hasn't this already happened?

It'll take a long time to recover the damage done to foreign policy. even worse is the division, which was already present thanks to how distant people are if they are a few income brackets apart. he really knew how to worsen all this and make the chaos work for him.

whoever repairs the damage in the coming years has their work cut out. maybe we've learned something as a collective? (I don't think so because while humans are smart humanity is the worst)

It doesn’t take too long to mobilize the troops and get back to active war in the Middle East.

The CCP also managed to take control of eastern Africa and managed to make an indian ocean trade route that COMPLETELY avoid India. Well done. Also during the squabble between Trump and Kim-Jun-Un, the CCP just send 4000 troups in 16 different location around the Indian ocean, to "secure their investment".

TBH i'm glad there is a little competition to the US, and that the CCP successfully outplayed the US on a diplomatic standpoint, but please don't conflate foreign policy and war. War is such a small part of foreign policy overall.

On the topic of foreign policy fuck-ups, another consequence of Trump is that countries about to do deals with the USA under Biden will ask, "So, will this deal be undone in when the next administration comes to power?" and will be more hesistant or they'll manage to get a better bargain because of the US's loss of reputation.

That’s an understatement. After the second loss in the Supreme Court he and his allies are at 1 win, 57 losses. He lost the election and lost every case that mattered, while winning one inconsequential case. What a loser.

So, are you against using police force unnecessarily or for it? Because you seem to be saying that people should be visited by the FBI for their comments online, like it happened with this kid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgqeJi_Z6aM. Or are you only for it if it's against your political opponents?

But I believe there is a responsibility on the side of organizers to be more vocal about peace than they are about the change they are trying to implement as other more righteous and respectable figures have done in the past.

If you allow your movement to become one of violence and all you have to say is to point the finger at others, whether you are correct or not, you are grossly inferior of the civil rights movements of the past.

But I believe, as many others do, that this movement was not born to achieve any measure of civil rights, though that may be the intent of many.

Making an enemy of an clear necessity of any society ( a police force ) and only being satisfied when injustice is performed on the offender is madness. There are corrupt police, do something productive about. Burning your own house down solves nothing, unless perhaps your goal is a new house.

If your gripe is with the police, go and burn down a police station, not the Portland elk statue or a corner shop owned and run by your neighbour.

Did anyone in power make any proposals on how to fix what was being protested about? In contrast, I saw a lot of politicians talking about how awful the protesters were as if they were protesting just for the sake of it.

https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect...

My take is that the federal government has accrued far, far more power than was ever intended. The entire population of the US has to fight over who is in charge at the federal level in order to live their lives the way they would like.

The founders had the right idea - a federation of states with a variety of laws that the people could choose among, glued together by a weak federal government.

The article is about Twitter exploring new ways to shape interactions with the content from Trump, a retreating politician, on their platform.

This development is far more relevant to me than the largely US american pro/contra Trump debate, as my own societies discourse is dependent on those very same platforms.

I therefore believe that it is completely wrong to justify Twitter's continuing trials on discoursive influence over the notion that it's alright since Trump might be a particularly bad actor.

I think that's off topic and misses the point.

I just thought I'll explain since the thread appears to be very heated right now. People might attribute up & downvotes to a far smaller set of reasons than they should on a platform as global as HN.

Those people with molotov cocktails have been almost exclusively targeting property rather than people, and specifically corporate rather than personal property. I'm not suggesting you should approve that, but it is categorically different.

As for your question, it makes a huge difference. While any weapon can be used to inflict harm (by definition), some make that significantly easier than others. It's facile to ignore this and pretend all harms are equivalent.

> I therefore believe that it is completely wrong to justify Twitter's continuing trials on discoursive influence over the notion that it's alright since Trump might be a particularly bad actor.

what you see is a global company acting locally and so not too surprising, no? Algorithmic biases and assumption engineered so the service is successful with a US ideology. Nobody asks the question in any tech company does the product only work in my market (unless you're outside the US). There are plenty of German companies (start-ups especially) which first design for a market that works in the US. Even language support is first English before they become local. FAANG and every SV start-up thinks first whether that works here in the US. It's just normal business sense and no big scheme of why they do this. Twitter does it because it makes sense for them to fight back against lies and disinformation that end up killing people. Free Speech ends here.

I get everyone thinks free speech is essential, but we live in a world where free speech is not a thing for very valid reasons. Germany only promises freedom of opinion; they don't actually promise you can tell anyone that opinion, try denying the holocaust. And in Germany, you're not legally allowed to insult someone (civil matter, but still not legal), in Berlin, and someone got convicted (eventually overturned but the fact it happened is massive) for farting on a police officer. The US, which claims to be the centre of freedom, has one of the lowest press freedoms and a multitude of laws to keep things secret. There are things that we know people shouldn't be allowed to say. Freedom of speech is a myth and should not be used to enable the destruction of democracy or to spread propaganda (in any sense).

