Smooth Criminal

Today I’d like to talk, perhaps for the last time, about election fraud.

[EDIT: It won't be the last time, because, try as I might, I couldn't get everything into this essay. Even though it's as long as Moby Dick.]

After this, I will assume that American elections are fraudulent just as often as they need to be in order to ensure that no challenge to the existing order succeeds. I will believe this until such time as I encounter significant evidence that that situation has changed. To put it simply, I’m ceasing to give the establishment the benefit of the doubt.

Here's another one, and a hearty hat tip to entrepreneur for posting this here originally:

In addition to the points made in Lee Camp's video there are, of course, other indications that the 2020 Democratic primary has followed the lead of the 2016 Democratic primary and the general elections of 2000 and 2004 (and possibly the general election of 2016 as well, though Russia had nothing to do with it) and embraced total fraudulence. First there was the Shadow app which screwed up the reporting of the Iowa Caucus' vote count. I want to go through this one bit by bit. Imagine the following things are true:

1)Someone decides to count and report the votes in an entirely new way, for no stated reason.
2)They get a software company to develop an app for that. The company is named Shadow (you can't make this up).
3)This company is funded by a combination SuperPAC/dark money group called ACRONYM (again, you couldn't invent this shit).
4)The wife of a senior advisor to one of the candidates running in the race is on the board of ACRONYM.
5)That same candidate gave $42,000 to Shadow to fund the development of the app.
6)On caucus night, the app screwed up the vote count and the reporting of the vote.
7)As the caucus results were slowly reported, all the caucuses that favored the candidate in question came first, enabling the candidate to announce a win when nobody had won anything
8)The caucus results didn't get reported within a time frame which would allow the results to matter. Results continued to dribble in over time. The other candidate, who actually won the state, could not claim it as a "real" win, but had to refer to his winning the popular vote.

Now, where I come from, that would stink to high heaven and would, in itself, be enough to spark an almost Watergate-like investigation, only less intense because the President was not involved. Those of you who are old enough, think back to the 70s. Think back to who you were then, and what your expectations were. Imagine Walter Cronkite reporting this story to you on the nightly news. Would this, or would it not, be a serious scandal with reporting done on it probably for weeks?

Then there's the bog standard voter suppression. The closing of polls, the opening of polls with broken machines or no supervision, you know the drill.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/texas-primary-lines/

Now, it's easy to say "That's the Republicans' fault! Texas is run by Republicans!" But, quite apart from the fact that there were similar phenomena in California, which is run by Democrats

why do we persist in assuming that the parties never cooperate in their electoral aims? It seems odd to just assume, on the face of it, that if Republicans are committing election fraud or voter suppression, then 1)they couldn't be working with Democrats to prevent the election of someone that they both would like to fail, and 2)they couldn't be working separately but concurrently, each party making its own effort to suppress the same person, whom neither of them like.

Then there was this:

In Illinois, the results of the Democratic primary were broadcast the day before the election. The prematurely broadcast results showed the establishment candidate winning. The day before the election.

Of course, people immediately tried to claim a technical explanation: it was just a test that got accidentally aired. "We often put in numbers like 999 9999 and run the graphics so that we can be sure they will work right on Election Day." Yeah, but you didn't put in a number like 999,999, or the name Abraham Lincoln, or anything that would make it immediately apparent that this was not a real result. Instead, you posted numbers which gave the establishment candidate a plausible win.

And anyway--look at the faces of the candidates. Look at the pictures you chose to broadcast, and then tell me again that this isn't any kind of pre-planned "loss" for one and "win" for the other.

These facts are evidence of election fraud and voter suppression. They may not be conclusive proof of election fraud. I think, in order for evidence to become proof, these matters would have to be investigated systematically. Of course, they will not be investigated, and if they were, by some well-meaning organization, like ElectionJustice USA who investigated the Democratic primary election fraud in 2016, their findings would still not be investigated formally by law enforcement nor prosecuted in criminal court. Neither would they be investigated by journalists working for the five major media corporations. The political, legal, and media establishment--and even some independent media--do not wish to find the answers to those questions.

And a lot of ordinary people don’t want to find those answers either. This is understandable in light of the fact that ordinary people have no resources with which to punish the wrongdoers and deter future crimes of the sort—no recourse. Since we can’t do anything, it’s a lot less painful just to believe that our republic and its elections are intact. It’s easier to believe that election results are authentic, that it is possible for the people to wield political power in our current system, and that the only problem here is the unenlightened, unintelligent unkindness of a large portion of the American electorate.

