I tend toward minimalist ideas.

As far as ethics, I avoid companies that abuse workers and aren’t terrible for the environment. Beyond that, unless the company is doing obvious evil, I don’t spend a lot of time overthinking purchases.

Is the BMW sticker price fair? Maintenance still has to be at Euro-import level I would assume. Maybe a little cheaper than modern cars. Even a fully paid off bmw I would assume is running 3-6k minimum in yearly costs. While the big American truck probably has cheaper parts.

I have no problem on spending a lot of money on doing things versus clothing.

Funny someone else said they avoid companies that abuse their workers. I got no qualms and think I’m doing a good thing buying from them. In that case your most likely giving someone a wage versus subsistence farming or worse.

while remaining essentially the same in their perception.

Did they?

I don't know what clothing you and your wife wear, but in general is seems like clothing primarily signals things about youth/age/region/tastes/subculture, and signals about wealth very little unless your wife is buying those bespoke ballgowns from the Oscars or something. Plumber is by far the most enthusiastic describer of clothing in the SSC-sphere, and is credibly an actual plumber.

There's a certain class of mostly older women who wear large pieces of turquoise jewelry. It's especially common among realtors in their professional photography. As far as I can tell, it signals "fussy and hard to work with," but I assume they're going for something else. Regionally sensitive PMC? I'm not exactly sure, but it's consistent enough to be meaningful and intentional. Turquoise jewelry is not so cheap that people don't think about buying it, but not so expensive that even a burger flipper working their first job couldn't save up and buy an elaborate piece if they really wanted to. Or couldn't get it at a second hand shop at a steep discount. But they generally don't, because it's a signal from a previous generation, from a time when a person could spend 10% of their income on clothing, and actually project a meaningful image. From a time when people inherited things for reasons other than nostalgia, and there weren't a bunch of china tea sets in the second hand stores for $10.

Keeping slim and in shape later in life signals status, and it does seem like there's a trend of people over 30 who want to show how young they still are training for and running marathons and climbing mountains. Especially the training part. our user name seems to fit into that pattern?

BMW 3 Series

I looked this up. It just looks like a sedan? A nice-ish sedan. I'm surprised you're getting comments on that car, were they joking? Is it because you have to find a special mechanic or something? I'm trying to recall people around me talking about cars, and other than comments about "compensating" or "mid life crisis," it's mostly been for hobby cars that they clearly put some personal attention into, like turquoise muscle cars that people decorate for car parades. I have heard some shade thrown at the big trucks that look like they haven't ever been used to haul anything, and likely never will, but I do also see a lot of expensive trucks genuinely hauling things (RV looking trailers if they're well off, but still), so it can be hard to guess.

the money seems to evaporate into nights out, travel, concerts, and house renovations.

My workplace tends lower middle class, with less money than yours, very far from the coasts, and I have been surprised by how many people talk about taking their kids to Disney World, especially, and also parties with a lot of other kids at trampoline sorts of places. It's not that we don't go on trips ourselves, or wouldn't go to Disney World on principle, but these are the same people talking about how they hope they can make it to their next paycheck, as though credit is not a thing. Are they not using credit because they're worried they'll go too far if they start, or just exaggerating about needing to wait until actual payday?

And what fascinates me is that one set of consumption patterns is judged as normal, even blue collar, while another is judged as fancy, bougie, aristocratic.

Sure. Construction contractors sometimes make a decent amount of money, but they will buy pickup trucks and take their kids to Disney World with it. They will not buy nice suites, because where would they wear them? Going to the opera costs the same as going to three regular movies, but then you have to sit through an opera. Visibly training for running events is extremely bougie.

these are the same people talking about how they hope they can make it to their next paycheck, as though credit is not a thing. Are they not using credit because they're worried they'll go too far if they start, or just exaggerating about needing to wait until actual payday?

They don't think about using credit, on principle.

I'm from a very similar background to your co-workers -- lower-middle class, not coastal -- and it was drilled into my head from a young age that debt meant slavery and you use credit cards only and exclusively to build credit for mortgages or cars (if you have to), and you must pay it off each month, and preferrably keep your credit utilization low. My parents have a solid nest-egg and little debt, but if you talked to them about money you'd think they were constantly in danger of bankruptcy. In their household, paying interest on a credit card even one month is something close to a mortal sin -- it's just unthinkable.

While I think this is probably an overreaction to the problems of debt, I suspect it's the same sort of cultural overreaction that made Baptists go hard against liquor. The American frontier was full of drunks -- literally, there were stories of preachers having their church ransacked by drunk mobs on Sunday morning. So the clergy who ministered to them (mostly congregationalists, Methodists, and Baptists) ended up taking the nuclear option: "You people obviously can't handle your booze, so we're going full abstentionist, no liquor at all, you show up drunk and we're disfellowshipping you. Shape up, you sinners."

And that view became crystalized and theologized from a discipline based on prudence to a definitive theological approach of Methodists and Baptists, the same way that clerical celibacy in the Latin Church went from a discipline based on preventing the direct inheritance of parishes to (in the trad days) a definitive theological approach where clergy are seen as marrying the Church.

Nowadays, the American interior (where evangelicals are the primary ministers, interestingly enough) is now full of people trapped in debt. So, the approach of normie American interior culture is shaped by this problem in a similar way alcohol to how alcohol shaped the frontier, eschewing it totally because of the potential for abuse (and perhaps because it signals separation from less conscientous people for whom debt is less controlled). I think in religious terms, so what strikes me is how this gets tangled up in the prosperity gospel, producing "supernatural debt cancellation", the favorite of slimy televangelists the world over. Call it evangelicals finally figuring out usury is supposed to be a sin.

Your parents are right about credit card interest.

That improperly risk-averse position is not having/using one for regular spending instead of a debit card.

I looked this up. It just looks like a sedan? A nice-ish sedan.

Bmw 3 (especially the M series) series from the 90s and 80s are the ultimate driver's car. Rear wheel drive. Very powerful, temperament, hard to tame. All around fun.

True The Vote, the group behind the wildly popular "2000 Mules" film that purported to document extensive election fraud in Georgia, has admitted to a judge that it doesn't have evidence to back its claims.

Y'all know I love my hobby horse, even if it's beaten into an absolute paste, and I admit at having ongoing puzzlement as to why 2020 stolen election claims retain so much cachet among republican voters and officials. TTV has a pattern of making explosive allegations of election fraud only to then do whatever it takes to resist providing supporting evidence. TTV has lied about working with the FBI and also refused to hand over the evidence they claimed to have to Arizona authorities. In Georgia, TTV went as far as filing formal complaints with the state, only to then try to withdraw their complaints when the state asked for evidence. The founder of TTV was also briefly jailed for contempt in 2022 because of her refusal to hand over information in a defamation lawsuit where TTV claimed an election software provider was using unsecured servers in China. Edit: @Walterodim looked into this below and I agree the circumstances are too bizarre to draw any conclusions about the founder's intentions.

I have a theory I'm eager to have challenged, and it's a theory I believe precisely explains TTV's behavior: TTV is lying. My operating assumption is that if someone uncovers extensive evidence of election fraud, they would do whatever they can to assist law enforcement and other interested parties in fixing this fraud. TTV does not do this, and the reason they engage in obstinate behavior when asked to provide evidence is because they're lying about having found evidence of election fraud. It's true that they file formal complaints with authorities, but their goal is to add a patina of legitimacy to their overall allegations. TTV's overriding motivation is grifting: there is significant demand within the conservative media ecosystem for stolen election affirmations, and anyone who supplies it stands to profit both financially as well as politically. We don't have direct financial statements but we can glean the potential profitability from how 2000 Mules initially cost $29.99 to watch online, and the millions in fundraising directed towards TTV (including a donor who sued to get his $2.5 million back). There's also a political gain because Trump remains the de facto leader of the conservative movement, and affirming his 2020 stolen election claims is a practical requirement for remaining within the sphere.

I know this topic instigates a lot of ire and downvotes, but I would be very interested to hear substantive reasons for why my theory is faulty or unreasonable! I believe I transparently outlined my premises and the connective logic in the above paragraph, so the best way to challenge my conclusion could be either to dispute a premise, or to rebut any logical deduction I relied on. You could also do this by pointing out anything that is inconsistent with my theory. So for example if we were talking about how "John murdered Jane", something inconsistent with that claim could be "John was giving a speech at the time of Jane's murder". I would also request that you first check if any of your rebuttals are an example of 'belief in belief' or otherwise replaying the 'dragon in my garage' unfalsifiability cocoon. The best way to guard against this trap would be to explain why your preferred explanation fits the facts better than mine, and also to proactively provide a threshold for when you'd agree that TTV is indeed just lying.

I'm excited for the responses!

Edit: I forgot I should've mentioned this, but it would be really helpful if responses avoided motte-and-bailey diversions. This post is about TTV and their efforts specifically, and though I believe stolen election claims are very poor quality in general, I'm not making the argument that "TTV is lying, ergo other stolen election claims are also bullshit". I think there are some related questions worth contemplating (namely why TTV got so much attention and credulity from broader conservative movement if TTV were indeed lying) but changing the subject isn't responsive to a topic about TTV. If anyone insists on wanting to talk about something else, it would be helpful if there's an acknowledgement about TTV's claims specifically. For example, it can take the format of "Yes, it does appear that TTV is indeed lying but..."

I would be very interested to hear substantive reasons for why my theory is faulty or unreasonable!

You're missing the forest for the trees. There was a concerted effort to illegally influence the election. This manifested in many ways, mostly to do with mail-in-voting, and the evidence, if it ever existed, has been lost by now. You are focusing on details that don't matter, and have never mattered, instead of looking at what people have admitted, and what that means for what they will never admit.

This isn't what you wanted, of course. You want to argue like this is a court of law and pretend I didn't witness an obviously stolen election in real time. However, I will continue to trust my lying eyes. I don't care about TTV, and I don't care about their evidence. I saw what happened in Atlanta, in Philadelphia, in Detroit. I've been following the absolute shitshow in Arizona, whose elections were a fraud in 2022, too. If the courts are incapable of doing anything about it, I judge that to be a failure of the courts, and not of the charges, because I know the charges are true, and I won't be argued out of them.

The reason you get ire and downvotes is because you conspicuously highlight which side of the friend-enemy distinction you've chosen.

You are focusing on details that don't matter, and have never mattered, instead of looking at what people have admitted, and what that means for what they will never admit.

If they don't matter and never mattered, then the "mules" movie would not have been made, having been made would not have become popular, and having become popular, would not have been cited by commenters here as evidence that the election was stolen.

I also believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate. That belief does not preclude certain claims as to the specifics of its illegitimacy from being falsified.

If the courts are incapable of doing anything about it, I judge that to be a failure of the courts, and not of the charges, because I know the charges are true, and I won't be argued out of them.

Provably false claims of election interference do neither you nor I any favors, do they? Neither does a retreat to the unfalsifiable. My conclusion that the 2020 election was illegitimate does not stem from the "mules" movie or its claims, so debunkings of that film or its claims do not challenge my conclusions. Why should one think otherwise.

The reason you get ire and downvotes is because you conspicuously highlight which side of the friend-enemy distinction you've chosen.

People should not come here to read things that they agree with written by their friends. They should come here for sound arguments well-made. I think @ymeshkout's arguments have a glaring blindspot in them. But until I have the time and energy to make my case with evidence and arguments, he's under no obligation to make the case for me, and I have no right to object to him making other cases based on his own evidence and arguments.

He thinks this specific movie is lying. Why is he wrong? If he's not wrong, why would you object?

I don't know about KMC, but the things I saw were rules being changed in ways which favor Democrats, blatantly illegally, and the courts just kinda shrugging. But what convinced me that there was more than the usual fraud (over and above election rules changes) going on was the whole Georgia water main thing. The claim by the crazy fraud-claiming Republicans was it happened a certain way. The claimants were called paranoid conspiracy theorists. It turns out it went exactly that way. The people who called them conspiracy theorists tried to split hairs and also claim it didn't matter anyway, and of course that narrative carried the day.