I'm sure the majority of people here would agree terrorism propaganda videos shouldn't be hosted on twitter or youtube, and people shouldn't be allowed to promote terrorism. Well, this is basically the same, in many of the Trump supporter stuff, I've seen calls for domestic terrorism.

Also, I think a lot of people don't realise why we're seeing an increase in companies stepping up here. Biden has offically won, now. All states have certified who won. The election is over. All that can be done now is stirring up hate and starting a civil war.

I don't think Bush/Gore undermined anything.

I don't think Hillary undermined them when she told Biden not to concede under any circumstances. I don't support her or Biden's politics, but I cheered that position.

That's because in that case you had the infamous butterfly ballots in one large Florida county, where a very poor UI led to a large number of people voting for both Gore and Buchanan. You also had a large number who voted for Buchanan but for all the other offices voted for people that it was very unlikely a Buchanan supported would vote for.

For those not familiar with them, the ballots listed Bush at the top of the left page, with Gore listed second on that page. Buchanan was listed on the top of the right page, with the list on the right page vertically offset so it was like this:

    ------
    Bush | |----------
    -----| | Buchanan
    Gore | |----------
    -----| | McReynolds
  Browne | |----------
    -----|    (and so on)
   Nadar |
   (and so  on)

The ballot was wide enough that you might not realize that there were Presidential candidates on both pages.

It is very hard not to conclude that many people who wanted to vote Gore saw he was second on the left page, and so punched the second hole, and some realized their mistake and tried to correct it leading to both holes two and three punched.

That's why the challenges there did not undermine anything (other than confidence that whoever designed those ballots was competent). We had actual concrete and sound evidence that a large number of ballots did not reflect the intended vote of the voter, and there were enough of these to affect the outcome because it was an extremely close race.

The 2020 challenges so far have failed to include any concrete and sound evidence. Its all been things like that surveillance video that they say shows extra ballots being sneaked in late at night, which when you look at the whole video instead of just that short clip you see that those were ballots that had always been there--when counting stopped for the night they were put in their standard ballot storage containers, and what the clip is showing is those ballots being removed from those containers when counting resumed.

Or things like that statistical argument that was in the Texas Supreme Court filing that said there was only a one in a quadrillion chance that Trump could lead in the evening and then behind after more ballots were counted overnight, which completely overlooked that in-person ballots were counted before absentee ballots, and that Democrats were far more likely to vote absentee because of COVID than were Republicans.

That's why 2020 challenges are undermining in a way no previous election challenges were. They aren't going to force any strengthening against fraud because they are failing to point out any fraud to strengthen against.

Such proclamations come off as either "Nothing to see here" or "Lock her up" rhetoric to me. Too much, too soon.

Some of us are trying to be open-minded about the evidence being presented, while others accept the first argument that supports their bias. I think it's wiser to take the first tack.

How much more research do you do on any particular piece of evidence after some media outlet tells you that you don't need to worry about it?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha7iWECm_8E [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-nblE8ps2M

I have so far seen no reason to worry about the latter bit.

The ability to run a standing army can be used for ill. Yet we have an army.

The ability to regulate corporate pollution can be used for ill. Yet we have pollution regulations.

The ability to throw people in prison via the justice system can be used for ill. Yet we have laws and courts and prisons.

This is why “platforms” like Twitter need to lose their liability protection when they engage in such behavior. They are no longer playing the role of independent platform in need such protection; they are a publisher that is deciding what can and cannot be viewed. That is perfectly acceptable, as long as they are held accountable for that content. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

You may use Parler, Gab, and countless federated services; along with Facebook and other giants.

Freedom of Speech has never been a guarantee of platform access or forced association.

Filter bubbles and shadow bans already exist, and while I think they are particularly insidious for people wanting to find multiple opposing views on something, they are invisible to the average user. Just make sure that Trump's tweets and interactions don't get shown on any feed except his own page, and any retweets are only shown to the people that retweet him, and be done with it.

People still think they have the freedom to read and speak about naughty opinions, but they never get further than the "desk" of the person that wrote those opinions.

The way out of this was for the winning side to get out ahead of it and do everything in their power to legitimize the election for these people. They didn't have a moral duty to do so, but it was foolish not to, since now by not doing so we've seen a deep, cemented, hatred and distrust of the outcome and the other side that from my vantage point is materially worse than before and could have been avoided to a large degree.

We're in trouble. People on the "winning" side of this dispute seem to be celebrating as the other side's hopes are dashed and their speech is marginalized, but in fact they ought to be terrified, since insofar as the other side isn't persuaded of their error and their beliefs deepen in light of the coercion being used against them being seen as a form of confirmation, things are going to be worse for everyone going into the new year.

