One Brow
Well-Known Member
So, you're basing your notion of a trend on exactly two elections, both of which involved Donald Trump?
Voter Suppression and Why The Republicans Love It So Much?
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Polls are worthless. What can you expect people to think?
People largely are taught to cope in government schools. Methods of coping vary, but all involve some measure of decoupling personal notions and linking up to some consensus divined from the social group. When polled, most people respond on the same key they use in school, and say what they think is a "normal" position.
Then there's the media, which is not what the "normal" position must presume.
So the fact that we are not all unanimously enamored by issues or questions posed to us with sticky/drippy bias loaded content is just a big fail.
The BIG FAIL is greater than the big lie.
The BIG FAIL is the fact that people are more complex than most simple big heads believe.
Probably less than 1% of Americans actual believe, in their private core of fully protected sacred notions of truth, that elections are anywhere near fair. Probably 30% actually want to cheat, for one side or the other. The rest have varying practical degrees of complacency coming from the realization they just have no say.
Elections are not democracy, they are machines for gamers.
polling a mass of people who are almost totally excluded from relevant information is a fools errant. Using it to justify a political belief is insane, or partisan. Probably equivalent terms.
People largely are taught to cope in government schools. Methods of coping vary, but all involve some measure of decoupling personal notions and linking up to some consensus divined from the social group. When polled, most people respond on the same key they use in school, and say what they think is a "normal" position.
Then there's the media, which is not what the "normal" position must presume.
So the fact that we are not all unanimously enamored by issues or questions posed to us with sticky/drippy bias loaded content is just a big fail.
The BIG FAIL is greater than the big lie.
The BIG FAIL is the fact that people are more complex than most simple big heads believe.
Probably less than 1% of Americans actual believe, in their private core of fully protected sacred notions of truth, that elections are anywhere near fair. Probably 30% actually want to cheat, for one side or the other. The rest have varying practical degrees of complacency coming from the realization they just have no say.
Elections are not democracy, they are machines for gamers.
polling a mass of people who are almost totally excluded from relevant information is a fools errant. Using it to justify a political belief is insane, or partisan. Probably equivalent terms.
fishonjazz
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It's almost like Donald trump isn't good for democracy or our country.
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Al-O-Meter
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Three elections as I’m using 2012 as a data point below the 2016 level. That is an admittedly small set of points, but there are a number of trust-in-authority statistics that all show the same trend. People have less trust for Religious Leaders, the Media, Law Enforcement, and Intellectual Experts. I want to be proven wrong on this. I’ll happily take the hit to my ego. I don’t like this trend. I don’t like where it goes.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
Weird… it’s almost like there’s an entire media set up to sow distrust in religious leaders, the media, law enforcement, and intellectual experts. But I just can’t put my finger on it…
One Brow
Well-Known Member
Fair enough. I agree that I don't like the possible trend, either, and that could be coloring my perception. The real question will be the degree to which the Trump rhetoric positions outlive Trump.
Red
Well-Known Member
Go back one administration. With Trump himself leading the way, some percentage of Americans believed Obama was not born in the United States, and was thus illegitimate. Once elected in 2016(and in an aside that historians will be left to sort out, the revelation that Kilimnik was a Russian agent, and he passed along the polling data Manafort gave him in August, 2016, probably was evidence all along of conspiring with a foreign power by the Trump campaign) a percentage of Trump voters believed his lie that he would have won the popular vote, were it not for 3 million illegal aliens in California voting for Clinton. Then, when he lost the 2020 election, Trump attempted to steal the 2020 election by claiming that the Democrats stole the election.
I don’t expect the trend has played out yet, either. I’ll likely go to my grave knowing that people are not very bright, by and large. Certainly Trump proved the old adage that if you just repeat a lie often enough, the more people will believe it. Welcome to the Post Truth era and all, a terrible place to be, but really, it just tells me that despite all our accomplishments, demonstrating that we are quite different from other forms of life on this planet, when the time is ripe, one man can prove how stupid many people are, how un-self aware people are, how easily they can miss the fact they are being manipulated. Of course it’s not the first time, history is replete with madmen manipulating other people, but just a sad state of affairs to have to witness this.
Red
Well-Known Member
It might be said that you are describing the Post Truth era. People distrust religious authority, political authority, scientific authority, medical authority, you name it authority. We see this everywhere. It probably doesn’t help in this country that Americans have never lost love over intellectuals. The late American historian, Daniel Boorstin, attributed this dislike/distrust of intellectuals to the fact that America grew as a series of frontiers, and frontiers need people with practical skills, not “smarty-pants”. This itself may be part of the urban/rural based divisiveness that characterizes our nation. Cities are liberal, countryside conservative. This is simplistic, yes, we are a more homogenous culture with McDonalds and Walmart’s in city and country now.
But it seems people are their own source of authority now. It’s like a nation wide Dunning-Kruger effect. When I run across folks railing against one source of authority or another I trot this out: “you know what, you are absolutely right! I’m scheduled for heart surgery next week. I’ve already told the hospital I want them to pull the first guy off the street to operate. You can’t trust these medical school clowns!” In the hope it makes them rethink whatever stupid comment they just rendered.