But what convinced me that there was more than the usual fraud (over and above election rules changes) going on was the whole Georgia water main thing.

Rudy Giuliani had the perfect opportunity to present evidence of his claims when he was sued by the Georgia election workers for defamation, but he instead sandbagged and stumbled towards a default judgment. I think he acted that way because he knew he had no defense against defaming them. Do you think my conclusion is unreasonable?

Rudy Giuliani had the perfect opportunity to present evidence of his claims when he was sued by the Georgia election workers for defamation, but he instead sandbagged and stumbled towards a default judgment.

Which is to say he was denied the chance to present evidence of his claims in court through procedural legerdemain.

I think he acted that way because he knew he had no defense against defaming them. Do you think my conclusion is unreasonable?

Yes. I think the court acted that way to prevent him from defending himself. Because maintaining the appearance of integrity of elections is more important than maintaining their actual integrity, apparently.

That's interesting, how do you know that Giuliani actually had evidence to present instead of just bluffing? Assuming he had evidence, why didn't Giuliani just release the evidence elsewhere? I think the reason he didn't release evidence is because he was lying about having had evidence. Which part of my conclusion do you think is unreasonable?

That's interesting, how do you know that Giuliani actually had evidence to present instead of just bluffing?

I don't know what Giuliani had. I do know the court engaged in dirty tricks to prevent him from being able to use it to defend himself. I also know that regardless of what Giuliani had, the sequence of events described by the crazy conspiracy theorists in Georgia did in fact actually happen (and is no longer disputed).

So to loop it back, I said my theory for why Giuliani sandbagged his trial is because he didn't have the evidence he claimed he had. You claimed this was an unreasonable position to hold, but now you're saying that you don't know what evidence Giuliani had? If he hasn't released his evidence outside of court, do you still think it's unreasonable to think the man has been lying about that? At what point would you be willing to accept that explanation?

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Why do you think the 2020 election was illegitimate?

Very briefly, because there is more to legitimacy than the strict letter of the law, most notably when "the letter of the law" is so obviously dependent on adversarial interpretation. A number of laws were broken in the leadup to the election, and a number of misdeeds were committed that were very real, but were not adjudicated as crimes. My assessment is that the collective result of those actions is that rule of law and the democratic process were breached, and that those victimized by such actions should adjust their expectations and commitments accordingly.

I am pretty sure that @ymeshkhout is correct that many and perhaps all the dramatic claims of ballot fraud are either spurious or intentional lies. On the other hand, the FBI really did break the law to illegally spy on an opposition candidate, and the broader set of the FBI and their close associates coordinated with journalists to lie to the public about this and many other facts, in a direct attempt to influence the outcome of the election. That seems like fundamentally illegitimate behavior to me, and the fact that it happened undermines the legitimacy of the subsequent election process. When enough such incidents accumulate, as I observe they did in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the democratic process is not only threatened, but has in fact been compromised.

I think a lot of the support for dramatic fraud theories comes from people recognizing that something is badly wrong, and defaulting to the scripts that society and the media have provided them for what "wrongness" looks like. "election was illegitimate" > "ballot stuffing makes elections illegitimate" > "ballot stuffing happened." This combines with a fair amount of grifting by people seeking to exploit this tendency, along with the general tendency of large, complex, contentious issues to generate considerable amounts of FUD as a simple consequence of mass human friction, distrust, misinterpretation and bias. It seems to me that this tendency is entirely worthy of criticism; you have to have some way of separating the wheat from the chaff, or tribalism will devour you completely. If you are going to discuss the issue with people on the other side, that requires some measure of common ground, and actual, observable facts seem as good a place to start as any.

I think a lot of the support for dramatic fraud theories comes from people recognizing that something is badly wrong, and defaulting to the scripts that society and the media have provided them for what "wrongness" looks like.

This is likely the interpretation with the highest amount of charitability I'd be willing to co-sign on. But I do have a quibble about "the FBI really did break the law to illegally spy on an opposition candidate", are you talking about Trump? Edit: I got confused and forgot you were talking about 2020 instead of 2016, so I don't know what you're referring to here.

He walked back his claims about his campaign being wiretapped, claiming he didn't mean it literally. He said "I used the word ‘wiretap,’ and I put in quotes, meaning surveillance, spying you can sort of say whatever you want" and also that his allegation wasn't really based on any actual evidence but more on "a little bit of a hunch". His DOJ confirmed in a court filing they had no evidence of wiretapping.

Not “his DOJ”; the Deep State’s DOJ.

I’m being a bit snarky but I believe I am accurately representing the stance of those who won’t concede that say a lifelong Republican or Trump-appointed official can be a reliable source of anything that contradicts Trumpian vibes.

I also forgot we were talking about 2020, not 2016.

FC flipped between describing his issues with both elections and I believe he was referring specifically to 2016 on that specific issue. Your lawyerly need for precision is getting in the way of understanding the vibes.

I was actually just trying to point out that “Trump’s X” where X is any government entity or official led by / appointed by Trump is rarely convincing to those who think that Trump was done wrong.

But I do have a quibble about "the FBI really did break the law to illegally spy on an opposition candidate", are you talking about Trump?

Him and his campaign collectively. Does that seem like an unreasonable usage?

The distinction is valid, as I'd straightforwardly assumed that if they were wiretapping his associates and campaign staff, they'd wiretap him as well, but a quick googling of "Trump FISA" reveals that the warrants were actually for his campaign advisors, and don't list Trump himself. I'm also informed by CNN that the investigation of an opposition candidate merely involved "significant errors"; would you likewise argue that the FBI did not break the law in their surveillance of Trump's campaign staff? I certainly don't believe I can point to anyone going to jail over these events; I'm unaware of any convictions, nor even prosecutions, certainly not of anyone senior in the administration or the bureaucracy. Can it really be said that what they did was illegal, in that case?

Edit: I got confused and forgot you were talking about 2020 instead of 2016, so I don't know what you're referring to here.

I was talking about 2016. I am now quite confused. If I'm misinformed, I'm open to being corrected.

I haven't looked into this in a very long time so I don't know if and what part of the FBI's conduct was illegal. The "illegally spy on an opposition candidate" part was too ambiguous for me to parse, compared to "several members of Trump's campaign were surveilled". Everyone is entitled to editorialize, although I would caution about using verbiage that leaves a misleading impression because the involvement between Trump associates and Russia that kickstarted the surveillance is very well-documented and resulted in multiple convictions and didn't come from nowhere. You're of course still absolutely and completely free to argue it was politically-motivated persecution.

Fair enough. I do actually appreciate the precision, and working from memory is difficult.

Trump was certainly not an opposition candidate in 2020.

The amount of fraud necessary to ensure victory in a national election requires a level of coordination that is basically impossible to pull off without generating significant evidence. Doing this against an incumbent using the organs of government is not remotely realistic at any scale.

It’s particularly ironic to compare your sentiments here against documented behavior by Trump explicitly looking to manipulate election outcomes, let alone all the other ways he flouted law and convention. Caring about “legitimacy” above the letter of the law consistently would not lead to a positive view of Trump even if you were entirely correct about the misdeeds against Trump.

The fraud is alleged to have taken place in a handful of counties administered by democrats.

A national election does not turn upon a mere handful of counties.

Somewhere purple like say Maricopa County has tons of conservative voters and government workers; large plots are hard to hide and small ones aren’t enough to matter as claimed.

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Trump lost by 40k votes, which could easily be delivered in only a few counties. The 2020 election was extremely close and Georgia or Michigan having been swung by fraud in 1-3 counties is extremely plausible, but not proven.

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I saw what happened in Atlanta, in Philadelphia, in Detroit.

What exactly did you see? And did you see whatever it was in person, with your own two eyes, in each of the 3 cities you mentioned?

If not, then how exactly did you see “what happened”, and have you considered that whatever you saw may have been selectively curated, edited or manipulated?

I saw the forex markets flip in the middle of the night at the same time that ballot counting centers in those cities reopened without their republican poll watchers in attendance.

My source is my own lying eyes, unfortunately, so I'm not going to be giving you any links.

I'm a complete layman at trading. Can you at least provide some context on what, exactly, was significant about that market flip and what kind of event you've surmised that would connect "market flip" and "election fraud"? Since you've mentioned that, it must've been even more convincing than "ballot counting centers reopening without Republican watchers" alone. But so far, I'm just baffled.

Also, isn't market data public? And wouldn't you need some kind of source besides your eyes to see counting centers reopen in several cities at once?

He would because Philadelphia did not stop counting over night. It had a livestream up the whole time and Republican poll watchers were present. They did file suit to say that they were being kept too far away due to Covid restrictions but nothing about the ballot center closing.

Atlanta is the only one where anything could be seen (with eyes lying or otherwise) as potentially a problem as there was indeed a time period where counting stopped overnight , and resumed and there was no Republican poll watcher present. Legally this wasn't strictly an issue because the independent poll watcher was still there, which is all Georgia law required at the time, but it is at the very least not best practice in a contentious election.

The forex markets reflected a presumed Trump win all evening, and all night, then opened down, reflecting a change to a Biden win, at the same time as those screwy counting centers were being reopened.

That's your observation. I'm asking for your explanation of it.

I saw the 2020 elections. At the time they seemed suspicious, but as much in a badly-run way as in an obviously-stolen way. Then in 2022, mostly-Republican precincts in maricopa and harris counties ran out of ballot paper.

This has significantly changed my priors towards ‘democrats were cheating in 2020’.

Yes, Arizona 2022 significantly increased my certainty that 2020 was illegitimate.

Now that being said, the inability to do something more subtle than that leads me to conclude that 2020 cheating was fairly small, nothing like what trump is alleging.

What was problematic about the Arizona 2022 election?

My overall impression was that the Republicans just ran a slate of terrible candidates and lost. (By a very close margin, in the case of Hamadeh.)

Republican precincts in maricopa county suspiciously ran out of ballot paper(although, yes, Kari Lake and Blake Masters were not good candidates). The same thing happened in Houston and plausibly swung some county level elections(specifically the county judgeship).

I just looked it up again, I'd forgotten about that. It looks like it was problems with toner printing too light before it was fixed, and they were still able to vote, just their ballots were counted separately or something? I'd imagine that would cause some people not to vote, especially with it hitting social media, which yeah, could well have meant that Hamadeh would have won.

Why would you assume that it was interference rather than just an error, though? I'd thought that in those districts the voting was mostly administered by republicans?

Because elections just keep having irregularities that are totally secure and fine but always wind up favoring democrats, in short. I’m not totally familiar with the division of labor in Arizona elections, but in Texas(where Harris county which did the same thing and plausibly swung the county judge election is located), it’s a county level responsibility to run elections, the elections judge has a fancy title but is basically just a clerk. My assumption is that Arizona is the same way; the Maricopa county elections department being responsible for sending out all the equipment(incl ballot paper) and the poll workers just use it.

“Always wind up favoring Democrats”

And yet Republicans win plenty of elections.

Perhaps you recall way back in 2016 when the underdog presidential candidate outperformed polling and won an extremely close election?

I don't care about TTV, and I don't care about their evidence. I saw what happened in Atlanta, in Philadelphia, in Detroit.

I don't think this is coherent. If you believe or especially if you have evidence of X, you should be absolutely frothing at the mouth if a bunch of people yelling loudly about not!X are soaking up a ton of money and attention and trust for grifting to coopt your beliefs. That looks different than Meskhout's position, but it's not ambivalence, either.

The reason you get ire and downvotes is because you conspicuously highlight which side of the friend-enemy distinction you've chosen.

How have I done that and which friend-enemy distinction are we talking about? From my perspective, I'm making an argument that TTV is lying about the election evidence they claim to have. I can see how that would earn me no love from TTV but antagonism is expected when you accuse someone of lying. The relevant question here would be whether my allegation is true or not, and your response doesn't actually address my argument and instead changes the subject. If you don't care about TTV, why respond to a post about TTV?

because I know the charges are true, and I won't be argued out of them.

At least you’re self aware you’re not operating from sound epistemic principles.

