How to use the US election system to stage a coup

[LuckyR]

So Trump's lawyer is using the "no reasonable person would believe" in the election fraud narrative as her defense against the defamation lawsuit from Dominion. Sucker born every minute...

[chewybrian]

So Trump's lawyer is using the "no reasonable person would believe" in the election fraud narrative as her defense against the defamation lawsuit from Dominion. Sucker born every minute...

So, nearly half the country is unreasonable for that reason, and it's fair enough to say at least half of the rest are, by other criteria. So, that doesn't leave a lot of room for reason to win out, does it?

He is admitting through his mouthpiece that the whole thing is just a big game and he has no intention to and feels no duty to do the right thing. It was already evident that he felt this way, but now he is on the record. It still won't be enough to dissuade most of his followers, though. It's sad enough to think so many of us can be fooled, but sadder still to think that it doesn't even take real effort or skill to fool us. Just tell us what we want to hear.

Why isn't this enough to make a case against him for sedition or some such thing? He is admitting that he was lying when he sent the crowd down to congress to try to defy the results of the electoral college. Should we allow the most powerful person on the planet to have different facts for different audiences and purposes? This is not a case of keeping facts hidden for national security reasons. He lied to try to steal the election, he readily admits it, and yet we still face the prospect of his being elected in a few more years yet again.

[Steve3007]

So Trump's lawyer is using the "no reasonable person would believe" in the election fraud narrative as her defense against the defamation lawsuit from Dominion. Sucker born every minute...

This is Sidney Powell isn't it. The really wild and creative part is that while using that defence, that no reasonable person would believe the mad theories that were being put forward to try to say that there was election fraud, she's also still stating that she herself still believes that narrative. So, in other words, it's a not guilty by reason of insanity plea!

[Steve3007]

It essentially seems to be:

"I proposes some mad theories about election fraud. You'd have to be mad to believe those theories. I personally do believe those theories. Therefore I am mad. Therefore I am not guilty of proposing mad theories about election fraud."

It's an argument worthy of Joseph Heller.

[Steve3007]

He is admitting through his mouthpiece that the whole thing is just a big game...

It's worth noting that the lawyer here is Sidney "Release the Kraken" Powell, who was removed from Trump's team of lawyers during the aftermath of the election because she was too wild even for them. So they can distance themselves from her comfortably enough if they feel the need to do so.

[Steve3007]

Why isn't this enough to make a case against him for sedition or some such thing?

The free speech absolutist would reply: Because nobody should be prosecuted for talking, because talking, itself, does no harm. That would include inciting people to storm a building and telling lies about a company and its products. So, on that view, Donald Trump and Sidney Powell are innocent. In the case of Powell, if she tells lies about a company (Dominion voting systems) with the result that the company loses business, they have no grounds to sue her because it's not her that caused them to lose business. She just said some words. It's the people who decide to withdraw their custom on the strength of those words who actually caused them to lose business. And, of course, they're free to do that. So the conclusion there would that telling lies about a company and its products is not, in any sense, wrong or a crime.

An odd view in my opinion!

[Steve3007]

So, nearly half the country is unreasonable for that reason, and it's fair enough to say at least half of the rest are, by other criteria. So, that doesn't leave a lot of room for reason to win out, does it?

Only by her argument, and, by her own apparent admission, she's crazy. I think it's more sensible not to say that half or all of the country are unreasonable, but to simply say that they're busy, that they're apt to believe things that their predispositions already lead them to suspect are probably true, and that they live in an ocean of information. i.e. they're human.

[Sculptor1]

So, nearly half the country is unreasonable for that reason, and it's fair enough to say at least half of the rest are, by other criteria. So, that doesn't leave a lot of room for reason to win out, does it?

Luckily it looks like the balance is in favour of social liberalism, intelligence, and true patriotism which includes all Americans; and against racism, stupidity, white power, greed and facism.

So it was 4 years ago too, but due to a corrupt electoral collage system which is biased in favour of republican, urban red neck southern and whites; and against urban, democratic, and cultural diversity, Trump managed to get control despite having 3 million fewer votes.