A strange irony from this situation that I hadn't realized is that it seems that if one is on the winning side of a dispute its the point of maximal confidence the other side will be coerced into submission that one actually should be the least confident that the dispute is going to be settled, since it means coercion has been accepted as the only possible method to settle it. In fact, its that moment, the one where persuasion is understood to not be viable, which presents the greatest danger.

Our history points to another example of the point of presumed capitulation in fact being the start of anything but, but I won't make the analogy at the risk of it (rightly) being torn apart.

How does one do that when the people you are trying to convince are inherently unconvincable? They refuse to acknowledge experts, legal authorities, or any application of logic. If one of them steps out of line and goes against the narrative they are torn apart for it.

I would imagine to actually get to that point there are really only a few simple steps needed: full forensic audits of the disputed states, as well as a day in court in SCOTUS. I believe so far those have been largely denied or blocked (the merits of doing so are irrelevant) - if those were acquiesced by the winning side and accelerated at the outset it seems highly likely to me we would be nowhere near the precipice it seems we are now.

If any person still thinks the election was stolen after that, they're not a reasonable person.

This doesn't mean they're right. Unfortunately, no matter how "unreasonable" you think these people are, when they exist in such numbers and feel with such confidence they've lost the ability to have fair elections, the result of suppressing, ridiculing, and marginalizing them is fairly predictable.

[1] https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3685

Did you read the poll? Literally, in the first three paragraphs:

- 98% of Dems think election victory is legitimate

- 97% think there was no widespread voter fraud

Please stop trolling HN. Take it to Parler.

> a margin of error of +/- 3.1

The number of Dems you've claimed to support your position is less than the margin of error.

That leaves 2% of Dems that disagree. They aren't wrong in saying their stated figure includes Democratic party voters, just misleading.

> 97% think there was no widespread voter fraud

Assuming this reflects all polled people and not just Democratic party voters, then yes, 3% ≠ 1/3 and they are wrong. Assuming this figure only reflects Democratic party voters, that seems to suggest that 1% of Dems believe that there was widespread fraud, but still think the victory was legitimate.

In fact, it's much worse than that: a third of Americans believe it (which shows its appeal to centrists and/or the depth of Republican belief), and if you dig into the crosstabs, the number of Independents who believe it (approx 1/3rd) and Republicans who believe it (approx 3/4ths) is quite concerning. For such an extreme question ('widespread fraud') I would have expected this to be a fringe belief. The belief that would have made these numbers less surprising would have been questions such as "do you believe there is some evidence of targetted fraud" etc. Given that I'd suspect nearly 100% of Republicans believe some form of fraud occurred. If so, the entire losing party believes they were cheated to some degree. This isn't a recipe for reduced conflict from here. It means that the radical end of the party is large enough to be meaningful, and it means that large parts of the population will be less likely to condemn actions they take given the widespread shared beliefs.

> Do you believe there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, or not?

> 77% R

> 3% D

> 35% I

To feel secure that this isn't going to spill over into a conflict, we should expect to see a similarly marginal number of I's and ideally less R's (this should be a fringe belief in the Republican party, but it's not.) This question is the most extreme form of the issue, as well. (Few ought to believe widespread fraud definitely occurred, many more likely believe it’s possible strategically targeted fraud occurred, a much weaker stance but similarly dangerous.)

I'm guessing you'll just assume the I's are closet Republicans. But don't blame me if you aren't willing to face reality that this skepticism is not just going to go away through coercion.

While this may have shifted a bit since 2019, 38% of the public identify as independents, but 13% are R-leaning independent, 17% are R-leaning, and 7% aren't leaners. [0]

If you assume leaners are exactly like partisans and further assume the non-leaners are stealth leaners split equally between the two parties, you'd predict 36% of I’s would believe in large scale fraud. If you force all non-leaners to the D side or all to R side, you get a predicted range of 28%-44%.

So, yeah, the results actually seen (35% of Is believing in widespread fraud) are very consistent with the “independent" numbers being entirely predicted by partisan bias of “independents” combined with whatever factors drive the distribution of beliefs among party identifiers, with nothing nonpartisan about “independents” on this issue.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/03/14/political-in...

No, the US distribution of political beliefs is not a unidimensional center-weighted distribution. More independents are either extremists outside the main parties on the main axis between the parties or sitting equally far off on axes orthogonal to that axis than are centrists.

And most centrists are in the neoliberal capitalist faction of one or the other for the major parties.

Not in any meaningful sense; largely for related limits to those discussed upthread for general centrism: research on voting behavior that has shown those who identify as independents are not particular independent, and contain an identifiable major subset as reliably partisan as those who identify with a major party.