In contrast, some sound evidence might sway those of us trying to update as we learn more.

You don’t care about TTV. I’m sure you don’t care about the Mall Ninjas, or whoever the GOP hired to investigate Arizona. It goes without saying that you don’t trust the courts or, God forbid, the mainstream media. They might have some sort of incentive.

So what’s good and trustworthy? Who brought those election irregularities to your lying eyes?

There is an obvious, huge incentive for Trump-hating media to downplay any interference. Likewise for Democrats shoring up tight margins, or election officials struggling to keep their jobs. No surprise there. But the exact same calculus holds for Trump partisans and for self-proclaimed alternative media. It’s the underdog brand. Why is that any more credible?

See, I would understand if people saw this mess and concluded “we’ll never know, fuck this, I’m going to grill in perfect Cartesian doubt.” That’s not what happens. Instead, believers assemble their fantasy team out of all the players who say the right things. It’s just good strategy.

It’s really just a motte-and-bailey.

These guys seem to exaggerate fudge provable fraud.

This survey caught my eye. It’s probably not perfect but it showed 20% of mail-in-voters admitted to some kind of voting fraud.

https://heartland.org/opinion/heartland-rasmussen-poll-one-in-five-mail-in-voters-admit-to-committing-at-least-one-kind-of-voter-fraud-during-2020-election/

It’s by no means a perfect survey. But I think real world awareness is going to tell you the secret ballot was violated and people voted in groups. That’s fraud.

My guess is this kind of fraud likely did tip the election but would be nearly impossible to detect for a court.

I’ve also been looking into Douglas Murray’s Real Education and he makes good points that half the population is below average and a large percentage can only do rudimentary reading comprehension and arithmetic. Truthfully in politics if you want to win you still need a lot of votes from these people. Whatever you want to call it grifting, causing outrage to get people mad enough to vote, etc you need to do it. The left will do it too. As they do with race relations. Flood the zone with accusations and get your people voting. Both sides have dumb people.

Also I’d note there does seem to be some evidence the illegal who shot up the Houston Church had voted but I haven’t dug in enough to verify.

Illegals also count for population which changes government funding, house seats, and electoral college votes. Which feels like another form of voting fraud to me.

This survey caught my eye. It’s probably not perfect but it showed 20% of mail-in-voters admitted to some kind of voting fraud.

https://heartland.org/opinion/heartland-rasmussen-poll-one-in-five-mail-in-voters-admit-to-committing-at-least-one-kind-of-voter-fraud-during-2020-election/

This writeup doesn't inspire much confidence in me. The only details they have on their methodology are the following sentence:

The poll of 1,085 likely voters was conducted from November 30 to December 6, 2023. Among those surveyed in the poll, 33% were Republicans, 36% were Democrats, and 31% were “other”; 32% were 18-39 years old, 46% were 40-64 years old, and 22% were 65 or older.

But how were these "likely voters" determined? Random phone calls? Knocking on doors? Are they all from Portland or spread out over the US? Are they rich or poor? Were they paid for the survey?

They don't even answer how many of these "likely voters" they survey actually voted or voted by mail!

Based on this incredible lack of detail, it's hard for me to take these results seriously. If there's a more detailed writeup somewhere that I missed, I'd love to see it. I didn't see any link to one though.

That Rasmussen survey is crap. Basically all of the described conduct can be legal depending on jurisdiction. Maybe you think it's all colloquially fraud, but that does not make it illegal. Just using my own state as an example:

17% of mail-in voters admit that in 2020 they voted in a state where they are “no longer a permanent resident”

That's totally legal in my state. If you are a US citizen living abroad and maintain a residence in Washington state you're allowed to continue voting at that residence. Or even if you live more permanently in another state but have not registered to vote in that state, you can continue voting at your Washington residence.

21% of mail-in voters admitted that they filled out a ballot for a friend or family member

This is legal in many jurisdictions, including mine, when the voter in question has a disability. From the AARP guide for Washington state:

Voting with a disability

When voting by mail, voters with disabilities can request assistance filling in their ballot from a person of their choice or by contacting their county elections office. Voters are required to sign the ballot envelope, but if the voter can’t sign the envelope, they may make a mark, such as an “X,” and have two witnesses sign the envelope.

When voting in person, those who need assistance filling in their ballot can receive help from either two election officials or a person of their choice. Each polling place is equipped with an accessible voting system. Get more information at the secretary of state’s website.

This also goes to the next Rasmussen question about signing a ballot for a friend or family member. Rasmussen makes it sound nefarious by combining "with or without" their permission but that distinction is pretty important! With permission it can be totally legal.

8% of likely voters say they were offered “pay” or a “reward” for voting in 2020

Again the equivocation between "pay" and a "reward." If someone offers you a sticker for voting, is that a "reward?" Would it be "fraud?" Note also that it is being offered for voting, not for any particular candidate.

I’ll agree I have a concern with the survey. But since you used crap. I’d say the same about your explanations.

You very well know 17% of voters do not have Washington St residence and live in Europe. Even during COVID that isn’t true. My critique would be the number is obviously too high to be believable and indicates trolling. Even peak work from anywhere COVID wasn’t going to close to that.

Yes. Disabilities exists. But 15-20% of voters do not have those disabilities.

I’m not entirely sure what to think of this polls issues. Some of the data seems implausible. But the explanations you are using is what I would call misinformation by giving a true exception. But those reasons don’t seem to be numerically close to same values.

I do think there was a lot of fraud with regards to people sharing answers and helping with a ballot. It’s illegal to campaign at the poll booth in person so I assume that is also illegal when voting at home. And if it’s not illegal I would still call that fraud.

I don't think it's something to be worried about if someone lets a family member fill out their ballot for them. Maybe it's illegal, but when you're saying that an election is fraudulent, and what you mean is "some people illegally let their spouses fill out their ballot for them," that's not what it sounds like you were saying, and it's not what people care about.

I definitely care about that. Perhaps because I think it’s sways elections.

Let’s say you work at Disney. You bs a lot of corporate BS. Everyone is voting at work and showing each other their ballots. Everyone expect you to do the same. Do you think a guy who votes Trump is getting promoted? That is more extreme but this did happen within families. We already knew that Trump outperforms his polling so there were a lot of quiet Trump voters.

For a lot of voting rules a good question is whether each side fights over them so much if they didn’t think they mattered. If their isn’t fraud why wont Dems get rid of extensive mail-in voting unless they think it’s a huge benefit to them.

I intended my explanations to be illustrative, not comprehensive. I agree the numbers seem intuitively implausible but my uncertainty is high given the lack of information about the people surveyed.

I do think there was a lot of fraud with regards to people sharing answers and helping with a ballot.

What do you mean by "sharing answers" here? Is it voter fraud for person A to tell person B how they voted?

It’s illegal to campaign at the poll booth in person so I assume that is also illegal when voting at home. And if it’s not illegal I would still call that fraud.

It's illegal for a campaign representative to stand around a poling place and try and influence voters to vote for their candidate. It is obviously not illegal (and not fraud) for person A to try to convince person B to vote for some candidate in the privacy of their home.

It would seem to be fraudulent and perhaps illegal to tell them who to vote for/pressure them who to vote for while they are preparing/in the act of voting. That is an identical act as campaigning at the election site but sort of worse because many times it also removed their ability to vote independently with a secret ballot. With the sex skews in voting now that can add up.

The strongest claim of election fraud is the violation of the secret ballot and people interfering with peoples ability to vote their conscience. This survey supports it was widespread.

It would seem to be fraudulent and perhaps illegal to tell them who to vote for/pressure them who to vote for while they are preparing/in the act of voting. That is an identical act as campaigning at the election site but sort of worse because many times it also removed their ability to vote independently with a secret ballot. With the sex skews in voting now that can add up.

Pressure, sure. But none of the Rasmussen questions asked anyone if they had pressured or been pressured by anyone. My wife and I often fill out our ballots together. Sometimes debating about ballot propositions or candidates and things. Sometimes I've read the guide and she hasn't and doesn't want to so she just asks me for my opinion, which I give. Do I do something fraudulent and perhaps illegal in such a circumstance?

If you were essentially at the ballot box then the same principles would apply and that would be fraud.

If you read the ballot together and discussed the issues and then half an hour later filled out the ballots in private then I would say it’s fine.

My guess is most people who helped didn’t clearly establish discussing and the process of voting.

I think there’s an issue with having assistance in any form that isn’t witnessed by a judge, or in signing with an X in front of two witnesses when we’re talking about mail in ballots. The issue being that no one outside of the assistant is able to observe the process and make sure that the disabled person is competent enough to understand the things they’re voting on, isn’t being coerced or tricked into voting the way they’re voting, or even that they were involved in the process at all.

All of those things would be obvious if the person has to show up and sign in and follow the simple directions of the verification process. You can also potentially overhear things that would make you question whether the person is 3x oriented (knows where they are, knows the time and the date). If granny rocks up and you hear her say this is a nice bingo hall, you can question it. If she thinks it’s 1955, again, you can question it. If the “helpers” are very obviously saying things like “you want to vote for Biden,” or similarly suggesting voting for or against issues, again, the judges would absolutely be able to notice and question it.

Mail in voting makes all of those things much more difficult to detect. I could absolutely vote in some dementia patient’s name and mark an X then have myself and my partner sign it as witnesses. I could go to the home and find the patient who thinks it’s 1955 and the nursing home is a cruise ship and have them vote.

I can go and tell my gran to vote in the way I want her to either for a reward or to avoid a punishment or even just suggesting something bad happening if she doesn’t. I saw something similar when I used to work at a nursing home ten years ago. The social worker who was evaluating whether patients were fit to return home had a way of sneaking in her politics into her evaluations. She’d add “whether you like him or not” to the question of who’s the president when republicans were in charge and not democrats. It left a very obvious impression that being fit to return home might well depend on supporting the democrats. If these patients were filling out ballots while waiting to see if they were going home would be pressured to vote for democrats. Especially if she’s helping them fill out the ballot. Family members could imply that they won’t see their grandchildren if Trump wins. Or promise them ice cream if they vote Biden.

Mail in ballots make all of that impossible to detect because the only thing you have is a document signed after the fact. If it’s signed with an X and witnesses, there’s no way to know whether or not the person is even aware that they voted or anything else.

These guys seem to exaggerate fudge provable fraud.

Why do you think TTV has been so resistant with offering evidence? I think it's because they were lying about having any and that their primary interest was grifting rather than actually uncovering fraud. Is there any part that you disagree with?

Sorry meant they didn’t have proof.

I don't think announcing the release of a covid vaccine days after the election was in any way illegal. It was probably enough to sway the election.

I don't think implying to major social media networks that the Hunter Biden laptop story was fake was illegal. It was probably enough to sway the election.

I don't think investigating Trump for nearly 3 years for collusion with Russia that ultimately turned out to be nothing was illegal. It was probably enough to sway the election.

I don't think freaking out over covid and insisting that the country completely shutdown and tank the economy was illegal. It was probably enough to sway the election.

None of these things were illegal, but they were all very very dirty and despicable. If they had just done one of them I might chalk it up to coincidence. But all of them happened, and other people can probably list their own examples. With so many events I strongly doubt they were all coincidences. I also say this as someone who never has and never would vote for Trump. I usually get sick of election politics about a year before the election. But I fully get why people have the unwavering sense that the election was stolen, while not having a single shred of "evidence" that applies to a court case.

What do your examples have to do with whether or not TTV is lying? Your post is ambiguous so as best as I can tell (please correct me), you're not disputing that TTV was lying or that they've hoodwinked millions of people, but offering an explanation for why certain demographics would be susceptible to gullibility. Dissecting the reasons behind the gullibility is an interesting topic for sure, but it seems downstream to my argument about whether or not TTV was lying/grifting.

This is the first time I've heard of TTV that I can remember, so I mostly don't care about them. Grifters and liars exist out there. There are whole industries around "essential oils" and "crystal healing" that you could have written about and exposed. Why did you choose to write about TTV specifically? My guess would be because they touch on a wider and more important topic which is the sense of "fairness" people have about the 2020 election.