But in order to believe this, we have to keep recreating the idea of an innocent, or at least a neutral, political system with innocent, or at least neutral, political parties and an innocent, or at least neutral election process. We have to keep erasing history, or at the very least shoving it to some unregarded corner of our minds. We create, and maintain, an asymmetrical burden of proof. The establishment can do a veritable shitload of suspicious and unsavory things and still be regarded as neutral, or at least, neutral enough for government work (heh). However, if anybody thinks there might have been some dirty tricks or even criminal behavior going on, that person has to provide proof like they're standing in a court room. It's not enough to present evidence that creates a suspicion, which should create an investigation. It's not even enough to show the results of certain investigations (like Max Blumenthal's investigation of Shadow Corp). You practically have to present jury proof.

Yet I'm not sure that requiring that level of proof is appropriate. In fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't. When a courtroom is working correctly, my understanding is that the burden of proof that someone committed a crime should be very high. Well, that makes sense. After all, you are debating whether or not to deprive someone of their liberty or even their life. But we aren't debating whether or not the Democratic leadership, or the candidates, or the state party officials, should be shot in Central Park, to borrow a meme from Chris Matthews. We're not sending people to the guillotine. We're not contemplating putting them in prison. We're simply deciding whether or not we want to participate in an operation they're running. Do we feel safe doing so? Do we feel it is in our best interests? We're more like people deciding whether or not to enter into a business venture with someone than we are like a prosecuting attorney, with the DNC in the dock. We don't have that kind of relationship with the DNC.

Even worse, we treat each separate instance of fraud as a new roll of the dice, virginal, with no relationship to history. I noticed this when I was trying to get Democrats on board to fight George W. Bush's fraud in Florida in 2004. They didn't want to believe it happened again. I had evidence, at least of what happened in my precinct, but I couldn't believe they needed it. It was the same presidential candidate: George W. Bush. His brother was still in charge of the state, and people he hired were in charge of its elections. He got away with fraud and voter suppression four years before to great effect; a member of his family became President, and he walked away with his reputation barely scratched, no accountability for him at all. Yet somehow we give him a complimentary factory reset because...well because that was then, this is now, I suppose. Certainly nobody ever explained it to my satisfaction. Maybe Jeb Bush saw a bright light on the road to Damascus.

I've noticed that this sort of asymmetrical burden of proof always turns up when establishment forces are attempting to repress, one way or another, insurgent forces. When I was young, there was a lot of (I believe justified) consternation in certain circles about the IRA and its violence. It took me a while to realize that there was little or no consternation in those circles about British Army violence, which seemed to have, for my interlocutors, all the solidity of fog. But at least the British Army violence was visible--barely. The fact that there was another paramilitary organization of Protestants who also committed violence was completely unknown, invisible as air. The story was that the IRA was a violent, horrible organization. And that was that.

If we are living in an oligarchy, perhaps it’s time we acknowledge that fact rather than giving the fact lip service and then going about our lives with the expectations, or the pretense, of living in a republic. By this I don’t mean that we should accede, within ourselves, to the oligarchy’s norms. I’m fully in support of C.S. Lewis’ Puddleglum when he says:

"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I don't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

My values are still those of a citizen of the American Republic, and I don’t intend to abandon them. They are the values I was trained to have: independence, responsibility, honesty, fairness, restraint, mutual respect among equals, inventiveness, curiosity, civic concern, and hard work. My ideals go somewhat higher and farther afield from my early training. Neither my inherited values nor my imagined ideals can be encompassed by the oligarchy I live under. And I certainly would not recommend to anyone that they should follow Lewis Powell’s lead and reorganize their internal moral landscape or re-jigger their reasoning apparatus in order to remain in step with the cultural engineering of the last fifty years, which he pioneered. And that’s what it takes to continue to believe in the honesty of the political system.

Let me state that again. When we say we believe that election results are authentic, even in the face of indications to the contrary, we are relying on the idea that, on any given day, the American political system has a better than even chance of doing its business honestly. And to do that, we have to forget recent history, or, to some extent, change what we value and even the way we think.

What I’m calling for, and hoping for, is that we will refuse to cede our minds to the power that has already taken our country, our rights, our prosperity, our health, and our self-determination: the power that has rearranged our culture to suit itself, keeping the qualities that will serve its ends--American greed, bigotry and barbarism--and throwing everything else in the dumpster and tossing a match. What we have left is ourselves. What we have left is the freedom of our own minds. If we work at it, we will also have each other, in a meeting of minds. These things are worth fighting for, but if we do not assert our intellectual independence, we will not even be able to conceive of the fight. We will instead participate in a series of pro wrestling angles, making America great again, joining the Resistance, fighting over whether Bernie was mean to Tulsi or Tulsi was mean to Bernie, slotting ourselves neatly into the roles pre-written for us.

