2020 US Election (Part Two)

[Lexicus]

What I am amazed by, is not that they think this, or that they discuss this in private, but that they think that expressing these sentiments will not collapse their support in any subsequent election. Could it really be that saying "we have to make it harder for everyone to vote because if everyone can vote then we will lose" does NOT make anyone who believes in democracy think of you as a monster?

The problem is that most Republicans (and, it should be said, a good number of Democrats) really don't believe in democracy at all. They are perfectly fine with making voting as difficult as possible. And they explicitly reject the idea of a political system organized along the lines of one person, one vote.

 

[Patine]

The problem is that most Republicans (and, it should be said, a good number of Democrats) really don't believe in democracy at all. They are perfectly fine with making voting as difficult as possible. And they explicitly reject the idea of a political system organized along the lines of one person, one vote.

But is that actually truly conviction of a belief in that as a good, ideal, and functioning political system, or an irrational fear of the socio-political unknown beyond the corrupt chains of the current scheme?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The problem is that most Republicans (and, it should be said, a good number of Democrats) really don't believe in democracy at all.

This, unfortunately, is basically true. USians generally have forgotten the basic tenets that make democratic government work. That is, the democracy is the decision making process. Once the decision is democratically made all participants are obligated to make it work as best they can, even if they are in the minority that voted otherwise.

They are perfectly fine with making voting as difficult as possible. And they explicitly reject the idea of a political system organized along the lines of one person, one vote.

This, however, is currently incorrect for the wrong reasons. Right now, even though most Democrats are not the least bit committed to the principle, they are in favor of, even demanding of, making voting easier because everyone knows that it would favor them.

Anyway, so far as the upcoming election, the pandemic chaos, and the supreme court goes...yes, states are going to have to adapt their election processes, and GOP dominated states are going to do that badly. However, the seriously GOP dominated states were already doing badly anyway, in that they were likely to continue being GOP dominated. So there's minimal loss there. The benefit is that the issue of the electoral process itself will be brought front and center, in a way that carries inescapable consequence. "Ha ha, we used disenfranchisement to pwn the libs!" is a lot less cheerful statement when it ends with "We stood in line and a lot of us died while those blue staters just mailed in their ballots." When those people in Tennessee are asking "Hey, why didn't we just mail in ballots? My brother-in-law, Uncle Henry, caught flu and died working at the polling place," they are not gonna want to hear "well, that's part of pwning the libs, you see, just a price you have to pay to keep me in office," as an answer.

Meanwhile, in the purple states (many of which have GOP in power at the state level) there will be a hail mary effect. The state government will be forced to say "yes, we are going to kill a lot of you, but that's the only way we stay in power here." If that doesn't drive turnout to flip the state no matter what then it really is too late, but I think that in most places it would.

 

[Cutlass]

My point here was that there are logical problems with the statistics that you, and anyone relying on a statistic to substantiate a predetermined viewpoint, simply overlook. Your racially-linked study and your wiki edit war invite a couple of safer conclusions:

1. Production of identity politics viewpoints is amply-financed by the university network.
   
2. Wikipedia is not.

But on the general subject of whether we can gather good data about voter fraud, not even the higher-quality source has anything to say. In fact if you follow the link you posted, you will see other studies in the roster commenting on the hurdles I mentioned: the extreme difficulty of gathering voter ID info and actual data about fraud in the US. I think some of these difficulties have been created on purpose. You make these stupid pretenses of empiricism. One need look no further than the census questionnaire, and the spirit in which, "are you a US citizen," was struck. There's the real level of empiricism.

In person voter fraud does not occur in the US in number large enough to ever change the outcome of an election. This has been proven every time Republicans have attempted to prove the opposite.

Understand that Republicans prove that it is not happening every time that Republicans claim that it is, and go looking for it.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Every vote for a democrat is indisputable proof of voter fraud!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

In person voter fraud does not occur in the US in number large enough to ever change the outcome of an election. This has been proven every time Republicans have attempted to prove the opposite.

Understand that Republicans prove that it is not happening every time that Republicans claim that it is, and go looking for it.

Caveat...in large area representation elections. There have actually been cases where voter fraud has influenced the outcome in city council elections and other such small area representations. I'm not going to go looking for the source, but as an example there was one case where a candidate for a city council seat who owned a small apartment building received dozens of votes from people using his apartment building as their address who turned out to live in different wards. Several "apartments" turned out to be nothing but mailboxes where voting materials were received and forwarded by the building manager to people who for various reasons wanted the candidate on the city council.