Since I neither know or care about TTV, I chose to instead just write about the topic that I think makes TTV important.

If I thought the topic was quite literally only about TTV I would have just yawned, minimized the thread, and moved on without commenting.

Truth the Vote is the group that provided the data and the allegations outlined in the Dinesh D'Souza 2000 Mules documentary, which is by virtually any measure the most popular and talked about expose into stolen election claims. The film was watched by millions of people and received widespread media coverage and promotion within conservative media, and also was extensively endorsed by Trump (for what it's worth) and continued to be regularly cited by politicians and other stolen election believers. This wasn't just some obscure fringe group.

The target audience for that group is downstream of TheMotte. I wouldn’t be surprised no one here has an opinion on them.

It’s like comparing a WW2 propaganda film to boost morale to kill some Japs and Germans versus the arguments the upper class has on an election. The goal of making those films is too boost the lower class to do what you need them to do.

This is a refreshingly honest response that is coherent. Assuming it's true, I would wonder what exactly were the lower classes supposed to do. And how effective would creating false-but-exciting documentaries be in the long run if it ends up poisoning the well when it's exposed as a fraud?

No punishment if you get the vibes right. As CJ noted there’s a ton of other stuff going on that looks like a conspiracy to keep Trump out of the White House. Once the average guy sees a lot of things that let’s call it “system fraud” they will just go with it. If the left boosted their credibility then they could perhaps undermine the grifters.

The issue is the grifter feel directional correct even if their specific stuff is false.

I don't think investigating Trump for nearly 3 years for collusion with Russia that ultimately turned out to be nothing was illegal. It was probably enough to sway the election.

Some of it was recognized as illegal. Not that it changed anything.

It doesn't really matter if the 'fortifying' of the elections was legal or not. It didn't matter for the Covid lockdowns either. It doesn't really matter if the 'vaccines' work. What matters is that ~nobody would do anything about it, and if they do, they will get J6'd. Or they will be summarily Babbitt'd.

It doesn't matter how many pieces of evidence you will bring to the courts, the courts will deny your claims and the media won't report on it unless to tar you as a nutjob.

If you want to have free speech, buy your own Twitter and if you want to have justice, build your own nuke-armed country.

Edit: I forgot I should've mentioned this, but it would be really helpful if responses avoided motte-and-bailey diversions. This post is about TTV and their efforts specifically, and though I believe stolen election claims are very poor quality in general, I'm not making the argument that "TTV is lying, ergo other stolen election claims are also bullshit". I think there are some related questions worth contemplating (namely why TTV got so much attention and credulity from broader conservative movement if TTV were indeed lying) but changing the subject isn't responsive to a topic about TTV. If anyone insists on wanting to talk about something else, it would be helpful if there's an acknowledgement about TTV's claims specifically. For example, it can take the format of "Yes, it does appear that TTV is indeed lying but..."

Narrowing the topic to the point of irrelevance seems like a rhetorical trick, and not a nice one.

He wrote an effort-post about a specific thing. Asking for replies to confine themselves to that specific thing is not a rhetorical trick, and certainly not objectionable. If you think he's intentionally picking specific things to exclude other specific things where the evidence is against him, you are free to write your own effort-post about those specific things instead. I do not think it is unreasonable to defer from addressing "all claims of election interference that have ever been made", and confine yourself to prominent, specific instances.

Suppose I write an effortpost about the specifics of the Michael Brown shooting, focusing on the claims made by the public and press versus the evidence accumulated through the subsequent investigations. would it be unfair for me to say that I'm looking for replies to these specific incidents, not to address all other claims of illegitimate police shootings? Would it be reasonable for people to complain that I'm not addressing a shooting that has just become culture-war fodder yesterday, when my entire point is the disconnect between the initial reports and the actual evidence painstakingly accumulated well after the fact? Especially if other posters had made it a point to specifically cite Michael Brown as an example of an illegitimate police shooting?

If you think he's intentionally picking specific things to exclude other specific things where the evidence is against him, you are free to write your own effort-post about those specific things instead.

And in fact it seems like writing that effort post in the comments is a significantly better contribution than arguing incessantly about thread ownership.

Narrowing it to a particular instance is near “the point of irrelevance”?

It “seems like a rhetorical trick” to get concrete and remained focused?

That seems telling.

Just agree it seems they are lying and then perhaps the OP can move to a case where the evidence is more robust.

If I'm making an argument about TTV, it would be nice if the responses are about TTV so I don't see what's irrelevant about that. I can't control what people say but my interest here is wanting to avoid time-wasting Gish gallops and motte-and-bailey diversions, because an unfortunately common rhetorical trick used by some when they encounter arguments inconvenient to their position is to try and change the subject.

You're welcome to suggest an alternative disclaimer wording, and you're also welcome to challenge my premise for why I even included a disclaimer.

you're also welcome to challenge my premise for why I even included a disclaimer.

Thanks -- that's what I'm doing. AFAIK nobody needs your permission to talk about whatever they want on here -- if you only want to respond to points about this particular organization I suppose you are welcome to do so? Still a semi-free country and all that.

Yeah that's true, I agree no one needs my permission! Do you have any opinions about whether TTV is lying or not?

Not really -- like I said it's an irrelevancy. Clearly they are a bit of a weakman though, which is why I'm not super-interested in going through their claims to assess plausibility. Are they the ones who did a bunch of locational data analysis showing (?) suggestive behaviour around ballot drops? They probably aren't lying about that, but of course it doesn't mean their analysis is correct. As I recall the debunkings of it that I saw were pretty misinformed/naive as well though.

Look at it this way -- BLM-associated groups lie all the time about the dangers of being black in America. This doesn't mean that race relations in America are not an interesting thing to discuss, but if I make a post saying "I only want to talk about these assholes who are lying, what a buncha maroons, amirite" I am not making a quality contribution to the discussion.

I have personally seen "2000 mules" brought up here by people who believe the election was stolen, as at least potential evidence to back their claim that the election was stolen. If one side uses it as evidence, why should that evidence not be interrogated?

This doesn't mean that race relations in America are not an interesting thing to discuss, but if I make a post saying "I only want to talk about these assholes who are lying, what a buncha maroons, amirite" I am not making a quality contribution to the discussion.

I am currently planning a post specifically about whether the BLM movement is the worst thing to happen to black people since the end of Jim Crow, and a good portion of it is going to be specifically about the lying. If and when I get around to posting it, I think it will in fact be a quality contribution to the discussion, and you had better believe that if people try to avoid the substantive claims by deflecting to nebulous appeals to systemic racism, I'm going to do my damndest to make it clear that's exactly what they're doing.

If one side uses it as evidence, why should that evidence not be interrogated?

It should! But framing the discussion as "I want to talk about this and only this" is literally using the weakman as a superweapon.

I am currently planning a post specifically about whether the BLM movement is the worst thing to happen to black people since the end of Jim Crow

I look forward to it -- but if you make your post only about BLM(inc) or whatever the org is called that went around buying themselves mansions, and get tetchy if anyone wants to bring anything else into the discussion, you would be engaging in unsavoury (I daresay lawyerly) tactics to shape the discussion.

if people try to avoid the substantive claims by deflecting to nebulous appeals to systemic racism, I'm going to do my damndest to make it clear that's exactly what they're doing.

Sure -- please don't do it by saying 'don't say that bro, I told you this post is not about systemic racisim, it's only about BLM(inc)'.

It should! But framing the discussion as "I want to talk about this and only this" is literally using the weakman as a superweapon.

I don't think BLM or its proponents are fairly described as "weakmen". They were enormously, absurdly, disastrously influential on the shape of our society. The damage they did, and the fact that such damage was so easily predictable in advance, is an extremely important issue for any holistic assessment of American culture.

I can easily imagine a similar view from the other side toward Trump and his movement, and sincerely believe that argument is a valid thing to make.

Sure -- please don't do it by saying 'don't say that bro, I told you this post is not about systemic racisim, it's only about BLM(inc)'.

This comes down to a disagreement on norms, I think. I've repeatedly made top-level posts explicitly asking for specific forms of response, and even explicitly listing other forms of response I'm not interested in replying to. I've seen a lot of other posters, including very high quality ones, do the same. I think it's a legitimate thing to do, provided one does it with the understanding that it's not rulebreaking but merely gauche for other commenters to ignore such requests.

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It’s not a weak man when it’s a major and representative example of its reference class.

Tearing apart BLM for misrepresenting any given issue is also totally justified in a world where it is influential and representative.

Ibram X. Kendi, for example, is literally a weak man in the sense of being bad at thinking, but he’s the voice of his generation on the issue of race and so engaging his material is both wholly justified and necessary.

Similarly, all there are are weak men when it comes to election fraud issues because none of them can actually demonstrate a case.

When all you have is weak men, well, “you go to war with the army they have”; to slightly modify that quote.

Clearly they are a bit of a weakman though, which is why I'm not super-interested in going through their claims to assess plausibility. Are they the ones who did a bunch of locational data analysis showing (?) suggestive behaviour around ballot drops? They probably aren't lying about that, but of course it doesn't mean their analysis is correct.

Yes that's them. They were willing to share their data with D'Souza, but not law enforcement. I'm curious though, what exactly establishes them as a 'weakman'? What standards do you rely on to make that determination on any given topic? If a BLM group made a wildly popular documentary full of lies about the dangers of being black in America and it received favorable media coverage, do you believe that discussing the lies would not be relevant?

I'm curious though, what exactly establishes them as a 'weakman'?

They don't seem very transparent nor particularly rigorous -- do you disagree? Your whole thesis here seems to be that they are a weakman.

If a BLM group made a wildly popular documentary full of lies about the dangers of being black in America and it received favorable media coverage, do you believe that discussing the lies would not be relevant?

Not in a vacuum -- if some black poster just got pulled over and arrested by a bunch of racist hicks I want to hear about it, and would consider it a valid (and valuable) contribution to the discussion.

I admit I don't understand your meaning of weakman. I tried to sketch out how to define the term a while ago and Julian Sanchez's description seems the most fitting:

With a “weak man,” you don’t actually fabricate a position, but rather pick the weakest of the arguments actually offered up by people on the other side and treat it as the best or only one they have.

I don't see how weakman would fit for TTV unless I'm using them to somehow make a claim about all stolen election allegations. I'm not doing that and I already said that would be an invalid argument.

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and I admit at having ongoing puzzlement as to why 2020 stolen election claims retain so much cachet among republican voters and officials.

Yeah, it's a mix of things. I think the main way people end up believing it is due to deep amounts of distrust in mainstream sources and in the political system, combined with a lack of skepticism and maybe some motivated reasoning towards appealing propaganda. When you have Trump promoting this, it gets followers. Combine that with some purported evidence (I think there was some graph of a bunch of new votes added at once in some state), and people think that they're right.

At least, that's the way it comes across to me, when talking about ordinary voters. I'd assume there's some of that for politicians, etc., but that there's more of that for the sake of the political benefit. I remember that being a thing in the lead-up to the 2022 election, of people being more likely to consider/endorse the theory in the hope of gathering support from Trump and so winning the primary.

Two additional things to consider:

  1. "They" did in fact "interfere" with the election, and publicly admitted to it (see: "fortifying" type claims). This may not count legally as election tampering or whatever but may feel that way to the right and disgruntled moderates.

  2. Many voters know someone who hates Trump enough to do this and feel justified doing so. I have several family members and friends involved in government, some of whom I straight up asked "if you had the ability to stop Trump from being elected would you do it?" to which the answer is "yes absolutely, he's literally Hitler." It doesn't take much to believe that some people in the position to do something had the same thoughts.

I earnestly believe that anyone who doesn't get why people have concerns is being obtuse.

As to point 2: personal belief, any presidential candidates would be a fool not to include federal laws requiring higher pay for nursing home aids in his platform. If you think the people who work in nursing homes aren't going to alter the delivery of ballots significantly based on political party, or just fill them out themselves...

see: "fortifying" type claims

"I fortify, you gerrymander, he tampers" with elections, then?