Al-O-Meter
Well-Known Member
Maybe, but I’m not sure America does dislike intellectuals. Other nations have had actual purges where intellectuals were rounded up. We certainly aren’t in that category. America also built the finest collection of universities the planet has ever seen in a single nation. It is hard to make a case that America dislikes something when they’ve built the highest capacity factories to crank them out.
I know there are many intellectuals who feel like your historian, Daniel Boorstin, but I think a lot of that stems from feeling under-respected. They put in the hard work. They spent the years to acquire detailed knowledge, and random Joe on the street will dismiss their opinion as easily as they dismiss anyone who disagrees with them.
Rather than dislike, I think the issue is American optimism. It is the same phenomenon that has historically stopped class-based movements from gaining the foothold it has in Europe. In America, even poor people believe they can become rich, and even uneducated people of mediocre ability believe they can know as much as an intellectual.
I think you’ve landed on a universal truth about the human condition. It is why I don’t blindly trust the cool-headed wisdom of a popular majority. The human being is a smart animal, but people can be dumb. Realizing what you have just written, and that such movements are capable of democratically seizing the reins of government, has greatly informed my personal political beliefs.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
But like election integrity is important and stuff
The Thriller
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Red
Well-Known Member
No, had not seen it, but something like that sure is how I see things playing out. Manchin’s stance does not help. My heart sank listening to him today. Yeah, I agree with Snyder that given the outcome he describes for 2022 and 2024, we should expect to see this. Given another chance to do the same, lie and discredit election results, they are all aboard with that game plan. I cannot begin to imagine the damage. May the next generation hold tribunals for these criminals. It will be hard to recover from something like that, just a tremendous struggle and soul searching looming ahead, maybe for decades to come. Hope it can be avoided in 2024, but we are a long way from solving this disaster.
So of course this article is wrong in claiming this is a "rare" case, and if it were "rare" this would hardly clear the Democrats of doing this same trick and perhaps many others.
My first opinion of Trump was that he would serve as Hillary's "Perot". I think Perot just hated the Bush famiy beyond all sanity, and didn't even care if Bill won. Just insane. I had a lot of friends who voted for Perot, but I voted for a socialist out of favor with the fascists.
If it were a Republican cheated of a valid vote count, it would not even have changed the certified count, likely, because the election judges would have just counted all the votes with the same name for their candidate, and dumped the ballots in the swamp. Jes' sayin'
Unearthing a "rare" case like this actually damages the media claim that our elections are perfect and beyond all dispute.
I don't care who the criminals are, I just want them found out and stopped from doing these things.
I think this scenario is off the charts bonkers. If all you ever accept as evidence is what you want to see, and you are mesmerized by a media that creates a false narrative, sure you can believe it. But not if you do your own thinking, ask questions, and objectively look for evidence.
So I looked at several states' voter registration, census, and participation data. I tried to get immigration stats, did get age profiles, educational profiles etc.
Areas run by deep blue government officials, with partisan judges in some cases as well, had improbable voter turnout stats, some areas greater than 100% of voter registration. But the media went all out immediately to declare people who questioned the vote as "conspiracy theorists", unfounded, without evidence, or flatly "false" and made this the official "Big Lie".
However you wish things to be, it is just reasonable to see that some various kinds of fraud were being used, and in these cases, by the Dems.
I grew up thinking the mob and the Chicago mayor threw the 1960 election to Kennedy. I noticed Nixon spent almost 8 years being a lawyer for the Rockefellers after his defeat. I thought maybe we had dodged a bullet on that one. LBJ did wonders in Texas in that election as well. Voter fraud probably has more truth than we know going back decades if not to the origtins of our elections.
When I was in the Philippines, a nation with a Constitution modeled after our own, I saw plenty of irregularities. People in general didn't even believe fair elections were possible. Some candidates or even officials were gunned down in their homes by drive by shooters or raiding squads. People negotiated their votes for a few kilos of rice. I was well-acquainted with a man who told me he was on the duty crew who went to the Batanes islands between Taiwan and the Philippines to pick up a plane loaded with US currency, stolen from the US Treasury by Nelson Rockefeller and transported to the Philippines to pay for the installation of Ferdinand Marcos in 1968. So he said. He was a UN official for decades after that.
Marcos fell in disgrace after he assassinated Ninoy Aquino, by some paid thugs on the tarmac of Manila International Airport. People rose up in rebellion. Marcos got the Army out on the streets with tanks. Filipinos faced the tanks and the army caved, unwilling to fire on their own people. One of my best memories was a day in 1971 in Pangasinan, when Ninoy and Corazon Aquino were introduced to me by a friend. They were very impressively articulate and nice people. And did I mention, they were Ted Kennedy friends too. Democrats.
