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."
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.