I think part of it is the way the mail-in ballots swung the vote; you went to bed while the count was going on and Trump was leading, you got up in the morning and suddenly Biden had won the state. That seems odd, if you are disposed to think that all the hysteria over Orange Man Bad, and the main plank of support for Biden's campaign being "we can't let Trump win because he is the AntiChrist!", meant that the opposition would do anything and everything to make sure he lost.

Yeah. This was pretty expected because many states counted mail ballots last, which would be leaning Democrat because Republicans were discouraging mail in voting, but it might not feel that way to many voters.

As I have explained elsewhere, the state that I'm most familiar with definitely had quite a few illegal votes cast. With the fact pattern present, I don't think it's possible to determine how many of these votes were fraudulent in reality rather than just cast illegally, and I think it's a Very Bad Thing that an election was conducted where that is impossible to know with any degree of confidence.

That said, I think it is also true that a lot of right-wing content is produced by liars and grifters. I have no idea if TTV is lying and I tend to not think that's the simplest explanation. Instead, I would favor a model of them being largely disinterested in factual evidence, probably genuinely believing that Georgia was stolen, but having a lackadaisical enough relationship with truth and facts that when the rubber meets the road, they're forced to retreat. Since they lack strong evidence but have made strong claims to profit from people that agree with them, they're put in an awkward position - I bet they still think that the election was stolen, but they got far out over their skis with claims that they can't back. They certainly could be lying, but I have to say, I feel like I increasingly hear commentators claiming that people are "lying" for false statements that the speaker may or may not have actually had the relevant information and intent to deceive. I don't care about this group enough to defend them much at all, but I am not confident they're lying, even if I do think they're pandering and grifting without doing the work to prove their claims.

The standard of evidence I would accept for stating that they're lying would be a clear statement from one of their leads saying that they don't believe there is much fraud or that they know Georgia was above the board. I would absolutely grant the claim if they were saying things privately that directly contradict their public statements.

false statements that the speaker may or may not have actually had the relevant information and intent to deceive.

I draw intent to deceive through their strident refusals to cooperate with authorities once they're required to show their evidence, including their willingness to go to jail over it. The alternative theories are 1) they're telling the truth or 2) they're mistaken but don't know it. If they're telling the truth, I've seen no explanation for why they've refused to cooperate with election authorities. Presumably if you have extensive evidence of serious election fraud, you'd want to do something about the fraud itself besides just making a documentary. If they're mistaken but don't know it, I would still expect them to fully cooperate with election authorities who then would be in a position to further investigate their claims and thereafter inform them that they were mistaken. Instead, TTV's consistent refusals to share their evidence showcases they must be aware that their evidence is bullshit and that sharing it would expose that it's bullshit.

If they're telling the truth, I've seen no explanation for why they've refused to cooperate with election authorities.

One possible explanation is that they don't believe the election authorities wish to cooperate with them in good faith. For example, look at what cooperation with the FBI got John Paul Mac Isaac: they sandbagged the case, seized his property and refused to give it back, tried to deny claims that he was cooperating with them, and tried to intimidate him into silence.

He wrote a whole book so it doesn't seem like the silence intimidation worked very well. What property was seized, are you talking about the laptop?

What reasons would TTV have to believe that election authorities in Arizona and Georgia would not cooperate with them in good faith? Why would TTV lie in court and tell a judge that they don't have evidence if they actually did have evidence?

He wrote a whole book so it doesn't seem like the silence intimidation worked very well. What property was seized, are you talking about the laptop?

So, no harm, no foul? Government abuse is fine so long as the person persevered in any case?

What reasons would TTV have to believe that election authorities in Arizona and Georgia would not cooperate with them in good faith?

Are you asking, theoretically, or are you asking me if I know personally of specific reasons they believe this? I don't have first-hand knowledge, no. But I have personal first-hand experience with this sort of thing. I personally witnessed election malfeasance as an independent observer. Ultimately, I did nothing with that information for several reasons: A) I had no physical evidence. I knew what I observed but that's all that I had. I had no ability to corroborate my observations. B) The police and elections commission were involved. The same people that I could complain to. Did I expect they would seriously undertake efforts to investigate themselves of wrongdoing? No, I did not. C) Without physical evidence, I would actually be vulnerable to a defamation claim for taking my observations public. I would at a minimum be subject to the smears of people far more powerful than I am and who would be motivated to deny any wrong doing.

So, I know something was done improperly. I know nobody cares. I know that most people can't fight city hall.

So, no harm, no foul? Government abuse is fine so long as the person persevered in any case?

No. You made a claim that the FBI tried to intimidate him into silence but provided no citations for this assertion. I googled his name to see if I could find this evidence of intimidation on my own and instead the first thing that popped up was the Amazon link to his book with hundreds of favorable reviews. Both the high SEO listing and the number of reviews are contrary to the claim that he was intimidated into silence, and since I haven't seen evidence to the contrary, I'm forced to conclude that whatever attempts that may have been made (which again, hasn't been established) were inconsequential. If they did try to intimidate him into silence, that's very bad even if it was unsuccessful, but the intimidation would be far worse if it was successful.

I would at a minimum be subject to the smears of people far more powerful than I am and who would be motivated to deny any wrong doing.

I appreciate you outlining the reasons why you were averse to reporting what you saw. Do you have any reasons to believe that TTV would have felt similarly stymied? Their work received extensive media coverage and widespread endorsements from powerful figures with deep pockets. If TTV is inadequately equipped to do something about the fraud they claim to have uncovered, is there anyone who is?

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Do you have any reasons to believe that TTV would have felt similarly stymied?

Not directly, I'm simply reasoning by analogy.

If TTV is inadequately equipped to do something about the fraud they claim to have uncovered, is there anyone who is?

No, I've thought since the beginning it was a futile effort because much of what is alleged would require the cooperation of the accused to prove. If it's rigged, there's basically nothing that can be done from the outside. It's hopeless, as an outsider, to force accountability.

I draw intent to deceive through their strident refusals to cooperate with authorities once they're required to show their evidence, including their willingness to go to jail over it.

I was unfamiliar with this incident, but it looks just plain weird. They were jailed at the end of October and conducted themselves in a way that I would say moves me in the direction of agreeing with you:

At the end of the hearing, which lasted less than 20 minutes, Hoyt ordered two marshals to take Engelbrecht and Phillips into custody. The men, who’d been sitting in the gallery joking familiarly with the court’s bailiffs, stepped through the swinging doors and escorted the pair to a holding cell.

Two hours into their stay in jail, True the Vote posted a call for donations on Truth Social.

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32,” the organization posted. “To join us in cause, please donate here.”

On the other hand, they were released a week later and the story is weird:

It’s the newest surprise in an unusual case. Konnech, a small election software company based in Michigan, filed a federal lawsuit in September alleging that True the Vote, and Engelbrecht and Phillips, led a social media campaign of allegations involving a Chinese election-meddling conspiracy that damaged its business and prompted threats to its founder, Eugene Yu.

Yu was arrested shortly afterward, and briefly confined to house arrest, after the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said Yu and Konnech violated the company’s contract with Los Angeles County by illegally giving contractors in China access to data that was supposed to be stored only in the United States. That case is still pending, and Yu has filed for dismissal of the charges.

I don't know. I again decline to defend the competence of TTV or their honesty, but I don't find it particularly implausible that they thought they were working with a confidential informant, that they should not have to disclose that informants identity, and that they were either surprised to be jailed over it or willing to go to jail briefly as a publicity stunt. I don't think this incident provides strong evidence with regard to whether they're lying or not.

Oh wow, yeah that's my bad. I did not know details about this incident and just repeated what Newsmax/AP said in their article. I looked up the court of appeals decision that reversed the contempt finding and it describes an absurdly vindictive district court judge. The judge granted a preliminary injunction which is based on emergency arguments, but the judge included a requirement to disclose the identity of individuals involved and then almost immediately spun up contempt proceedings before anyone could get their bearings. Contempt findings are fairly rare, contempt jailings are extremely rare, and this is one of the most bonkers contempt jailings I've ever heard of.

I agree with you completely that this incident is too weird to tells us much of anything about TTV and their honesty. I edited my post above to reflect that.

This sort of thing is a good part of why it's difficult to seriously prove matters, and why I push so hard about fair and quick access to neutral and open courts.

Konnech eventually sued LA County, which settled for 5 mill. It's not like this stuff would make TTV's claims credible even if they were true -- their claim was just that Konnech had run a poll worker software server in some way that stored data in China, which would have been a PII boo-boo (that a lot of places struggle with) but said nothing about the actual 2020 vote -- and Konnech had a fair defense that the LA criminal lawsuit was based on claims that, even if true, were more contract breach than criminal violation.

But I can't find much out about whether they were true. Given the LA County DA's office makeup at the time charges were filed, it seems weird to have gotten fooled by TTV shitpost-grade claims, but it'd I'm not sure if it's weirder than five million dollars.

If I had to bet, I'd say that TTV are lying (or being so extremely credulous or indifferent to the truth that the difference doesn't matter), but I don't think this is the best evidence for it, simply because whether or not they believe what they're saying, there's quite a lot of reasons to be willing to go to jail rather than reveal sources (or 'sources') or leave a lot of paperwork anywhere that would.

Remember the Biden Journal thing? Plea bargains aren't proof of anything, but the subsequent rulings make it extremely likely that the journal was real. Annnnnd Veritas founders were had their homes and offices stripped in morning raids that left them standing in their skivvies, the feds someone who must have stumbled on random paperwork somewhere leaked privileged information to the New York Times who was in the middle of suing these guys, the informants/thieves singled out for felony prosecution (with a plea), and the whole mess was at least a small part of why decreasing trust from donors and potential sources drove Project Veritas bankrupt.

EDIT: and that wasn't exactly a theoretical example for TTV specifically; they'd been slapped with a Voting Rights Act lawsuit pre-J6 that went to (bench) trial and is in the appeals process today.

If they're telling the truth, I've seen no explanation for why they've refused to cooperate with election authorities.

Because in that case, they think those are the guilty parties? Imagine a case where it's "You accused Peter of stealing from your bank account. Please hand all your evidence over to Peter, who is going to investigate these charges". Mm-hmmm, and when the evidence is all mysteriously shredded or lost in a fire? Pure coincidence?

I don't know anything about the merits of this bunch and their accusations, but a lot of the problem around credibility is the insistence that nope, this was the bestest, most rigorous, most securest, honestest election evah! when the measures introduced to accommodate voting during the Covid epidemic were not secure or rigorous. Honest error and the small amount of dubious votes or counts which happen in every election were surely going on here, and the whole "we'll take as legal any ballots without even a postmark so you have no idea if they arrived in time for the election" decisions don't fill me with confidence about "nope, every single vote was legit". As the linked article says, a vote could be legal in one state but be thrown out in another under the same circumstances. Of course that is going to give space to accusations of deliberate fraud, and the more denial about the chance of any honest mistake, on the part of those defending the result as "most secure ever", just makes the accusations of conspiracy worse.

As the linked article says, a vote could be legal in one state but be thrown out in another under the same circumstances.

Welcome to Federalism.

Because in that case, they think those are the guilty parties?

If they think the election authorities are in on it, why would they bother filing a complaint with them only to retract it when the authorities asked for evidence? And if they had evidence, why would they ask their lawyer to lie in court and say they didn't have evidence? I posit it's because they're lying.

Edit: I forgot I should've mentioned this, but it would be really helpful if responses avoided motte-and-bailey diversions. This post is about TTV and their efforts specifically, and though I believe stolen election claims are very poor quality in general, I'm not making the argument that "TTV is lying, ergo other stolen election claims are also bullshit". I think there are some related questions worth contemplating (namely why TTV got so much attention and credulity from broader conservative movement if TTV were indeed lying) but changing the subject isn't responsive to a topic about TTV. If anyone insists on wanting to talk about something else, it would be helpful if there's an acknowledgement about TTV's claims specifically. For example, it can take the format of "Yes, it does appear that TTV is indeed lying but..."