When they were in power, they did not go outside of the judicial process to deal with Marcos interests. I heard all about it because I woned some stock that was basically Marcos interest. I heard all about long judicial campaigns going on in the courts.
Today, the open border idea is out of Marxist tactics for burningt down an established government so it can be rebuilt, but it also serves, some think, to pack the voter base with a lot of Marxist-educated people from Central America, and covers for bringting in paid activists as well. This amounts to a program to overcome the voing rights of American citizens who are "conservative" or "patriot" sorts who want their country as they have known it. The program is for the "fundamental transformation" of America, per the designs of particular strategists.
In the context of such things, wading around in the muck of todays news and weeping for the possible failure of supposed great ideals for a country coherent with you own views, just seems a bit petty.
We need to criminally pursue the big dogs in this racket. We need to overhaul our Civil Service and make it so nobody can work in the government more than three years, at a rate10% under the market rate for their skills. Sure it will be inefficient, but much less corrupt. Our budget could be balanced, and the massive corruption of government officials and elected office would be hamstrung.
If you have ideals for a better future of any sort, of any possible political persuasion, you can't get there without rooting out the crooks.
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I think Trump was simply naive, in a big league sort of way. I think he believed he could make a difference, for good, that people voted for.
I think he assumed a lot of Establishment officials would help him. Sessions, Barr, even the intelligence and diplomatic establishment. He ran into a buzz saw.
The failure of many specific institutional officials to help pursue his election complaints was to him, unexpected. But he never even thought of over-turning the institutions or even the Electoral College. He was just asking for some credible investigation into some issues. It was a bad idea to do the rally that close to the Capitol, really. Too soft a target for anyone to insert troublemakers. I will consider any other finding a political hatchet job against Trump.
Trump was The Chump. No one can fix our mess without building in from the ground up, demanding integrity in our government and compliance by the government with the fundamental requirements of the Constitution...... limited power, federal distribution of any powers needed to make our country work. By "federal distribution" I mean local governance being the acting agent.
Most of Trump's base are really actual democrats and small business sorts of people, a lot of union folks, maybe even significant professionals including teachers, who are just alarmed at the actual "transformation of America" envisioned by Obama. What they want is a responsibe and accountable government that respects their values and preserves their interests and rights. Maybe not so much government.
It really looks like about the only safe votes for the Dems are government officials feeling a little sweat about their jobs. And, maybe some imagined dependent people of whatever kind. But that is not enough.
people are more interested in their freedom.
I think he assumed a lot of Establishment officials would help him. Sessions, Barr, even the intelligence and diplomatic establishment. He ran into a buzz saw.
The failure of many specific institutional officials to help pursue his election complaints was to him, unexpected. But he never even thought of over-turning the institutions or even the Electoral College. He was just asking for some credible investigation into some issues. It was a bad idea to do the rally that close to the Capitol, really. Too soft a target for anyone to insert troublemakers. I will consider any other finding a political hatchet job against Trump.
Trump was The Chump. No one can fix our mess without building in from the ground up, demanding integrity in our government and compliance by the government with the fundamental requirements of the Constitution...... limited power, federal distribution of any powers needed to make our country work. By "federal distribution" I mean local governance being the acting agent.
Most of Trump's base are really actual democrats and small business sorts of people, a lot of union folks, maybe even significant professionals including teachers, who are just alarmed at the actual "transformation of America" envisioned by Obama. What they want is a responsibe and accountable government that respects their values and preserves their interests and rights. Maybe not so much government.
It really looks like about the only safe votes for the Dems are government officials feeling a little sweat about their jobs. And, maybe some imagined dependent people of whatever kind. But that is not enough.
people are more interested in their freedom.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
Facts matter, get the **** off Facebook and read better sources
Fact check: States don't have more than 100% voter turnout in an election
A post uses outdated data to argue there are more votes than registered voters in key battleground states. Data shows no state exceeds 100% turnout.
www.usatoday.com
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I work with a guy who frequently proudly proclaims that he doesn't watch the news (like who under 65 watches the news?) but he frequently shares hot takes on current events that come straight off of facebook. He tried to make me watch "plandemic" the day it come out before I had any idea what it was, I was 20s in and telling him it was a little conspiracy theory-ish for my taste and they had already made a number of unsubstantiated claims, presenting them as facts.Facts matter, get the **** off Facebook and read better sources
Fact check: States don't have more than 100% voter turnout in an election
A post uses outdated data to argue there are more votes than registered voters in key battleground states. Data shows no state exceeds 100% turnout.www.usatoday.com
Red
Well-Known Member
The Dark Money Influencing Senator Manchin’s Right-Wing Agenda
Koch advocacy group Americans for Prosperity is urging its followers to send Manchin messages to uphold GOP priorities.
truthout.org
Red
Well-Known Member
‘It Was All Bullsh*t’: Bill Barr Opens Up About Shooting Down Trump’s 2020 Election Lies
An upcoming book on former President Donald Trump's final days in office is providing explosive details on the break between himself and Bill Barr.
www.mediaite.com