The important takeaway from that being that those ballots were legitimate for every other issue. The people voting improperly still each got their one vote for mayor, their one vote for governor, their one vote for congressional representation from their district. They also voluntarily gave up their vote in the city council race in their own wards. There was no change in the net votes cast and no one voted twice.

 

[Patine]

Your own words, "my more scholarly rather than semantic and polemic point-of-view"

And now I'm going to tell you WHY I believe Donald Trump is not the WORST U.S. President in history (though certainly in the bottom 10 or so), without denouncing polemics or semantics, or commenting directly on other people's lists. I believe it is a matter of intent and scope. An easy comparison is, in fact, a U.S. President also within the 21st Century I believe is FAR worse - George W. Bush. Although I don't believe, personally, he engineered 9/11 (although the incident definitely shows an embarrassing degree of sloppiness and dropping of the ball by U.S. Intelligence, considering it was later revealed to have been hatched as a plan by bin Laden, and in some phase or other of planning and preparation by al Qaeda and it's predecessor groups since 1982), Bush did play the fears and outrage of the population like a fiddle (a Nero-style fiddle, as it turned out), and he used this drummed atmosphere of fear and outrage to justify war crimes and violations of the Geneva Convention worthy of the Nuremberg Tribunals, illegal new wars for corporate profit unrelated to the original mandate, even outright lying through his teeth about it, and violated, flagrantly, the very Constitution he took an oath to protect, including the Constitutional rights of his own people, and made a lot of actions by fiat that legally required Congressional deliberation and enactment, and annulled at least two treaties outright by such fiat (that, Constitutionally, requires a 2/3 vote of the Senate). Bush enjoyed far more popular support until near the end of tenure that Trump has EVER enjoyed, and all of Bush's support was based on lies and fanning fear and outrage. The last action of Bush's Presidency was a massive bailout package that was only designed, in the long term, to make the rich richer, but he again used fear to get it passed, claiming the whole economy would collapse to the Dark Ages if it weren't done. As for Trump, he is mostly incompetent, a showman, a loudmouth, has little restraint on the stupid and bigoted things he says, and he lacks any consistent, meaningful, or solid ideology or vision, outside of, perhaps his tariffs war - his biggest sin and crime, however, is lending his sincere, giving access to the "keys to the kingdom," and empowering and emboldening people and groups FAR more extreme, callous, bigoted, exploitative, corrupt, and malignant than he could ever. THERE! I have anted up! What say you?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

What say you?

I say that I still don't think you have justified any claim to being "more scholarly." I have no idea how any of us would go about supporting any such claim by anyone.

 

[Zardnaar]

My personal opinion is Trump isn't the worst.

He's getting close though would surprise me if he ends up with that distinction.

 

[Patine]

I say that I still don't think you have justified any claim to being "more scholarly." I have no idea how any of us would go about supporting any such claim by anyone.

So, a semantic, vitriolic, acidly, non-answer designed to insult and show a blanket contempt for my opinion and it's a validity (a "stone from a glass house," such attack on my credence, mind), but no actually MEANINGFUL response or rebuttal. Okay, you've dropped below even the lowered bar I expected for one of your response posts. Anyone want to give a REAL response or retort, moving past the peanut gallery regular?

 

[thecrazyscot]

Personally I don't really see the use in trying to tease out who the "worst" president is. Especially if you're trying to rank a president during his term. The historical impacts of a presidency won't become fully apparent for years, or even decades. Also, if you want to "rank" the presidents, you need a mutually agreed-upon scale, otherwise the whole exercise is just slinging conflicting opinions with conflicting underlying assumptions without actually addressing the root argument. I very much doubt any two of us on this forum could agree on a single scale to measure a president on.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So, a semantic, vitriolic, acidly, non-answer designed to insult and show a blanket contempt for my opinion and it's a validity (a "stone from a glass house," such attack on my credence, mind), but no actually MEANINGFUL response or rebuttal. Okay, you've dropped below even the lowered bar I expected for one of your response posts. Anyone want to give a REAL response or retort, moving past the peanut gallery regular?

I think they've mostly given up, so you are stuck with me.

I could self proclaim "scholarly" right along with you, but I know better. What on earth would be the point? There are definitely subjects I know a lot about and/or have a lot of life experience in. I've shared enough, credibly enough, that some of those things are widely recognized and if a conversation drifts to submarines, or prison life, or the pros and cons of violence as a solution I will most likely get tagged as a way of asking for my perspective. That doesn't arise out of any claim on my part.

