A few more points about that Time report
I’ve already written two posts (this and this) on the topic of that recent report in Time on the 2020 pre-election machinations, as well as posting several podcast videos on the same subject. But somehow it seems there’s more to say.
The basic premise of the Time article was “we had to do all of this to protect America from the false accusations Trump was sure to make about voting fraud.” This presupposes a lot. It presupposes he would be making such accusations. It presupposes they would of course be false.
But these things – especially the latter – were unknowable prior to the election. The first – Trump’s accusations – was not a farfetched prediction. But the idea that a fraudulent election would not and could not occur at the hands of Democrats? That could never have been known. And certainly the last people one should trust to reassure us on that score would be those Democrats themselves or their “bipartisan” NeverTrump GOPe allies.
And yet that’s what the people who ran the conspiracy to “fortify” the election say we should do – trust them. And that’s what Molly Ball of Time is saying, too.
What’s more, if that was in fact their big pre-election concern – that Trump would falsely accuse the Democrats of cheating, and throw the post-election transition into an uproar – what would be the best way to prevent that and reassure the American people that all was actually on the up-and-up with the vote? Why, make sure the voting process was hyper-secure and hyper-protected against fraud or even the suspicion of fraud. What did the Democrats do instead? They mounted a full-court press to relax the voting rules in ways that were bound to cause suspicion. Here’s how the article tells it:
They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears…
In the end, nearly half the electorate cast ballots by mail in 2020, practically a revolution in how people vote. About a quarter voted early in person. Only a quarter of voters cast their ballots the traditional way: in person on Election Day.
They instituted a nationwide, state-by-state lawfare push for the relaxation of these rules and the implementation of an avalanche of mail-in votes, a voting method known world-round to be inherently less secure than in-person ballots, some of it in states woefully unprepared to institute such a system in time. They relaxed other rules connected with signature verification, postmarks, and the like. All objections to this were to be labeled “voter-suppression.” And funny thing, although COVID was used as an excuse (successfully, in most cases) for these changes, the changes actually matched a Democrat wish-list for voting that long predated COVID and many had been part of the first bill the House had passed after the 2018 election. So no, this was not a reaction to COVID, although its legal success was enabled by COVID.
So, while they claim to have been motivated in this huge conspiratorial enterprise by the idea of protecting the public from believing in Trump’s obviously-bogus fraud claims of the future, they simultaneously made those claims far more credible. They also made it far more possible to actually accomplish voting fraud.
Doesn’t that seem just a bit paradoxical?
As for the suppression of information they deem false, who made them the judge of that? Once upon a time it was thought that getting to the truth dictated the free expression of ideas – that the answer to a bad argument was a better one, and the response to false facts was to prove them false and counter with the truth. Saying “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” was unacceptable, especially for news outlets. Now the MSM has become Orwell’s Minitrue, dedicating to suppressing information the proles aren’t allowed to hear.
This article is perhaps the most convincing proof yet of the absolute power and the nearly total control of the left in our moribund republic, because it is an admission of “fortifying”, i.e. rigging, last November’s election without any fear of the repercussions of nearly admitting what many on the right have been arguing for three months. In the guise of congratulating others of her ideological persuasion for their “heroic” work in “saving our democracy” from the enemy, Molly Ball is gloating over her ability to state, without fear of censure from her side, that 2+2=5, in truly frightening Orwellian fashion.
@neo:Once upon a time it was thought that getting to the truth dictated the free expression of ideas – that the answer to a bad argument was a better one, and the response to false facts was to prove them false and counter with the truth.
I’ve lost confidence that most of the people who used to say this actually used to believe this. I think they used it as cover for what they used to get away with more easily back before the web.
Now the MSM has become Orwell’s Minitrue,
Of course the original Minitrue was the war-time overseas BBC. I’m less sure about “becoming” and thinking maybe “always was, to some extent, some years more and some years less.”
All my life the media has selected information to drive a narrative. I’m not fifty but I can see it from here…
Frederick:
Yes, but it’s gotten worse in my lifetime, anyway.
Maybe it was the Minitrue but now it’s the Maxitrue.
“…to prevent that and reassure the American people that all was actually on the up-and-up with the vote?”
But it’s not only that.
Particularly damning is their indefatigable efforts to deny and stonewall any and every attempt to get at the truth of the stolen election—especially threatening anyone voicing suspicions. Oh, and threatening their families.
(As though it’s perfectly natural, perfectly normal, for four swing states to stop counting votes at almost the very same time, and several hours later—when counting “votes” resumed—end up with the leader by a substantial margin prior to the “stoppage” (Trump) now losing—across all four states! A simply amazing coincidence, no doubt…)
It’s a party of thugs. But maybe that’s ALSO what draws them to the Chinese leadership. It’s not just the money…
(I.e, it’s the principle! The Democrats, always willing to learn a trick or two, definitely do wish to learn from their Chinese pals and inspirers, pace Tom Friedman, whose fondest dream—Why can’t the US become more like China?—seems to have become reality…. Seems?)
“Now the MSM has become Orwell’s Minitrue, dedicating to suppressing information the proles aren’t allowed to hear.”