Boring night before the long weekend? Fair enough, I suppose

In that case, I decline to defer your attempted gerrymander on grounds of being a motte and bailey diversion by a repeated-iteration commentator.

To say this is not the first time you have posted on the subject of the 2020 election would be an understatement, and in those times you have regularly sought to use specific cases as a broader disproof to concerns or condemnations or malbehavior of the 2020 elections as unfounded/unjustified/'very poor quality in general', while not ignoring and or acknowledging (unless when forced, to the bare minimum as forced) said issues. You likewise have a pattern of then later referring to those selectively narrow motte-arguments in serve of more expansive baileys, such as claiming no substantive or well-founded issues were raised in previous iterations, or otherwise minimizing the existence or legitimacy of counter-positions, generally expressed by claimed befuddlement on how people could believe a broader topic despite numerous presentations to you.

Then there's the point that someone claiming they are not making an argument is not the same as not making the argument. Arguments do not have to be explicitly made to be made- this is the purpose of metaphor, as well as allusion, or comparison, and especially insinuation, which are techniques you have used in previous iterations of your reoccurring hobby horse pasting and examples can be found here. It's also the defining characteristic of a motte and bailey argument- a denial that the argument is the expansive claim, but really only the narrower one.

As your utilization of narrative techniques is retained, and your practice of referring to previous arguments is appropriate meta-knowledge for how you present arguments, your previous positions are a legitimate basis for understanding and interpreting your raising of a familiar topic. Said topic, the hobby horse you yourself acknowledge indulging in, is not TTP specifically, but 2020 election doubt more broadly. While asking people to refrain from acknowledging the bailey is indeed a form of motte defense, it still remains a motte and bailey argument of familiar form and purpose.

As such, it remains appropriately helpful for anyone wishing to contest the background argument to ignore the bailey, which is raised to defend the motte.

If only someone could provide compelling evidence so that this lawyer guy would stop trying to beat this dead horse.

Too bad it won’t be TTP, apparently.

Actually though, with complex and nebulous issues it’s often the case that rigorously examining a particular issue/example where some evidence is available is the only way to make any progress and not have the discussion spiral out of control.

There’s an asymmetry here where all we skeptics of election fraud theories can do is address claims that are made and evaluate evidence that is provided. We can’t prove the negative, so identifying say dishonesty from a prominent promoter of election fraud theories is about the best approach possible.

Lawyerly systematic approaches can get in the way of having fun though.

The desire to remain control of the conversation is a substantial part of why the lawyer guy's broader position continues to lack the consensus he regularly tries to build. By denying previously provided compelling evidence of misconduct warrinting doubt as compelling, and then insisting later that only uncompelling arguments were ever offered, not only does the presenter lose credibility regarding the root argument, but lose credibility as an interlocuter in subsequent repetititions. It's not that a negative needs to be proved, it's that repeat iterations have demonstrated that there's no point in further engaging with positives that will be inevitably denied/diminished/claimed in the future were never provided.

This is without the acknowledgement that the lawlerly systemic approach isn't an approached to uncover truth, but to win a legal argument in a court of law- but coming in the context where only around 1-in-5 people trust lawyers. Unlike more respectable professions, which rely on public trust for deference, lawyers are owed no such deference due to the lack of trust.

It is his form of fun, however, so he'll enjoy his otherwise quiet night none the less.

I guess I missed the weeks when the compelling evidence was provided, and so did TTP. But see broadening the discussion to any old theory put forth gets very messy very fast and makes it easier for shoddy claims and poor evidence to survive scrutiny.

Broadening the discussion to avoid being pinned down is a classic approach, and so being unable to wriggle due to preestablishef constraints is unpleasant.

The lawyerly approach is about the best one possible in an area of competing sides and contested evidence, and our local lawyer’s approach is even better in that he’s not going to win here on some technicality or strange legal theory.

“Who cares about these guys they’re not the real case” seems a bit convenient when they’ve been so prominent in their field.

I guess I missed the weeks when the compelling evidence was provided, and so did TTP.

There were literally years ago, so it's easily forgiven (and forgotten). They're not of much interest to anyone anymore.

But see broadening the discussion to any old theory put forth gets very messy very fast and makes it easier for shoddy claims and poor evidence to survive scrutiny.

Time and censoring effects also make it harder for true claims and relevant evidence to be re-resurrected well after the fact, especially when contrary to significant media interests and the effects of the already-difficult nature of web indexing. Multiple deliberate efforts have taken course over the last several years to suppress information declared as disinformation by authorities who regularly had incentives, and occasionally were even caught, pursuing said incentives for information shaping.

The lawyerly approach is about the best one possible in an area of competing sides and contested evidence, and our local lawyer’s approach is even better in that he’s not going to win here on some technicality or strange legal theory.

Frank disagreement. The lawyerly approach is not the best possible approach to revealing truth in an area of competing sides and contesting evidence, as the lawyerly approach is to declare certain forms and sources of evidence as off-limits for consideration regardless of veracity, and then to declare the absence of evidence a victory for lack of contestation rather than address reasons why evidence might not have been presented (or accepted). The lawyerly approach also often favors demands for selectively applied processes, violations of which are invitation for censure, to the degree that even the defense against which can widely be recognized as arbitrary harassment, i.e. the process is the punishment.

The lawyerly approach is generally a preferable approach to settling disputes, but settling disputes is tangential to addressing the truth of a matter, and the truth may or may not be of active hinderence to the lawyerly process.

“Who cares about these guys they’re not the real case” seems a bit convenient when they’ve been so prominent in their field.

Truths are often convenient. Such as the truth that the TTT is not particularly prominent, because the constellation of reasons for skeptics has been far too diverse for any singular party, but specific parties have been signal boosted by those who like to utilize them.

You’re conflating an informal “lawyerly approach” with the formal court system and assigning the known epistemic and other shortfalls of the latter to the former. Here, we can choose the advantages and avoid at least most of the disadvantages.

We obviously have a dispute here, and trying the case of a specific part of it is potentially useful in getting closer to the truth.

I cannot fully express how funny it is to imagine that there was compelling evidence for significant fraud, that was available then and not now, and that this is not of interest to anyone.

There was extreme scrutiny of the 2020 election, many claims of fraud, and some evidence provided.

The evidence fell short of the claims then and continues to.

By denying previously provided compelling evidence of misconduct warrinting doubt as compelling, and then insisting later that only uncompelling arguments were ever offered

Can you cite a specific example of compelling evidence that I have denied? Once again to assist you, here are every single one of my reddit motte posts archived in this google spreadsheet.

you have regularly sought to use specific cases as a broader disproof to concerns or condemnations or malbehavior of the 2020 elections as unfounded/unjustified/'very poor quality in general'

I think if there's a bunch of specific cases that turn out to be unfounded, then it's justified to presumptively downgrade the broader claim only as a heuristic. I don't believe I've ever used a specific election fraud case to disprove the broader election fraud claim, but if I did then I disavow it now because that's not a valid argument. This would be akin to saying "Michael Richards never killed someone" as a way to establish that no Seinfeld cast member has ever killed someone.

You likewise have a pattern of then later referring to those selectively narrow motte-arguments in serve of more expansive baileys, such as claiming no substantive or well-founded issues were raised in previous iterations, or otherwise minimizing the existence or legitimacy of counter-positions, generally expressed by claimed befuddlement on how people could believe a broader topic despite numerous presentations to you.

Can you cite a specific example of my evasion/obstinance? To assist you, I have every single one of my reddit motte posts archived in this google spreadsheet.

Then there's the point that someone claiming they are not making an argument is not the same as not making the argument. Arguments do not have to be explicitly made to be made- this is the purpose of metaphor, as well as allusion, or comparison, and especially insinuation, which are techniques you have used in previous iterations of your reoccurring hobby horse pasting and examples can be found here.

Can you cite a specific example of an allusion or insinuation that you believe I've made in a surreptitious manner? If explicitly disavowing an argument is insufficient for you, is there anything I can say that could possibly militate against the mind-reading? I'm often accused of holding positions I either never made or explicitly disavowed, and at some point I have to conclude that the reason people fabricate and refute arguments I've never made is borne out of frustration at apparently being unable to respond what I actually said. This post from @HlynkaCG remains the best example of this bizarre trend, where he's either lying about or hallucinating something I've never come close to saying.

As such, it remains appropriately helpful for anyone wishing to contest the background argument to ignore the bailey, which is raised to defend the motte.

Sure, I have an admitted interest in the overall 2020 election claims. If I made a post that aimed to claim that all of those were bullshit, then obviously pushing back on that is fair game. The reason I included that disclaimer was explicitly to avoid Gish galloping or similar distractions when discussing specifics. The scenario I have in mind is someone who believes that the 2020 election was stolen comes across the TTV claims I've made, but is frustrated because they realize they can't substantively rebut them. They're reluctant to admit that out loud, because they see arguments as soldiers and believe that conceding TTV to be liars will further erode their overall claims about the 2020 elections. Accordingly, their only viable response is evasion; doing everything possible to avoid discussing TTV directly, and instead preemptively changing to a different subject they believe to be more defensible.

Edit: I'm mindful that we've discussed many of these same issues a year ago almost to the day. I appreciate that you've tempered your accusations somewhat, and I nevertheless would be eager for specifics to support your claims.

I think if there's a bunch of specific cases that turn out to be unfounded, then it's justified to presumptively downgrade the broader claim only as a heuristic.

Fortunately this is simple hueristic to meet for the position you oppose. There are a lot of specific claims that electoral corruption does not happen in American electoral politics, and there are plenty of historical findings to the contrary.

I don't believe I've ever used a specific election fraud case to disprove the broader election fraud claim, but if I did then I disavow it now because that's not a valid argument. This would be akin to saying "Michael Richards never killed someone" as a way to establish that no Seinfeld cast member has ever killed someone.

It would be a terrible argument, and yet relying on weakmen arguments is something you have done repeatedly in the past, are charged with doing in the present, and are fully expected to do in the future. As such, your offer of refutation is not accepted, or believed.

It is a very characteristic part of your hobby horse, and is not expected to change.

Can you cite a specific example of my evasion/obstinance?

Yes.

This thread is one of them.

Can you cite a specific example of an allusion or insinuation that you believe I've made in a surreptitious manner?

Yes, assuming you are using surreptitious is the common vernacular (as a synonym of sly, as in cunning), rather than an attempt at adding a qualifier for a different definition (as in 'secretely') that can never be met by virtue of being an openly visible word, and thus not a secret, while smuggling the connotation of the other without committing to either.

If explicitly disavowing an argument is insufficient for you, is there anything I can say that could possibly militate against the mind-reading?

This would be another example an insinuation, as the argument presents the accusation as based on mind-reading, rather than observation of iterative behavior. The insinuation furthers a further implication to the audience, as opposed to the other party, that no reasonable defense could be made against such and thus the accusation is unreasonable.

The reasonable defense against reoccuring bad behavior is to not conduct the bad behavior, though by its nature this requires controlling one's conduct before, rather than after, the bad habits re-occur. However, you enjoy your snipes too much to not, as you have with your post-posting edit here.

I'm often accused of holding positions I either never made or explicitly disavowed, and at some point I have to conclude that the reason people fabricate and refute arguments I've never made is borne out of frustration at apparently being unable to respond what I actually said. This post from @HlynkaCG remains the best example of this bizarre trend, where he's either lying about or hallucinating something I've never come close to saying.

While it is certainly flattering to conclude your doubters are hallucinating liars who make up their basis for distrusting you, you are not forced into that conclusion.

Sure, I have an admitted interest in the overall 2020 election claims.

I believe the British would characterize this as a modest understatement.

Edit: I'm mindful that we've discussed many of these same issues a year ago almost to the day. I appreciate that you've tempered your accusations somewhat, and I nevertheless would be eager for specifics to support your claims.

Specifics have been provided, as they have been provided in the past, as you have denied being provided them in the past, and as you will continue to not link to as part of the denial.

And with that, have a good night.

