"What if the tables were turned?" - Is it really a "What If" kind of question? Maybe the tables have in fact turned?

YouTube certainly has no problem hosting videos that purport the idea of a rigged 2016 election.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Russian+collusi...

For a solid 4 years one party accused the other of rigging an election and it was considered news and reported on nearly non-stop. Now the tables are turned and the formerly accused party is claiming the other one rigged the election.

4 years ago one party went with a Boogey Man kind of narrative where a nebulous and hostile foreign power used untold influences and means to change the course of the election.

Today one party is going with the narrative that laws were broken regarding the conduct of elections.

These 2 things are similar but I put forth the idea they are not exactly the same. The TX vs. PA suit presents evidence and makes specific claims. Maybe I missed something along the way but I never saw anything but innuendo regarding what specific crimes were committed in the "Russian Rigging" of the 2016 election. Im open to reading up if anyone cares to drop a relevant link or two.

Except that's not what the Russian collusion accusations were about. I still find it hard to believe when I see polls that actively suggest people believe votes or voting machines were directly manipulated in 2016. This is not the narrative I experienced while following the election and subsequent Mueller investigation.

The information I consumed made it clear that there were questionable staffing, unusual meetings, and a foreign disinformation campaign associated mostly with benefiting Trump's campaign. In any case the current admin knew the stakes, and knew the issues but failed to safeguard against it. Still they claim there is widespread fraud, but fail to provide convincing evidence. Now they have pivoted to suggesting changes made during a pandemic could invalidate votes.

The specific crimes are laid out in the Mueller report [0]. A bipartisan Senate committee confirmed the intelligence findings that lead to the Mueller report even while Senators were publicly denying it [1]. Again I don't understand the claim of "rigging". This wasn't pushed in the circles I frequent or I considered it hyperbole at the time. There was a clear disinformation campaign, hacking attempts, and questionable contacts with the Trump campaign.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf (the 6-page executive summary is an adequate reading if you want the gist of it)

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/493889-bipartisan-s...

I'm not sure if we will ever know what exactly transpired, for me the off-the-books attempt to set up a direct line of communication between Kushner and the Kremlin looked extremely bad and is one of the strongest bits of outward visible proof that there really was something extremely dirty going on. Besides all the circumstantial evidence the direct evidence by itself is telling and I can not imagine any previous - and hopefully future - US administration caught with their pants down to that extent.

The popular vote is not a criteria for the winner/loser of an election - never has been here - instead its a component to a larger outcome.

The US has about 327M people and by the nature of our geography they tend to be somewhat more concentrated around coastal areas. Big cities, small farms so to speak.

The reason for the existence of the Electoral College is specifically to prevent any one region/geographic faction of the country from asserting control of the nation via the popular vote.

The lack of respect for the popular vote is no accident. Its a feature, not a bug. "Every vote counts" is absolutely untrue in the US and thats by design.

The evils brought about by counting each vote towards an election are thought to be outweighed by the evils of allowing one regional/socio-economic faction of the population dictate the government for all by virtue of their popular vote capability.

Now lets get real - this is precisely what happens anyhow despite the Electoral College - the battle lines are not regional in nature but economic/religious/cultural. One foreseen evil has been prevented while allowing another situation to thrive. Both sides play this divide and attempt to sway things their own direction.

America has been subdivided into two groups - "Us" and "Them". Things aren't going to get better anytime soon.

Unfortunately, we are witnessing one of the parties in the US doing this, repeatedly I might add.

If the democrats were doing this sort of thing I would be just as much against it. The point is: there actually is a party that is doing this, it is not 'some party' but a specific one.

Stop with your straw-mans.

When the moment arrived that facts were no longer on their side, they chose to alter the perception of reality of their voters instead of changing their behavior. They band together and adopt a narrative which they then spread through the networks which are aligned with them and in other public tools like youtube and twitter.

This is so incredibly successful that the only thing guiding their behavior is a change in polling with their base, rather than any philosophy based on values, convictions or general sense of morality.

Hell yes their outright lies should be banned from places like Youtube. They have no basis in reality and contrary to other types of false information, their information has the single goal of maintaining or increasing their power and delegitimizing democracy in the US.

Now from the point of view of the brainwashed conservatives, people like me are the brainwashed ones. There's pretty much nothing we can say to them to convince them otherwise. We can try and prevent the bad actors from saying the things which lead them down the path to dismissing reality.