If by “average, non-partisan belief” you simply mean the belief of the average person who doesn't identify with a major party, then, sure, you will have defined it such that independents are key. But this isn't useful information.

There is no such thing as apolitical observers.

Otherwise, I see the extended "election fraud" campaign as an excuse to squeeze out more money for Trump (bad), generate emotional support for the Georgia election (good), and help a guy in Texas get a pardon (lol).

I realize how what I wrote could be construed saying D's support the claim, especially if you presume I'm some kind of partisan hack trying to troll you. In fact, what I was emphasizing (poorly) was that the population sampled from which has one third of support includes Democrats and Independents, since I would have found one third of just Republicans believing there was widespread fraud to be somewhat surprising. I should have written "sampled from a population that includes Democrats and Independents" - I'd like to assume everything else I've written in this thread is evidence I'm not trying to trick anyone or score points. I am genuinely concerned at the level of dismissal, ridicule, and suppression of skeptics of the election, since the floor on this is a third of the country and history tells us what to expect when you leave that many feeling powerless to overcome a presumed deep injustice via speech, voting, and the legal system.

> [...] get out ahead of it and do everything in their power to legitimize the election for these people.

When the people in question refuse to hear anything other than what they want to hear?

Actually, no. If there was no election fraud (as it seems to have been proven) then they all have the same wrong belief, regardless of degree.

> The goal isn't to convince all of them...

Actually, it is since "conservatives" keep pushing lies.

> only a few simple steps needed: full forensic audits of the disputed states, as well as a day in court in SCOTUS

Both of those have happened. So why do you, a reasonable(?) person on HN trying to convince us that it hasn't?

> Actually, no. If there was no election fraud (as it seems to have been proven)

Your claim here seems to be that there was no election fraud, and it seems proven. Two problems with this statement:

- You cannot prove there was no election fraud, it is unfalsifiable.

- Beyond that, the idea that there was no election fraud is absurd on its face. We should expect there to have been some election fraud, with some liklihood of finding evidence of it, since in an election as large as this one there is always election fraud to some degree.

What I think you're trying to say, is there is insufficient evidence to prove there was sufficient election fraud to have an impact on the result. If that's the case, I agree with you. But commentators who say things like "there is no evidence of fraud" or "there is no evidence of widespread fraud" are wrong in the former case and creating a strawman in the latter. And of course, the effect of saying fallacious things like this is it just serves as confirmation for the other side that you are acting in bad faith. The specific claim made is that there was targeted fraud in specific districts in swing states to tip the result. I don't think there is sufficient evidence to show this.

> then they all have the same wrong belief, regardless of degree

My point is the degree matters if we care about avoiding a conflict.

> The goal isn't to convince all of them...

I don't know what you are saying here. My point is that if you are trying to persuade people of their errors in reasoning, you shouldn't expect to convince all of them, just a sufficient amount to reduce their confidence in their wrong beliefs to change the dynamics of the situation enough to avoid the worst possibilities.

> Both of those have happened. So why do you, a reasonable(?) person on HN trying to convince us that it hasn't?

This is objectively false. A full forensic audit of all the states has not occurred (some local forensic audits of sampled ballots in specific counties in some states has) and SCOTUS has not heard any cases (yet) about this issue. I don't know why you state obvious untruths, beyond just being ignorant of the facts or something.

(And yes, before you construct a strawman response, YouTube is within their rights to do this. But that has nothing to do with if it's something we think is morally correct to do, nor how we should think about the second order effects of doing so, and the dangerous precedents it sets.)

YouTube has tolerated this for much longer than the never we previously had.

It would be impractical for the US to ban either the democrats or republicans without either authorizing secession or experiencing a conflict comparable to one of the world wars. It’s doubtful there would be any winners in either scenario.

There is no prospect of a rebellion overcoming the US military machine, and its presence would allow the GOP to be purged and suppressed. Maintaining a low level of guerilla activity would allow this to continue.

The GOP is playing a very dangerous game for themselves moving in this direction.

What do you think happens if half of the country sees that government as illegitimate, including many members of the military? Governments aren't magic. They exist only if enough people see them as legitimate. The scenario you outline, as supported by polling data, implies to me approximately a third of the country would reject this outright as a legitimate government, with a high bias towards the military.

Are you really thinking this through? Do you know how easy it would be for there to be a guerilla war in the US, which is organized in part by military defectors? All it would take would be for enough belief that the country's goverment had become tyrannical. This is exactly the premise of the two prior situations where Americans mobilized for war on our own soil. The scenario you outline is precisely the situation that most strong supporters of the second amendment believe it was created for, and why they exercise it - to provide a deterrence and eventually, if needed, a mechanism to overthrow a tyrannical government.

If someone talks up rebellion and civil war to try to prevent some legal action of a democratically elected government, I will just look in them in the eye and say "Rebel and be damned."