Ok, I was hoping for something new and I'll keep my mind open towards that. We're repeating the cycle from a year ago where I ask for specifics and you scoff at having to provide proof for something so patently obvious. I've outlined before the reasons I believe your reluctance to substantively engage by providing specifics:

I can't prove this conclusively because I can't read your mind, but I strongly suspect that your refusal to provide arguments because I'm purportedly acting in bad faith is just a pretextual excuse (a lie) used by you as a dodge to avoid defending your beliefs or having them scrutinized. I suspect that anti-Trump arguments in particular make you upset, but because you are unable to construct a legitimate counter-argument, you resort to a dogged and persistent response campaign which compensates for the lack of substance with a heavy dose of vitriol.

I'm again open to having my mind changed but you're still responding with riddles and disdain even after a lengthy sabbatical.

Do you want to do a Bailey episode about this? You can quiz me all you want about whatever you want! You'd keep both our raw recordings and can do whatever with it! Let me know my man, otherwise sleep tight my friend.

You’re abusing the concept of a weak man argument to shelter an unjustified position.

All there are here are weak arguments and so addressing any one of them is not a weak man approach.

You’re smart enough to recognize this instance is BS, and then failing to be consistent and extrapolate, and instead trying to claim this is a flawed approach because it’s picking on a dumb case.

It’s all dumb cases because every one falls apart upon close examination.

It’s all dumb cases because every one falls apart upon close examination.

I want to focus on Wisconsin for a moment, because it's the state I'm most familiar with and I have never received a rebuttal from someone that disagrees with me about the quality of the election. This is a state with about 3 million votes, decided by about 20,000 votes, for reference. I think this report is a good summary of some of the known irregularities and mistakes.

This widespread adoption of absentee ballot drop boxes, not provided for under Wisconsin law, was correlated with an increase of about 20,000 votes for Joe Biden, while having no significant effect on the vote for Trump. WILL does not claim that the voters who used drop boxes were ineligible voters or should have had their votes rejected. But the ad hoc adoption of absentee ballot drop boxes without established rules, parameters, or security presents an election vulnerability and a challenge to state law.

More than 265,000 Wisconsin voters adopted the ‘indefinitely confined’ status, meaning they received an absentee ballot and were exempt from the statewide photo ID requirements. The number of indefinitely confined voters increased from 66,611 in 2016 to 265,979 in 2020. Given the substantial increase in the number of such voters, it is almost certain that many voters improperly claimed “indefinitely confined status".

Many of these votes were cast unlawfully. Additionally, clerks in Dane and Milwaukee counties used the presence of the pandemic to encourage voters to adopt an uncommon status called “indefinitely confined.” The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously rebuked the Dane County clerk for encouraging voters to adopt this status in March 2020. In November, it confirmed that a person who did not wish to leave home due to the pandemic was not “indefinitely confined.”

The votes cast by ‘indefinitely confined’ voters raise a number of red flags. While we cannot infer any malignant intent on the part of these voters, this means that many votes were cast without the requirement of photo identification. 54,259 ballots were cast by individuals who have never shown a voter ID in any election. 3,718 were cast from addresses that were on the 2019 Mover’s List. 7,747 failed their DMV check when they registered.[/quote] Another story I bumped into later was this one:

Wake is one of 95 people in Dane County who altogether cast more than 300 ballots in past elections despite being on the state’s list of people deemed incompetent to vote, according to a county clerk’s office review of more than 1,000 records from the state’s list. The state elections agency is reviewing all 22,733 entries to ensure the list is accurate, spokesperson Joel DeSpain said.[/quote]

“The system for identifying those voters and getting them out of the voter rolls is not working,” said Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, whose office conducted the review of that county’s ineligible voter list at Wisconsin Watch’s request. McDonell said he has informed local election clerks of any discrepancies.

Presumably the first 1,000 were selected basically at random and showed a 9.5% voting rate among people that had been deemed mentally incompetent and weren't allowed to vote. If that rate held, that would be over 2,000 votes from ineligible, mentally incompetent voters, just in Dane County. I don't know if other counties are suffering from similar errors; if they aren't, that would suggest something about the direction of bias, if they are, that would tell us something about the total number of illegally cast votes.

In any case, I don't think it's plausible to arrive at illegal ballot counts that are lower than these. Throw in various other irregularities, such as reported behaviors at nursing homes where standard election policies weren't followed due to Covid, illegal ballot-curing procedures by clerks filling in witness information, and other shenanigans, and we're going to keep going up. I would personally feel comfortable saying that hundreds of thousands of votes were plainly illegal, as these people were obviously not actually indefinitely confined, but I understand someone objecting and saying that's a weird one-shot deal that won't happen again. That over 50,000 of those ballots were cast by people who have never shown an ID in an election makes that my absolute lower-bound for illegal votes though, which would put us around ~2%.

I haven't thoroughly explored other states, but I would be surprised to find that they actually did a lot better in 2020. In some of them, it wouldn't make a material difference for national elections, but I would expect that to only result in even sloppier procedures because there isn't going to be anyone taking all that close of a look at whether California's vote count is garbage when they eventually get around to delivering sometime in December.

From your report's summary:

There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. In all likelihood, more eligible voters cast ballots for Joe Biden than Donald Trump. We found little direct evidence of fraud, and for the most part, an analysis of the results and voting patterns does not give rise to an inference of fraud.

Seems like this is the key takeaway for anyone.

Is your ultimate point that elections have security issues, or that the 2020 election was actually stolen from Trump? People who want to argue the first are free to do so, I'm open to the idea that we can tighten election security, especially for state and local elections (where more serious claims appear to be made).

Before I go looking at the murky details, I want to commend you for simply having presented a case that could actually matter.

The issue right off the bat though is if it’s an identified issue then why has no investigation not resolved whether there was, in fact, a plot?

Smoke, sure, was there a fire though?

Because the deep state/cathedral/whatever is preventing an investigation to get to the bottom of it.

Bold claim when several of the swing states are GOP-controlled and Trump was the incumbent.

The scale and amount of effort it would take to execute such a plot could not be concealed in a situation where all sides were on high alert for foul play.

Elections are besides the point if you believe dark forces can simply dictate outcomes without being caught. I wonder what they were up to in 2016.

The incredible thing here is that the report you cite from WILL concluded there was no widespread fraud, despite the documented issues being real problems.

Multiple cases and investigations did not find sufficient evidence to overturn the result.

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-wisconsin-lawsuits-presidential-16d90c311d35d28b9b5a4024e6fb880c

So my priors are entirely reinforced here by evidence you presented: that while certain states were shitshows, there was no “rigged” or “stolen” election.

You’re falling for one of the oldest tricks in the book. Who cares what the conclusion says? What does the actual evidence imply? @gattsuru had a post just last month that discussed an academic’s open, unpunished admission that he lied in the conclusion of one of his papers in order to hide an inconvenient result. This report is just more of the same. The authors put all of the inconvenient evidence in the body, said whatever they wanted in the conclusion, and trusted that most people would simply take the conclusion at face value, as you’re doing here.

You’re conflating academic impropriety with election issues that were investigated by multiple parties and the legal system.

You’re falling for the old trick where you can’t accept suggestive evidence didn’t lead to a well-established conclusion you favor.

My claim isn't that it was rigged or stolen (and I think this reply goes for @drmanhattan16 as well), it's that hundreds of thousands (or at least tens of thousands) of votes were cast illegally in a fashion that subverts election security. The result is not an obviously rigged election, but an election where there are votes of questionable legality that make up more than the margin of error. Additionally, as covered in this post the issues were substantially concentrated in deep blue counties and likely made it systemically easier to vote in an illegal fashion.

I want to be very clear - I am not trying to skirt the core point or handwave my way from this to mass fraud. I don't believe that happened. My model isn't that there are groups concocting totally fake ballots. What I do believe is true:

  • Dane and Milwaukee counties encouraged voting illegally in a way that would increase the vote counts in those counties relative to legal procedures.

  • This is not a result of a conspiracy, it's a result of their actual preferences with regard to maximizing ballot access and being the kind of people that wanted to take Covid very seriously.

  • Election security measures are poor enough that people vote illegally on a regular basis (see the mentally adjudicated portion above), which plausibly enables ballot theft by family members. I have no hypothesis on the directionality of this outcome, but it creates doubt about electoral legitimacy, which is very bad for obvious reasons.

  • The poor electoral security that was the hallmark of 2020 likely did enable at least some bad actors to cast fraudulent or knowingly illegal ballots. I expect that this is a small number, I have no good way of putting a good number on it, but it is (again) very bad that poor electoral security even makes this a possibility.

Taken as a whole, I cannot overstate how damaging to institutional trust it is to have counties and states just making up new rules on the fly that violate black letter law. When leadership elects to behave this way, they're shredding goodwill and trust in an unsustainable fashion. I can (and do!) have a poor opinion of groups like TTV, I don't agree with the people that call the election rigged or stolen, but I find brushing past just how bad 2020 was with nothing further, "well, you can't prove those votes were fraudulent" to be really frustrating. I'm not going off the conspiracy deep-end about Soros county clerks or something, I am entirely sincere that I actually want to improve the quality of elections because I think it will help prevent the dangerous destabilization of my country.

I can acknowledge every point you made and it doesn’t excuse the motivated reasoning, grifting, and conspiratorial thinking whatsoever.

We can and should do better.

We also can and should directly rebut unjustified claims trying to overstate and concoct problems.

We should not carry water for those who want to delegitimize any election where they don’t like the result.

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I will also chime in to say, as someone who has felt frustrated by many the election fraud claims, these are all reasonable and important concerns and I absolutely agree with the overall need to have high quality election processes.

@Dean and I have gone round and round on this issue for literally years where he continues to insist that I am ignoring blockbuster evidence, but then simultaneously he'll write very long posts articulating why he's justified in refusing to mention this blockbuster evidence I'm ignoring. A sample of responses to my (many many many) requests:

Dean is intelligent, knowledgeable, and articulate on a wide array of topics (particularly in the realm of geopolitics). The only topic I'm aware where he has maintained this years-long stonewalling vow is on the 2020 election, and the only explanation that makes sense to me is that he's concerned that I'd eviscerate his supposed blockbuster evidence. I admit the weakness in this explanation is that I don't understand how someone who is otherwise intelligent could compartmentalize to this degree without self-awareness.

I admit the weakness in this explanation is that I don't understand how someone who is otherwise intelligent could compartmentalize to this degree without self-awareness.

Oh I do. I know many brilliant, otherwise sane, people who believe Joseph Smith saw an angel and translated golden plates telling the story of Hebrews who lived in the New World—in direct contradiction of all available evidence and the entire fields of archeology, genetics, linguistics, and probably several more.

Once you have a trapped prior or anchor/sacred belief, the human mind warps around it so well, and polite society has to allow this.

Yes, you're right. We used to have a sort of peace treaty around discussing religious beliefs where we generally left people alone and didn't badger them about it, even if you think the beliefs are completely delusional. The problem is we don't have a similar convention for folks who want their non-religious beliefs to be similarly immune from evidentiary scrutiny, perhaps because admitting the desire for immunity is a bridge too far. The culture war topics for me that fit this bill the most are 2020 stolen election claims on the right, and the incoherent and vague concept of gender identity on the left.

There are a lot of specific claims that electoral corruption does not happen in American electoral politics, and there are plenty of historical findings to the contrary.

I'm not trying to wade into this particular fight, but since I have a followed it for its many years, I am confused by this statement. Are you saying that @ymeshkout claims as a general statement that electoral corruption does not happen in American electoral politics, that he has made specific claims about it not happening in particular instances, or that other people have claimed it doesn't happen? Because I am pretty sure the first is false and the last is irrelevant. Probably someone somewhere has at some point said "America never has electoral corruption," but hardly anyone (especially here on the Motte) would literally claim it's something that never, ever happens (whether or not they agree that the 2020 election was stolen).

While it is certainly flattering to conclude your doubters are hallucinating liars who make up their basis for distrusting you, you are not forced into that conclusion.

I think you're being uncharitable here too. While calling @HlynkaCG a "hallucinating liar" would be a bit harsh, he quoted something @HlynkaCG accused him of saying which he claims he did not. Either he did in fact say that (in which case @ymeskhout is either lying or suffering from faulty memory) or he didn't (in which case @HlynkaCG is either lying, misremembering, or mistaken).

