The Lies that can Undermine Democracy

A lie is intentional. If a person legitimately believes the election was fraudulent, even if it was not, it&#x27;s not a lie. It&#x27;s a mistaken belief.<p>Calling the other side liars is precisely the kind of polarizing rhetoric that can undermine democracy. They are not liars if they legitimately believe what they are saying. 70% of Republican voters and some 10% of Democrat voters actually do believe there was election fraud [1].<p>The way to combat mistaken beliefs is to allow them to voice their views, then refute their arguments, not to call them liars and suppress their views. And even if they do not accept the refutation, the arguments should be left up for people to read and make their informed choice.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;09&#x2F;republicans-free-fair-elections-435488" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;09&#x2F;republicans-free-fa...</a>

This was flagged dead. I vouched for it. There is nothing in here that is beyond discussion imo and we are still well into a situation in the US that requires discussion like this and this is a sufficiently nuanced take.

Parsed from outside, this piece could be the mirror image of its criticisms, which is what makes it extra interesting. It&#x27;s like the myth of the Tower of Babel, where there was a divine event that caused people to be unable to understand each other, and could no longer speak the same language. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tower_of_Babel" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tower_of_Babel</a>)<p>Our language itself has a virus in it that is spreading through minds and causing shared meaning to decohere. That&#x27;s really the level of disconnect there is with about 80m Americans on either side of it.

My prediction is that countries will appear less democratic in the future whether or not those against democracy succeed. Advocates of democracy will write articles and think pieces about how delicate democracy is and how we must protect it and the enemies of democracy will turn around and agree. I do not look forward to it.

&gt; I don&#x27;t have much confidence in how to counter it. It feels like a big chunk of our population have got sucked into a cult - how do you deprogram so many people?<p>Up until this point, I was very much agreeing with his take, but from this point forward it devolves into the usual paternalistic, quietly self-righteous and &quot;subtly&quot; anti free speech narrative this type of articles way too often seem to take.<p>This was a little sad to read. I <i>used</i> to think that Fowler was one of the smartest people I know about, I&#x27;ve now corrected that to he&#x27;s one of the most &quot;knowledgeable on software engineering and architecture&quot; people I know about.

&gt; 139 Representatives and 8 senators voted to overturn the will of the people after rioters had gone home. Most, I assume, know full well that there&#x27;s no credible evidence the election was fraudulent, but their fear of a primary challenge outweighs their oath to defend the constitution.<p>This is a very common meme that I think we should combat. In the absence of <i>evidence</i> that these elected officials believe something contrary to their actions, we should instead assume that their actions actually do follow their beliefs.

I don’t understand the purpose of this article. It is a copy and paste from any mainstream newspaper and has zero new info or opinion.

Martin Fowler, wasn&#x27;t he part of a 2 week sprint through downtown Minneapolis? Wait, wow, would you look at that burndown.

We have allowed our egos to be so affected by contemporary politicians’ rhetoric as to forget the core principles we all want to believed in.<p>Perhaps Trump was put in place (by somebody in a smokey room) to get the political left (who were previously notorious for promoting free-speech) to beg for censorship. Perhaps this viewpoint is cynical, but it certainly mirrors the end result we’re seeing.

America has always had a somewhat deep seated affinity towards authoritarianism and fascism. People might forget this but various right wing leaders in Europe had large followings in the US right up until WW2. It took a huge war and government intervention to change trajectory. Similarly Hoover&#x27;s FBI and the federal agencies at that time, or Nixon&#x27;s whitehouse, trended towards these ideas.<p>Social media might be a part, but it always feels like this is a longer historical trend. For as much as some Americans talk about freedom and liberty, it&#x27;s not clear how much they support true freedom.

&gt; &quot;By politicizing mask-wearing he could be responsible for killing more Americans than any other person in our history.&quot;

Can someone help me to understand this election fraud stuff? I promise I&#x27;m not a quack.<p>I pretty much ignore anything Trump has to say, since he was obviously going to say it was rigged upon losing, so his opinion contributes no info to my mental model.<p>I keep hearing from conservatives that the actual evidence was never properly examined in court, and that the cases were mostly dismissed on issues of legal standing. Not being a lawyer, I have no idea how to interpret the legal results from any kind of objective standpoint.<p>I feel crazy, because every rational person I usually turn to is saying that it&#x27;s a settled matter, but I haven&#x27;t seen any good &quot;breakdowns&quot; of the actual allegations and their validity.<p>Back in November I felt pretty confident dismissing stupid Benford&#x27;s law claims and sketchy graphs pointing out &quot;Biden spikes&quot; in Michigan. I had the data in hand and could confidently dismiss those. No fraud.<p>I watched the whole interrogation with the PA whistleblower mailman who talked with Project VERITAS, and I came away understanding that he was paranoid and confused and probably in way over his head. No fraud.<p>Electronic voting has always been criticized, so I don&#x27;t know why this year should be any different. But that just seems worse, that potentially decades&#x27; worth of elections could have been tampered with if any of those Dominion claims are true?<p>But it&#x27;s been weeks and weeks and there was a bunch of &quot;evidence&quot; since then, and I don&#x27;t have the time or energy or legal expertise to make any sense of them. I feel like I&#x27;m going crazy because all my moderate&#x2F;liberal friends are convinced it&#x27;s the stuff of conspiracy theories. This is keeping me up at night, feeling like the whole exercise of democracy could be a total sham, and possibly always was.<p>Is anyone else having this epistemic crisis since November? Is this how people become conspiracy theorists? Can anyone else relate?

The lies of the left far exceed what has come out of Trump&#x27;s mouth, much less the right&#x27;s.<p>Funny how there were zero attempts at squashing the lies of the left (eg: the Russia hoax, the Steele dossier, Trump being a racist, the stolen-election recriminations, &quot;mostly peaceful&quot; protests, masks work-but-don&#x27;t-work, etc etc etc.)<p>There is no room for truth anymore, we are well past the truth. Those that were supposed to be arbiters of truth (fifth estate) abandoned their responsibility and embraced Trump Derangement Syndrome.<p>It&#x27;s sad that this is where we&#x27;ve gone and the people supposedly interested in preventing the undermining of democracy, the rule of law, bipartisanship, and political unity are now attempting to steer the conversation again. No, you who are squawking about &#x27;lies,&#x27; &#x27;riots,&#x27; and &#x27;democracy&#x27; have already lost all credibility.<p>Double standards

First paragraph and we&#x27;re already at Nazis. Pass

Waiting for the likes of FB and Twitter to de-platform the PBS, after all their Principal Counsel with the name of Michael Beller thinks that Trump supporters should be sent to &quot;re-education camps&quot; and he also said that he would have &quot;thrown a Molotov cocktail&quot; on the White House had Biden not won. The video is here [1], most probably it will be taken down because it shows &quot;our people&quot; being as bad as &quot;them&quot;. Those were not &quot;lies&quot;, were direct threats coming from a person who does actively shape public opinion.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=t1r2rdmWsPE&amp;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=t1r2rdmWsPE&amp;</a>

I for one am shocked that a politician would lie. What has this world come to?