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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/13/21 in all areas

  1. And you are able to question anything. But you're conflating this with somehow living consequence-free and implicitly denying others their right to assembly. A Nazi could style himself as "simply questioning whether Jews are evil baby-eaters," but that doesn't mean that I should be forced to hire him, give him a platform to express his views, befriend him, or whatever. If I don't want to associate myself with him, that is enough: he has the right to question, I have the right to fire. And yes, the people who are continuing to question the validity of this election, at this point, are divergent with reality. Not so much as Nazis, and in ways that might be understandable to a degree (given that they are being lied to constantly by figures they trust; though their mistakes lie earlier in their own personal timelines). But they diverge with reality nonetheless. That's a fair reason not to want to hire someone. Haven't they? Hasn't the question been asked multiple times, and answered by scores of people in various departments, and justices of differing political ideology (including Trump appointees)? Trump just hasn't liked any of those answers, and so he continues to "ask the question" as though he hasn't received any. Because of course. Because he was never going to accept any answer that wasn't him remaining President. He was always going to call "fraud" in the event of his losing, facts be damned. He'd intimated that he would do as much before the 2016 election, too, and that he would only accept the results if he won. How people can take him seriously in this is beyond me. And yet the courts looked at these claims and gave them a hearing, over months, and found no call for any injunction or further investigation or to rule in his favor in the slightest (despite the fact that Trump's lawyers sought claims far more limited in scope than he or his team were making in press conferences, when it came time to sign their names to documents; there is fraud afoot after all, and they are party to it). That's not true. The question will never be "answered" to QAnon satisfaction. It will never go away. The goalposts will always be moved. If you could have your dream investigation, then there would be questions about that: the leadership and membership, and scope of inquiry, and whether or not there was collusion with the Dems, payoffs by Soros, and on and on and on. Then you would want an investigation into the investigation. There are sometimes real conspiracies in the world, but conspiracy-thinking is itself a phenomenon that, unfortunately, we must strive to understand with increasing urgency in the modern world. It interprets lack of evidence to prove the initial conspiracy as evidence of a yet-deeper conspiracy, covering up the first. Not going to speak for anyone but myself, but of course we ought not evade. We ought to question, consider, investigate, and ultimately -- conclude. And then our conclusions are subject to further evidence, further inquiry, and can be amended or even overturned, but there must be a point at which we are no longer "seeking answers," having found them to our satisfaction. And there are thorny epistemological questions in and among this, I will admit, but we must take care not to fault someone else for having reached the point of conclusion before we have, given that these activities are necessarily individual, and depend upon individual context (in terms of the evidence one has, one's powers of reasoning, etc.). In this case, for instance, I watched things play out thus: before the election, it was observed that, due to COVID and the increased role of mail-in ballots, and how Democrats were encouraging mail-in voting while Republicans were downplaying the need for masks, social distancing, etc., it was highly likely that in-person voting would be weighted towards Trump and mail-in voting would be both large, and weighted towards Biden. On the night of the election, that played out exactly as anticipated. It was also supposed by many -- and I assumed, knowing the character of politics generally and Trump quite specifically -- that if Trump had a lead in certain swing states on election night, that he would attempt to claim "victory" in those states, despite mail-in ballots not being fully counted. That he would then put up a fight to either shut down further vote counting or to minimize the results of that counting. And that played out exactly as anticipated, too. Thus, that Biden made up ground and then surpassed Trump in several areas as counting went on was not, to me, suggestive of any fraud, but exactly what was expected. But to others, they "went to bed with Trump in the lead" and woke up to find that Biden had overtaken him, and they were primed and encouraged to think that this was evidence of some kind of conspiracy. To join in an effort to "stop the steal," by which it was meant to throw out the votes of fellow Americans and overturn the results of an election that has been judged fair, by every individual and agency empowered to make such a determination. That's the bloodless version, of course. In reality, it was sickening to watch our democracy undermined in such fashion, anticipated though it was -- and it's only gotten worse. But I'm never going to convince you of this. Because that's how it goes: as soon as I tell you that "lizard men aren't real," you'll see that as evidence that I must be one of the lizard men. It's either that, or admit that your worldview is deeply corrupted -- and that, to put it mildly, is not an easy feat.
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  2. First they came for the Christians but I was not a Christian and remained silent. Then they came for the Conservatives but I was not a Conservative and remained silent, then they came for the Trumpians, but I was not a Trumpian and was silent. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up. That's a thing I picked up about the Leftist/Socialist, the craving to enact revenge and pay back as well as stifling dissent and to cut off any future (democratic, ideological) challenges to their power. You are going to see a growing witch-hunt, in the work-place, the business community, universities, broader society and by punitive laws and dictates.
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  3. Was every allegation of fraud proven false by forensic examination of the ballots? Were the elections in every state carried out according to their own and federal constitutional requirements? Most cases were dismissed on standing and other jurisprudential findings , not on a full hearing of evidence or discovery. Did TX and seventeen other states irrationally petition SCOTUS ? Sycophants the lot ?
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  4. Riots break out over the country, zones were even created in some parts to accommodate rioters while apologists tried to veil it as free-speech and dismiss the looting as not directly injurious to the life of the looted. A riot breaks out in Washington DC and it is escalated to an insurrection.
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