If I seem like I am coming down on @ymeskhout's side here, it's because from personal experience I can't help sympathizing with someone who gets accused of saying things he didn't and then gets further attacked when he objects to this. FWIW I think both of you would do well to maybe speak a little more directly (and charitably) instead of using long circumlocutory paragraphs to say "You're a lying liar who lies" as verbosely as possible.

I'm not trying to wade into this particular fight, but since I have a followed it for its many years, I am confused by this statement. Are you saying that @ymeshkout claims as a general statement that electoral corruption does not happen in American electoral politics, that he has made specific claims about it not happening in particular instances, or that other people have claimed it doesn't happen?

The later, as part of a counter-argument by negation by demonstrating the heuristic is not a rebuttal when it can simply be reversed to press to the opposite conclusion.

I think you're being uncharitable here too. While calling @HlynkaCG a "hallucinating liar" would be a bit harsh, he quoted something @HlynkaCG accused him of saying which he claims he did not. Either he did in fact say that (in which case @ymeskhout is either lying or suffering from faulty memory) or he didn't (in which case @HlynkaCG is either lying, misremembering, or mistaken).

I would disagree, as the structural argument is broader motte and bailey. The claim is not a specific instance of Hlynka, but a broader position.

If I seem like I am coming down on @ymeskhout's side here, it's because from personal experience I can't help sympathizing with someone who gets accused of saying things he didn't and then gets further attacked when he objects to this. FWIW I think both of you would do well to maybe speak a little more directly (and charitably) instead of using long circumlocutory paragraphs to say "You're a lying liar who lies" as verbosely as possible.

Speaking more plainly is what has gotten mod action in the past, and I wasn't intending to go into it after letting it sit for a night, but since you asked I'll try to make it as direct as necessary and consider this exchange in the thread done. (I have tried to not let arguments carry on past a day and intend to ignore/not make further public posts on this topic today, but if you'd like to PM, I will respond later.)

Among ymeshkout's bad faith habits is that you can provide him effort posts with the citations or examples he requests, and then he will lie in later arguments- or even in the same discussion threads- and deny such examples were provided to him, and use the argument of absence to claim a further point. When pressed sometimes he will deflect on personal-subjective grounds, sometimes he will do so on grounds of gish-gallop refusal, and sometimes he will simply not acknowledge... and then in the next iteration, he will repeat the claims of absence, and challenge for the same points previously provided, and repeat the same cycle. In the process he will regularly mis-represent other people's positions, even when directly corrected, and will affect incomprehension.

My position- which he used to directly link downthread of in the old-reddit- is that this is lying. That mis-representing other people's stated and elaborated positions despite direct clarification is lying. That claiming that no explanation or sources were offered is lying. That making broad insinuations that the only conclusion he can come to about his opponents no longer engage him to the detail he insists is because they are irrational and capricious is lying. And that, having disregarded the posts and positions offered to him only to claim that none were offered to him, that he is owed no such effort or citations in the future. Because, per the position, he would simply ignore the points made anyway and later claim weren't provided, while continuing to make claims and profer links which misrepresent the person's engagements. (Which he continues to do.)

The later, as part of a counter-argument by negation by demonstrating the heuristic is not a rebuttal when it can simply be reversed to press to the opposite conclusion.

I've read this sentence several times and I admit I am still not sure what you're trying to say here. My best stab at it is: people generally claim American electoral politics is (relatively) free of corruption and therefore we should assume any given election was free of corruption unless provided with extraordinary evidence of said corruption, and @ymeshkout is leaning on that as the "heuristic" that we should dismiss claims of the 2020 election being fraudulent. Is that... close? I swear I am not trying to be flippant or cute here, you're just constructing such an abstruse argument here that I literally cannot parse it.

I would disagree, as the structural argument is broader motte and bailey. The claim is not a specific instance of Hlynka, but a broader position.

Well, maybe you think that @ymeskhout generally claims his opponents are "hallucinating liars" (I do not actually recall him saying this, though as I noted above, you do both tend to throw accusations of dishonesty rather freely), but this was a specific instance of @HlynkaCG claiming he said something which he claims he did not.

Speaking more plainly is what has gotten mod action in the past

I am not trying to trick you into saying something I will mod you for. Directly calling someone a liar usually does result in mod action, yes, but I'd rather you directly say "I think this claim is false and here's why" and even "And I think you know it's false" (which is pretty close to calling someone a liar, but at least leaves room for the possibility that you're mistaken) than write long paragraphs which read a lot like "You're a big fat liar and I'm trying to use enough words to avoid being modded for calling you a liar."

FWIW, how you put it in the subsequent paragraphs (listing all the ways that you think @ymeskhout is arguing in bad faith and being dishonest) are acceptable IMO. Not saying I agree with you, and he is certainly entitled to rebut it, but I consider saying concretely "This is what I accuse you of saying/doing in the past and I think that constitutes lying" is within bounds.

I'd rather you directly say "I think this claim is false and here's why" and even "And I think you know it's false"

I would love it if this happened! Specifics are so much better than riddles

For anyone reading who is passively curious, I've asked Dean many many many times to precisely identify any false statements I've made or other instances of dishonesty and the most substantive explanation I was able to wrestle out of him in recent memory was this post from more than a year ago where he links to threads containing my purported dishonesty, but refuses to specify any further. I've looked through all the threads he linked and couldn't identify any false statements or anything else to substantiate his allegations. I understand that Dean is perennially averse to supplying details, but if ANYBODY reading this can provide ANY insight into what he's claiming, I would be extremely grateful!

Like Dean, I have also followed this topic over the years and had intense disagreement with you and felt extremely frustrated with your response patterns.

Unlike him I'm not convinced you are lying exactly, but with respect to this specific topic (and maybe also the "unequal treatment of BLM protesters vs. Jan 6 people) you behave in a way that is out of sync with the rest of your presentation and temperament, and is not unlike Darwin (as a point of comparison).

Darwin may or may not realize what is doing or how what he is doing is perceived by others.

You may not recognize what you are doing and how it is perceived by others.

But I believe a reasonable person's (here: Dean) subjective experience of your argumentation style with respect to this topic could be labeled "lying," by virtue of the way you present it.

As others elsewhere is chain have noted, it seems like you are approaching this in a specific way (?legal rhetoric style?) that you have much practice in, and value, but does nothing for the people you are disagreeing with in this context.

You I suspect are a good lawyer, and your proficiency with this style disincentivizes people from replying with specifics because you frequently circle back to that style and use it well, which is not the conversation and discussion they want to have and feels like arguing about apples when they want to be talking about trains.

I appreciate that you took the time to answer but I've read what you said multiple times and I can't identify anything actionable. What exactly is my argumentation style and how exactly would it give someone the subjective experience that I'm lying? What is the specific way I'm approaching this topic and how does it stymie people who disagree with me? It would help if you illustrated your concerns with specific examples of things I've said, and ideally offered suggestions on alternative ways I could convey myself.

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I don’t know why people discount the fact that Trump isn’t coming to “they stole the election from me” from some kind of neutral position. Trump is a historically, notoriously thin skinned man who lashes out at a lot of criticism and almost compulsively responds to it (eg tweeting @ minor columnists, celebrities or TV hosts who criticized him). The default assumption should be that he’s never going to accept that he lost fair and square, and will claim fraud. A lot of Trump supporters who believe the election was stolen believe it because he said so. Expecting this to be some kind of intellectual debate is ridiculous. Biden stole the election because Trump lost, and because Trump can’t lose and can’t believe he could lose. The evidence must then be obtained, as a secondary process.

This is why ‘stolen’ can mean many things, from hacking electronic voting machines and stuffing ballot boxes to planning protests (ie the ‘fortify the election’ meme) and engaging in the same dirty tactics that have been the norm in American politics for almost 250 years.

People who believe the election was probably stolen based on intuition: will you rescind your claim if Trump wins this year?

Looks like only one side of that bet has any epistemic skin in it.

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.

All that stuff is well within the bounds of the entirely regular corrupt shenanigans that have occurred in every US election since the 18th century. Do you really think 1992 or 2012 were “more fair”? They weren’t.

Yes, exactly! The kinds of crooked shenanigans that potentially stole the 2020 election are not unprecedented conspiracies, but historically normal and well-documented. Thank you!

My point, then, is that the specific conservative hysteria over 2020 was because Donald Trump specifically couldn’t accept that he lost (whatever the ‘rules of the game’), not because historically unprecedented corruption occurred. This is the country of Tammany Hall, of Chicago machine politics, of comical gerrymandering, in that context 2020 just doesn’t feel special.

We accept that election-rigging happens, now we're just debating the specifics.

It is more difficult to change an election at a national level than at a local level, and not every election is "rigged". But it's not unprecedented to speculate about rigged presidential resulrs: 1960, 2000. It's a well-documented historical fact that LBJ manufactured tens of thousands of votes in his 1948 Senate election. Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine, as you suggest, are known. So it is possible!

A brief: election rules were changed in many states for the pandemic in 2020 which made it easier to generate mass quantities of mail-in ballots. On election night, when Trump was ahead across several swing states, and had already won presumed-bellweathers Ohio and Florida, vote counting stopped. Suddenly, when counting resumed, Trump was irrevocably behind. Mail-in ballots comprised the difference. Attempts to segregate or eliminate these ballots were regarded as an unjustified conspiracy theory, even though to this day chain of custody basically does not exist for any of them. If you had all the ballots in front of you and wanted to attempt a recount, you could not prove that every ballot actually came from a legitimate registered voter.

At this point, it's fine if you just don't want to believe anything, I can't make you believe in my priors. But making everything about how you think Donald Trump has a thin ego isn't really much of an argument. (It's not as though the other politicians of DC are known for their thick skins.)

We accept that election-rigging happens, now we're just debating the specifics.

We accept that dirty behavior (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) is a perennial feature of US elections and that there was nothing special or unique about 2020, then?

That is the key claim. No democracy is free of corruption or dirty electoral behavior of the type we’re discussing. So ‘2020 was rigged’ proponents face a simple choice - either they accept and argue that every US election ever has been ‘rigged’ by their standards and America is not and has never been a democracy OR they admit that what happens to Trump in 2020 was nothing out of the ordinary and he should accept that he got played and stop whining about what happened to everyone else happening to him.

Which is it? 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.

That is the key claim. No democracy is free of corruption or dirty electoral behavior of the type we’re discussing. So ‘2020 was rigged’ proponents face a simple choice - either they accept and argue that every US election ever has been ‘rigged’ by their standards and America is not and has never been a democracy OR they admit that what happens to Trump in 2020 was nothing out of the ordinary and he should accept that he got played and stop whining about what happened to everyone else happening to him.

This is a false binary. One can accept that attempts to attack electoral integrity are common and also think that 2020 was an unusually compromised election that was compromised by a series of deliberate policy choices. It wasn't the first severely compromised election and wasn't the worst (see Illinois in 1982 for a truly absurd display of how bad a sufficiently corrupt set of officials can encourage), but it was actually very bad anyway.

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.

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.

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Y'all know I love my hobby horse, even if it's beaten into an absolute paste, and I admit at having ongoing puzzlement as to why 2020 stolen election claims retain so much cachet among republican voters and officials.

It is because they are unified in their collective belief in sacred beliefs in opposition to facts and logic. It's like a social acid trip, people who cannot believe in the world around them clustering around sacred beliefs and the rejection of a crazy reality that they cannot accept. They want someone to tell them that no they aren't crazy, it's the other side that is truly crazy and that they are the sane ones. They go through the motions, maybe they enjoy some good 'belief theatre' whereby they can see a sick person wheeled on stage and then 'healed' to walk off it again; but when they get sick they usally don't rely on merely prayer as they take full advantage of advanced medical science instead.

Tearing into a caricature of your enemies is not productive. It’s also against a number of rules, including those about courtesy, content, and engagement. I recommend familiarizing yourself with these rules.


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