The medium doesn't allow for submission of evidence, so claims, in general, are pointless. I could say I am scholarly and my degree from Harvard proves it...but since I can't show it to you it wouldn't really prove it even if I did have one. I do have a degree from New York State, but since I can't show you that either it doesn't matter any more than the pretense that I have one from Harvard. All we have is how we present ourselves. I provided what could be useful feedback in that your presentation over 5500 odd posts has not struck me with the one word description best fit being "scholarly." How you use that feedback is up to you.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Personally I don't really see the use in trying to tease out who the "worst" president is. Especially if you're trying to rank a president during his term. The historical impacts of a presidency won't become fully apparent for years, or even decades. Also, if you want to "rank" the presidents, you need a mutually agreed-upon scale, otherwise the whole exercise is just slinging conflicting opinions with conflicting underlying assumptions without actually addressing the root argument. I very much doubt any two of us on this forum could agree on a single scale to measure a president on.

In some cases those scales on the pier where they stick the fish on a big iron hook would be pretty satisfying.

 

[Berzerker]

the worst 4 in my lifetime are Johnson, Nixon, Bush 43 and Bush 41 in that order

nah, Obama's in there at 4th after Bush 43

war defines these presidencies

 

[Patine]

I think they've mostly given up, so you are stuck with me.

I could self proclaim "scholarly" right along with you, but I know better. What on earth would be the point? There are definitely subjects I know a lot about and/or have a lot of life experience in. I've shared enough, credibly enough, that some of those things are widely recognized and if a conversation drifts to submarines, or prison life, or the pros and cons of violence as a solution I will most likely get tagged as a way of asking for my perspective. That doesn't arise out of any claim on my part.

The medium doesn't allow for submission of evidence, so claims, in general, are pointless. I could say I am scholarly and my degree from Harvard proves it...but since I can't show it to you it wouldn't really prove it even if I did have one. I do have a degree from New York State, but since I can't show you that either it doesn't matter any more than the pretense that I have one from Harvard. All we have is how we present ourselves. I provided what could be useful feedback in that your presentation over 5500 odd posts has not struck me with the one word description best fit being "scholarly." How you use that feedback is up to you.

Isn't there some old saw you like to angrily and repeatedly lecture in screeds to me and other posters, like Kyriakos and a few others, about not continuing to insert oneself into a conversation if you're not at all contributing? I think it's to follow you're own advice here. And, for the record, the linguistic root of the word, "scholar," is one who "studies," with no inherent requirement or intimation in it's definition as to whom you study under (or even if you're self-learned), where you study, why you study, if your studies are viewed as "appropriate," or "commendable," in your society, or even how much respect you accrue form other scholars for your studies.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Isn't there some old saw you like to angrily and repeatedly lecture in screeds to me and other posters, like Kyriakos and a few others, about not continuing to insert oneself into a conversation if you're not at all contributing? I think it's to follow you're own advice here. And, for the record, the linguistic root of the word, "scholar," is one who "studies," with no inherent requirement or intimation in it's definition as to whom you study under (or even if you're self-learned), where you study, why you study, if your studies are viewed as "appropriate," or "commendable," in your society, or even how much respect you accrue form other scholars for your studies.

When someone hasn't responded to you in four pages, so you quoted them again, you just appeared kind of desperate for attention...so I gave you some. If you don't like my advice, don't follow it.

 

[Patine]

When someone hasn't responded to you in four pages, so you quoted them again, you just appeared kind of desperate for attention...so I gave you some. If you don't like my advice, don't follow it.

I'm not desperate for attention. Just quite annoyed by the gallery of self-righteous, two-faced, and arrogant clowns who always come down on me like they have some higher moral ground or level of conduct, but are just casting stones from glass houses. I don't think most of you truly realize, or have enough self-insight to see, how much "pot calling the kettle black," goes on around here. A while back, another poster told me, "to get off my high horse." I responded, "I will gladly oblige when everyone else here also dismounts." I got no response either way to that. So, I'm sick of hearing about my conduct on these forums and so it's so horrible from people who are at least as bad, but just won't - or can't bring themselves to admit it.

 

[Gori the Grey]

And, for the record, the linguistic root of the word, "scholar," is one who "studies,"

Fun (scholarly) fact: the word scholar derives from a Greek word meaning leisure!

 

[Patine]

Fun (scholarly) fact: the word scholar derives from a Greek word meaning leisure!

Still, completely way off the exacting and hard standards for prerequisite and judgement that @Timsup2nothin seems to believe it means - and makes vicious screeds based on that belief!

 

[Berzerker]

leisure - scholar lol