Liberalism =/= leftism. But it's completely normal for the hegemonic narrative to misunderstand or intentionally conflate these things.
I think most people on the left realized Trump was probably going to win. It's not a mystery.
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Even if Trump had lost, one fact remains: tens of millions of Americans voted for this guy three times in a row.
The first time, it's conceivable that Americans made a mistake.
The second time, they knew Trump as actual President.
The third time, they knew Trump as a convicted felon, insurrectionist and overtly wannabe dictator, and they voted for him even harder.
At this point, MAGA isn't a freak event, it's the norm. Even if the dems had won, they'd have won the presidency of a MAGA country, and quite frankly, what's the point... You can't cure someone who wants to be sick.
It's astonishing to me that anyone ever entertained the idea that MAGA was a freak event, even back in 2016.
I had no illusion in 2016. In fact, I had no illusion back in 2002 when I left the US and gave up my citizenship after Dubya was elected and signed the USA Patriot Act into law after 9/11. America is hosed and has been officially on the path to idiocracy and fascism since then.
It's just that a 3rd round of millions of Trump votes should confirm it without the shadow of a doubt to even the most wide-eyed believers in American exceptionalism. America today is the 1933 Germany of our time.
You left out, "convicted rapist".
The rape trial was a civil trial for defamation and not a criminal one for rape. One does not get convicted in a civil trial. So it has been determined that he is a rapist, but he hasn't been convicted for it.
There should be no need to pile on. Any one of those things would have been disqualifying in times past. Clinton almost got impeached over a blowjob. But Trump and all the things he said and done over the past 9 years is somehow okay. The mind boggles.
I just need someone to disprove the "bullet ballot" thing I saw. I have no idea if their numbers are real, but if Trump did actually get hundreds of thousands of votes in swing states where he's literally the only candidate selected I want that shit looked into at the very least. That's waaaaay outside the norm.
I'm being very careful not to go full dumbass like Trump voters in 2020 but I also think the GOP has a significantly greater propensity to cheat based on, well everything. That feels fair.
There’s also the well-established history of projection to consider with the GOP. While I doubt anything at scale was actually pulled off, an investigation is still fair and reasonable.
Not only that, but they have just spent years having the left call out their obvious bullshit claims over and over, so the base is primed and ready to immediately believe that this is just a cynical attempt by the Democrats to overturn a fair election. After all, that's exactly what they just did. And everyone must think and behave just like them because it's all they know or care to know.
Not that I care what those people believe, but I just know that they will dismiss it outright and never even consider any evidence that may come out.
A source for those interested: https://substack.com/home/post/p-151721941
Without calling into question the broader possibility that malfeasance did occur, I don't feel like this argument is particularly credible.
Suppose you were to engage in some form of straight up ballot stuffing? Why then would you make them bullet ballots? Why not vote straight ticket Republican? Straight ticket ballots are not unusual - even less so then bullet ballots, apparently - so you'd draw less suspicion, and you'd get the benefit of lots of extra down ticket votes.
If someone was going to cheat, what benefit would they gain from cheating this way?
If this was some tabulation hack, then maybe whatever exploit they used to add or flip votes didn't easily allow for introducing a full ballot of choices.
If it was human ballot stuffing maybe it was easier to make only one selection so that local county-level choices wouldn't limit where/when those ballots could be introduced.
Just for the record, I don't think there's anything to this. It's very hard to do voter fraud on a scale that matters, and I need more evidence than some strange ballots. If evidence emerges, I'll change my mind, but I don't expect that to happen.
That said, if I were to come up with an argument for why they did it this way, it's because of how fascism is lined up behind a specific leader. Nobody below him matters. However important those people think they are, they are replaceable parts. This line of thought is so ingrained into fascism that they don't even think of supporting anybody else.
Which is really important for reasons beyond possible voter fraud. It explains why people would naturally vote that way on their own, and then the voter fraud theory is cut up by Occom's Razer.
The people below him matter because they enact his agenda. The fact that there is a cult of personality around Trump absolutely explains why real voters would vote that way. But anyone enacting a ballot stuffing scheme on his behalf would almost certainly understand that he needs cronies to actually do any of the things he wants to do.