That is not to say that all republicans are racist, stupid, white power mongers and fascist. It is just to say that if you are those things you are going to be voting Trump.

[chewybrian]

So, nearly half the country is unreasonable for that reason, and it's fair enough to say at least half of the rest are, by other criteria. So, that doesn't leave a lot of room for reason to win out, does it?

Only by her argument, and, by her own apparent admission, she's crazy. I think it's more sensible not to say that half or all of the country are unreasonable, but to simply say that they're busy, that they're apt to believe things that their predispositions already lead them to suspect are probably true, and that they live in an ocean of information. i.e. they're human.

I get what you are saying, but this is really important information and the facts are rather easy to verify. Trump lied about the election results for several months. He had his day in court many times over and lost every time. He maintained the lie to the very end, and tried to incite his followers to overturn a legitimate election at the highest level.

So, we went to the brink of having this guy take over our country like a third world military dictator. Are we going to dismiss this near-miss and give everyone a pass for not noticing that democracy itself was in jeopardy? Are we ready to explain to our children that we were too busy to notice our freedoms being stripped from us? Isn't the the right to have your vote heard more important than any individual or any policy you would like to see put in place?

[chewybrian]

So, nearly half the country is unreasonable for that reason, and it's fair enough to say at least half of the rest are, by other criteria. So, that doesn't leave a lot of room for reason to win out, does it?

Luckily it looks like the balance is in favour of social liberalism, intelligence, and true patriotism which includes all Americans; and against racism, stupidity, white power, greed and facism.

So it was 4 years ago too, but due to a corrupt electoral collage system which is biased in favour of republican, urban red neck southern and whites; and against urban, democratic, and cultural diversity, Trump managed to get control despite having 3 million fewer votes.

That is not to say that all republicans are racist, stupid, white power mongers and fascist. It is just to say that if you are those things you are going to be voting Trump.

I think you've got that right except for omitting one new problem. The Republicans are working very hard right now to disenfranchise as many voters as possible to see that this corrupt election system continues, or even gets better at keeping the "wrong" people from exercising their right to vote.

[Sculptor1]

So, nearly half the country is unreasonable for that reason, and it's fair enough to say at least half of the rest are, by other criteria. So, that doesn't leave a lot of room for reason to win out, does it?

Luckily it looks like the balance is in favour of social liberalism, intelligence, and true patriotism which includes all Americans; and against racism, stupidity, white power, greed and facism.

So it was 4 years ago too, but due to a corrupt electoral collage system which is biased in favour of republican, urban red neck southern and whites; and against urban, democratic, and cultural diversity, Trump managed to get control despite having 3 million fewer votes.

That is not to say that all republicans are racist, stupid, white power mongers and fascist. It is just to say that if you are those things you are going to be voting Trump.

I think you've got that right except for omitting one new problem. The Republicans are working very hard right now to disenfranchise as many voters as possible to see that this corrupt election system continues, or even gets better at keeping the "wrong" people from exercising their right to vote.

A certain amount of that has already happened.
I would hope that the literacy test administered by whites to disenfranchise blacks is now a thing of the past..

I've heard that IDs, bank accounts and so forth have been used as qualifying blocks to stop voting.
What are the republicans up to now that I had not heard about?

Are ex-cons allowed to vote?

[Steve3007]

Only by her argument, and, by her own apparent admission, she's crazy. I think it's more sensible not to say that half or all of the country are unreasonable, but to simply say that they're busy, that they're apt to believe things that their predispositions already lead them to suspect are probably true, and that they live in an ocean of information. i.e. they're human.

I get what you are saying, but this is really important information and the facts are rather easy to verify. Trump lied about the election results for several months. He had his day in court many times over and lost every time. He maintained the lie to the very end, and tried to incite his followers to overturn a legitimate election at the highest level.

