> There was no path to them attaining any actual power.

They currently have actual power. Their leader is currently the president of the United States. For the next 48 hours he could nuke Tehran if he wanted to.

And what actually happened is far from the worst-case scenario. Imagine a comparable mob, but well organized, and armed with assault rifles. That was (and remains) a real possibility.

You seem determined to focus only on the worst possible hypothetical downsides and not consider anything else. Of course in this case free speech will prove to be an evil that must be eliminated. You win.

I would think assassinations.

That would be very bad if it happened, although existing institutions proved sufficient to prevent this.

Still, we've had many assassinations in our history, often at the presidential level. None of them were "existential threats". They were all handled by existing institutions and did not require throwing out our core values.

The worst-case scenario is the end of democracy in the USA in the next 15 years.

If one side stays convinced the elections were fraudulent and Trump is a victim , it will cause a permanent shift in how Americans see their own democratic elections.

Historically, since democracy has existed, that vacuum is always filled by an authoritarian leader.

I find it odd that most of this could have been prevented if just one judge had said "you know what, you have a lot of notarized affidavits, and a reasonable claim to harm considering you lost the election by conventional wisdom, and you can't legally access any further data to prove your case unless we enter a discovery stage, so, sure, let's play this out and be done with it."

I also find it odd that none of the lawsuits prevented combined the affidavits (generally considered sufficient evidence to proceed) and reasonable proof of harm. Always one or the other (or neither).

Or maybe the legal team lied to the public and were truthful to the 50 different judges?

Nothing will pour more gas on that fire than censorship.

I basically agree with your analysis on that point, and I'm resentful of Trump for helping to create that problem. But I consider big tech censorship to be the first step to an inevitable end of democracy, "destroying it in order to save it".

It's a really hard problem because the "anti-censorship" argument is also used by the side that wants to destroy democracy once in power.

Historically, Americans have succeeded at destroying ideologies by grossly impeding on free speech and other constitutional rights when there was political will.

Currently, I'm not sure there is a sign of political will to restore democratic norms by suppressing white-supremacism.

> Historically, Americans have succeeded at destroying ideologies by grossly impeding on free speech and other constitutional rights when there was political will.

What is the history here?

Native American autonomy and agency, African Americans obtaining land after the Civil War or stimulus measures after the Great Depression, Communism... Of course, the combination of limiting free speech for decades leads to the death of the ideology because no one picks it up.

> Native American autonomy and agency, African Americans obtaining land after the Civil War

Unfortunately these were suppressed with violence, far more than mere censorship. I don't think these causes are dead at all, however. Many Native Americans still pursue these goals and occasionally enjoy victories, while the other cause has changed with the times and shifted focus from land to a more vague idea of reparations.

> stimulus measures after the Great Depression, Communism

I don't think those are dead at all. They may not be especially popular among normal people, but one can certainly get elected and openly preach violent revolutionary ideology like "We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism, this police state. We cannot and will not stop until we overthrow it and replace it with a world based instead on solidarity, genuine democracy, and equality – a socialist world." [0] The organizers of BLM have explicitly stated that they are "trained organizers, trained Marxists" in the context of BLM's having adequate ideological direction. [1][2]

[0] https://www.socialistalternative.org/2020/07/07/kshama-sawan... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDqObO44e9s [2] https://therealnews.com/pcullors0722blacklives

However, what if the election really was fraudulent? I mean the video in Georgia after the election observer were sent home, were pretty incriminating.

Also seeing how BLM got backing and did way more damage, makes this all look pretty one-sided. It's only okay if they do it.

Interestingly, the democrats would have fixed the elections but only managed to win the Senate in a tight run-off?

After spending $100 million, the Trump campaign's legal team found no admissible evidence of election fraud, just videos they can use for future campaigns attacking democracy.

What is happening to this site? The comment above is alleging election fraud, which has been debunked by multiple court rulings from judges across the political spectrum. It is not downvoted, flagged, nothing. The comment responding it to it gets downvoted?

My best guess is that liberals stopped reading higher in the thread. I would hope that moderates and conservatives would not find those claims very credible, but perhaps they do or are not so offended as to downvote.

I was personally fine with the integrity of the election right up until censorship ramped up. Now I have zero confidence that I would hear about any problems. I still don't think the election was "stolen" or anything, but I'm no longer confident enough to downvote such an opinion. How are we supposed to really know what's true or not when we only hear one side of the story?

What censorship? The president himself was saying the election was stolen from him for two months and that was basically the only thing the nightly news talked about (other than COVID) every day. At some point we should be able to say "Enough, evidence or GTFO," without being accused of silencing discussion.

We're way past that point.

I don't know anything about what the nightly news ran. All I know is that when my news sources got around to talking about it, a couple days later it's "oh I have to be very careful what I say about this, I already got a notice threatening a ban". From my perspective, the period of free discussion was extremely limited.

I'm not at all sympathetic to the "we have to crush this viewpoint" camp since they amplified Hillary's claims of a "stolen election" for years. [0] You can't tell just one side "evidence or GTFO" and expect anyone to take you seriously. Especially when the new narrative is that elections are fair and unstealable, which directly contradicts the claims of an unfair stolen election in 2016.

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019...

> I'm not at all sympathetic to the "we have to crush this viewpoint" camp since they amplified Hillary's claims of a "stolen election" for years.

Clinton never claimed the counting of the votes were rigged, and I know of no serious politician claiming that Clinton should be installed as president because of the claimed Russian meddling, whether they believed it or not.

So, on one hand, we have a candidate who was pretty much dropped like a hot potato by fellow Democrats the moment she lost the election. On the other hand, we have mainstream media giving hundreds of hours of coverage to a president insisting he actually won the election, when all evidence says he didn't. ...And you're saying who is censored?

If your argument is actually that no one is being censored, then we will just stop there.

How is the video in Georgia debunked? They sent observers home (even a big newslet posted this on Twitter at that time), counted the ballots afterwards and Biden had a spike.

And btw I am from Germany, so I am on neither "camp".

No you saw a conspiracy theory peddled by Rudy Giuliani, the man in charge of the Trump legal challenge to the election.

The video is so wrongly interpreted, Republicans were the first one to debunk it. It's important to note, in a video, when someone leaves the screen or the room... you can't assume they've been sent home.

More info here: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/facebook-p...

From experience, evidence-based conversations here are limited when it comes to politics unfortunately.

You mean how one side for the last four years has said that Trump "stole" the election due to Russian interference.

The fact is, this is all whataboutism. This is all due to instructional failure. Americans increasing do not trust the institutions, the media, the government, 'elites'. This lack of trust is the root cause for growing conspiracy theories. The answer to this is not to stifle speech, but to have more speech. After all, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

The Intelligence Committee of a Republican-led Senate confirmed the Russian interference and managed to write a 996 page report with all the evidence.

The failure I see is Americans not wanting to read (or skim) the reports but being satisfied with sound-bites.

Source: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

Couple of things:

1) I'm not an American and don't give a shit about American politics

2) Do you think that Russian interference changed the result of the election? If it didn't than the huffing and puffing about the Russians stealing the election is just as false as Trump's current claims

3) Trump supporters can equally point to affidavits and "evidence" about vote tampering. Whether you believe that evidence or not is another story.

My point was not about trump or biden stealing the election, it was that institutional trust is low. People no longer believe what the government or the media put out. No doubt some of this is driven by the "narrative approach" to truth, where everything tells a story that aligns to a group's ideology.