I think you're guilty of crediting them with an abundance of intelligence.
But I'm forced to credit them with intelligence, by the framing of the theory.
You see that, right?
The supposition is that these people engaged in a massive ballot stuffing scheme, and covered it up so well (including successfully obtaining the silence of every one of the people involved) that the only evidence left is an abnormally high number of bullet ballots.
So they have to be smart enough and self-serving enough to do all that, but stupid enough to not do the obvious - and selfish - thing and make those ballots straight ticket votes.
See my previous point about any argument that relies on the same people simultaneously displaying extremes of competence and incompetence. I'm not saying that never happens, but it is usually a good indicator that you're engaging in wishful thinking.
Republicans are dumb enough to give it away if that is what happened. I'm not saying it is but I think there is definitely a non zero chance it is.
Generally speaking, a good test for fantastical thinking is when your theory relies on the same people displaying outlandish degrees of both competence and incompence at the same time.
If the people who did this are good enough to pull off - and keep quiet - a fraud at this scale, how did they fuck up such an elementary component?
If they're capable of fucking up something that basic, how is it that they've failed to leave any other stunningly obvious evidence?
Personally, I'm of the opinion that even apparently fair elections should be treated as active crime scenes. That's how we do things in Canada. Everything is checked and rechecked. But this particular theory seems to have veered pretty far into moon landing territory.
That's what I'm saying look for other evidence, the anomaly is worth checking but doesn't mean something nefarious happened.
It's not about election denialism. This is the standard problem with conspiracy theories being based on reality. Voter suppression has happened in small numbers and small ways for the last century. Pick your poison. Are we talking about felons being disenfranchised? Are we talking about taking native Americans off their roles because they don't have home addresses and they use po boxes? Are we talking about rejecting college kids because they're out of state? Are we talking about mailboxes being set on fire? Are we talking about polling places that are not handicapped accessible and never will be?
All of those things continue to happen and each of them plays a small part. I don't think that would make a break the election, not this time when the difference was so large, but it could make a break some elections.
And as long as it's left unaddressed, voters aren't blind, they can see the shady shit. So then what, then you just don't know how bad the problem is, and the same people that you would trust to compile data on how bad it is are the same people whose job it is to fix it, but they haven't, so you can't believe anything they say.
All of which is to say, if people are skeptical that the game is fair, that's based on proven reality from decades of experience. But that doesn't mean it affected this election.
Yeah, I mean we all took massive psychic damage. It didnt make any sense. And now he's appointing people in a way that looks purposefully destructive. So yeah.
It's not just a theory if there's a ton of blatant evidence the election was majorly tampered with
He won. Get this conspiracy bullshit out of here.
Yeah probably. But this is a man who has never gotten anything honestly in his entire life. All they do is project, and they just spent years shrieking about this exact thing. Historically, that has meant that they have done/are doing/will do that thing.
I'm not going to just automatically assume anything, but it would be the least surprising thing ever if it turned out to be true.
To be fair, it's been a longstanding rule with Republicans that whatever they accuse others of is merely a projection of what they'll do the moment they can get away with it. Whether or not they would try to steal an election isn't even a question. They've as much as admitted it. The only question is whether or not they did. I've not seen any evidence to that effect, and I'm not presuming there is any, but it would be idiotic not to at least contemplate the possibility.
Have you not heard of any of the shit tons of ballots that got destroyed, forged, and stolen by republicans leading up to the election? Or how they're not counting a shit ton of provisional ballots in Georgia and tried to get them to be hand counted? I'm p sure other states did that too but I don't remember
Edit just realized this sounds kinda rude, not my intention 🌸 I can look for some links if you want
Statistically anomalous data exists, it should be scrutinized, just partially. Sample and do a hand recount for 1 district that shows the greatest evidence of bullet ballots, if that turns out close to expectations, that's the end of it. If it isn't... that's a massive can of worms.
1 anomaly can be seen as a random outlier, and if it wouldn't impact the overall result, can be ignored. Multiple anomalies, in only the places that matter is worth a little time to confirm.