I agree, but nevertheless no matter how easy the facts are to verify, most people don't verify them. Most people, both in my personal experience and judging by events like the one we're discussing, take almost no interest in finding out any details of what goes on in their own political systems. I know plenty of people who just about know the name of the Prime Minister, but anything more than that: forget it. They're therefore vulnerable to even the most crude forms of political manipulation, as we discovered here in the UK during the Brexit referendum, for example.

But it won't do any good to dismiss whole swathes of the population as unreasonable or ignorant. The only effect of that will be that they call us lefty, elitist, intellectual snobs (as they did here in the Brexit referendum). It all just ends in football crowd style name calling. The tough challenge is trying to work out how people can be persuaded to verify or falsify what they believe before believing it, without alienating them.

[chewybrian]

So, nearly half the country is unreasonable for that reason, and it's fair enough to say at least half of the rest are, by other criteria. So, that doesn't leave a lot of room for reason to win out, does it?

Luckily it looks like the balance is in favour of social liberalism, intelligence, and true patriotism which includes all Americans; and against racism, stupidity, white power, greed and facism.

So it was 4 years ago too, but due to a corrupt electoral collage system which is biased in favour of republican, urban red neck southern and whites; and against urban, democratic, and cultural diversity, Trump managed to get control despite having 3 million fewer votes.

That is not to say that all republicans are racist, stupid, white power mongers and fascist. It is just to say that if you are those things you are going to be voting Trump.

I think you've got that right except for omitting one new problem. The Republicans are working very hard right now to disenfranchise as many voters as possible to see that this corrupt election system continues, or even gets better at keeping the "wrong" people from exercising their right to vote.

A certain amount of that has already happened.
I would hope that the literacy test administered by whites to disenfranchise blacks is now a thing of the past..

I've heard that IDs, bank accounts and so forth have been used as qualifying blocks to stop voting.
What are the republicans up to now that I had not heard about?

Are ex-cons allowed to vote?

There are too many to mention, but it includes barring felons from voting, requiring ID's to vote (often requiring so many forms of ID that poor people give up!), barring illegals from voting, stopping mail or on-line voting, limiting or eliminating early voting, eliminating all forms of automatic or passive registrations, killing citizen-led initiatives...

It has nothing to do with stopping fraud or "restoring faith in the system" and everything to do with looking at who votes by which method and limiting options for your adversaries and widening them for your supporters. For example:

Georgia Republicans would sharply limit early voting on Sundays, when many Black voters follow church services with “souls to the polls” bus rides to cast ballots.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/us/r ... ssion.html

At the top of those efforts is a slew of bills raising new barriers to casting votes, particularly the mail ballots that Democrats flocked to in the 2020 election. But other measures go well beyond that, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans; clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives; and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November vote....

“The typical response by a losing party in a functioning democracy is that they alter their platform to make it more appealing,” Kenneth Mayer, an expert on voting and elections at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. “Here the response is to try to keep people from voting. It’s dangerously antidemocratic.”...

[LuckyR]

So Trump's lawyer is using the "no reasonable person would believe" in the election fraud narrative as her defense against the defamation lawsuit from Dominion. Sucker born every minute...

This is Sidney Powell isn't it. The really wild and creative part is that while using that defence, that no reasonable person would believe the mad theories that were being put forward to try to say that there was election fraud, she's also still stating that she herself still believes that narrative. So, in other words, it's a not guilty by reason of insanity plea!

Well to be clear, the suckers I referenced are any jurors in the Dominion case who believe this current argument. No doubt the original claim of fraud was factually a blatant lie, but using the term "lie" implies it could be (and actually was) believable by someone.

[Steve3007]

...It has nothing to do with stopping fraud or "restoring faith in the system" and everything to do with looking at who votes by which method and limiting options for your adversaries and widening them for your supporters...

Interesting and disturbing. I guess they can claim that it's about "restoring faith in the system" while neglecting to mention that it was lies like those spread by Trump, Powell, Giuliani and others that damaged faith in the system in the first place! It seems any system that not only needs to work well but needs the public to believe it to be working well can easily be corrupted by people telling the public that it isn't working when it is.