Every story about election fraud in my local rag proclaimed all claims of election fraud as “baseless,” even though they didn’t expand on what those claims were. To get real information about the claims of fraud one had to read the Guardian or the Daily Mail or conservative blogs. It’s out in the open censorship of news that has become blatant since Trump was elected. Yet, so many citizens don’t recognize what’s happening. We used to make jokes about Pravda and Isvestia. Now we’re living in the jokes.
They are attempting to explain their way out of getting caught. As you said before, they are front-running. The Trump administration correctly interpreted the outcome of relaxing balloting rules. The effort to unwind voter and ballot security took months and was ongoing in earnest from May onward, in an atmosphere of unrest that was too organized and well-supported to be spontaneous and local. Such ‘lawfare’ efforts were known entities.
So it wasn’t ‘unknowable’, and the accusations of cheating were not ‘false’.
They think and hope that if they can just repeat it enough, in fairly respectable venues, that their version it will come to be believed. And it will be – by some.
“As for the suppression of information they deem false, who made them the judge of that?”
“You ain’t the boss of me.” May come home with a vengeance to Molly Ball and the other co-conspirators. Patience is a virtue but not an infinite attribute.
Dems keep asserting that Trump was a threat to democracy. This is the guy who drew thousands to rallies and there were locally organized parades of all types before the election.
Biden had nothing like that.
The phrase “voter suppression” is the most fake phrase of all time. How it ever got common usage only proves how powerful the Fake News and Dems are.
Everyone has free will and voting is easy. If someone doesn’t vote, it’s their own fault.
Let’s cut to the chase, they’re simply traitors and sooner or later they’re going to have to be treated as such because their treason has just begun.
The charge of treason fits because they cannot achieve their ideological goals without exterminating every meaningful trace of the Constitution.
Apparently forgotten in the stench of the Time revelations is Biden’s admission: “We have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.” Those words –which dovetail the story and can no longer be easily dismissed — should be thrown in the face of Romney, Sasse, McConnell and other high-minded RINO senators at every opportunity.
Sing it, Geoffrey Britain! We live in a time of treason.
The Dems have always depended on the LIV – low information voter. Get a sufficient level of TV ads for the D (or against the R) to one and a D vote is almost assured.
They’ve now perfected the pursuit of the NIV- the NO information voter. Vote harvesting is independent of voters, the goal is the ballot. An actual voter is a complication. Instead, “help” is offered to the infirm and the lazy, often accompanied by remuneration, disguised as a “prize”, or “walking-around money”.
Everything can be done to excess, and universal suffrage is no exception. Voters have to care about the course of the country, and requiring effort to vote helps insure that those are the kind of voters casting ballots. Allowing effortless voting gets the “care” vote swamped by the “what’s in it for me” crew.
As Orwell has consistently warned, the way to destroy society is first to destroy any sense of meaning, credibility and reliability.
To destroy any vestige of truth. In fact, to turn it on its head.
To destroy any feeling of honesty, empathy, trust, love and replace these with hate, vindictiveness, lies and demonization (;while insisting that you are doing exactly the opposite—promoting love, truth, empathy and human rights).
To destroy the family unit.
To “burrow from within” and destroy the foundations.
To sow confusion, generate dismay and provoke violence.
To spread fear and loathing. And most of all, sheer and unquenchable hatred of the target.
Constantly.
Some posts on Democratic Party-driven, agitprop-riven disinformation, manipulation and “kompromat”…
On the election:
https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2021/02/11/clowns-hammers-scorecards-and-con-man/
On the “rehabilitation” of Hunter Biden:
https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/disinformation-disinformation-and-more-disinformation/
Time’s news article made the statement that Trump’s defeat proved that democracy worked for the people. Wrap your brain around that idea. If democrats win then the US is good, if Trump wins again, then the US is a very bad country.
What if Trump won again, then democracy failed? The election was very close, and 73M voted for Trump and this fact is discounted in their analysis.
And now comes H.R.1.
From question posed to Sen. John Tester on NPR this morning and his responses, it is clear that the MSM snd Democrats are pushing the narrative that alleging election fraud, and using the Constitutionally-defined steps to challenge the validity of the results thereof, are now considered crimes even though both the MSM and Democrats consistently claim fraud and contest any election they lose!
The NPR hostess made reference to “The Big Lie” in a question to Tester, and he knew what she was talking about. I was momentarily confused, thinking she must be talking about NPR!
What struck me about the Time article was that it was loaded with accusations against Trump, but zero substantiation for those accusations. The article accused him of lies, of fraud, of meddling, of threats, of all manner of things but provided nothing behind the accusations. The article was written from the perspective that these things were taken as a given; that they did not have to be demonstrated. The article was written as well-ensconced within the deep bubble of Lefty Wokethink.
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And if the worst case “unfortified” election would be post-election chaos, uh, isn’t that what we had anyway ? The only tool they used to address that was the media blackout of any accusations of fraud and the claim that “in the US, the role of the media is to declare the winner”.
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I’d recommend giving this post a read next: https://michaelkimelman.substack.com/p/sovereign-sunday-a-fugitive-black
Goes over politics and some tech, it’s a pretty quick read and very informative.