This is the greatest political divide of the age. It is not race, gender, sexual preference, party affiliation. It is not even age or class (both of which are among the most important political distinctions of the present). The greatest political divide is between those who choose to have faith in the political system and the media, those who presume an innocent, or at least a neutral, establishment—and those who believe the system has proven itself repeatedly to be fraudulent.

Annie, are you OK?

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

We're still OK here--no illness. I hope all of the rest of you continue the same.

I can't believe I wrote all that and still have something left to say, but I do.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

I think we can believe this one. Must read material at this link to a report from a respiratory expert

Here is some of what is in this article...

“It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth. The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him. With all the coronavirus patients, we’ve had to restrain them. They really hyperventilate, really struggle to breathe. When you’re in that mindstate of struggling to breathe and delirious with fever, you don’t know when someone is trying to help you, so you’ll try to rip the breathing tube out because you feel it is choking you, but you are drowning.

“When someone has an infection, I’m used to seeing the normal colors you’d associate with it: greens and yellows. The coronavirus patients with ARDS have been having a lot of secretions that are actually pink because they’re filled with blood cells that are leaking into their airways. They are essentially drowning in their own blood and fluids because their lungs are so full. So we’re constantly having to suction out the secretions every time we go into their rooms.”

“Before this, we were all joking. It’s grim humor. If you are exposed to the virus and test positive and go on quarantine, you get paid. We were all joking: I want to get the coronavirus because then I get a paid vacation from work. And once I saw these patients with it, I was like, Holy shit, I do not want to catch this and I don’t want anyone I know to catch this.

It's better to understand the true severity of our peril from this virus.
As someone who has experienced being an ICU patient on a ventilator I can tell you with certainty that it is not an experience you want to have!

Please stay as safe as you can

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@jbob
should I find myself in that situation. Fentanyl should do.

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“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024

bondibox's picture

@jbob Or is this just obvious threadjacking?

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“He may not have gotten the words out but the thoughts were great.”

Lookout's picture

@bondibox

meaning all topics are welcome. Threadjacking can be aggravating so I know what you mean, but the OTs are here for folks to drop in whatever is on their minds. My 2 cents anyway.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@bondibox

I just put enormous one-topic essays into my OTs.

Which makes it an understandable mistake.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

bondibox's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal I couldn't see the gigantic "Open Thread" banner.

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“He may not have gotten the words out but the thoughts were great.”

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@jbob

Along with ventilators, masks, test kits, oxygen--another thing we need lots of is morphine. That's what the Italians used. I so do not want to get this disease. Thank god 80% of people who get it will not experience those symptoms.

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12 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Anja Geitz's picture

@jbob @jbob

For inserting yourself at the top of someone else's essay with your topic du jour. We came into this thread thinking we were talking about electoral fraud. Not a detailed account of the terrifying way we, our families, and friends could die. Perhaps a bit unhelpful and not in the best interest for those of us who are trying to keep ourselves from losing our minds during a pandemic, eh?

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz Gee whiz, did you send me another nastygram via PM too?

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@Anja Geitz
this is an open thread.

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Lookout's picture

...and the poor response from the courts and party. Whatta joke. (21 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI--5Y-Sst0]

Glad to hear all is well in your corner. Take care everybody!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

bondibox's picture

For those of you who were too young, don't remember, or never heard the story...
On election night 2004 John Kerry was leading Ohio. Then at around 11:00 p.m. the Ohio Secretary of State's computers went down. The vote tally was immediately rolled over to a backup computer in Tennessee - - the very same server that hosted the GOP website. 90 seconds later the S.O.S. computers came back up and suddenly, and miraculously, George Bush was in the lead.

But I wish there was another source other than TDMS Research for these "preadjusted" exit poll numbers. It's just one guy's Wordpress blog.

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“He may not have gotten the words out but the thoughts were great.”

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@bondibox

when most of the exit polling firms were shut down over the past ten years, and Edison is the only one left not connected to CNN or Fox (in other words, to the DNC or the RNC). There should be tons of data and plenty of people analyzing it. But we're in a context where there's only one even semi-neutral and objective source of data and also in a context where it's becoming received wisdom that exit polls are unreliable anyway.

I agree with you, though. I'd much rather have multiple sources. And that's why I included some of the additional (non-exit-poll) information.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

bondibox's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal I understand there is just one source for the data, I'm just skeptical that there's only one source for the analysis.

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“He may not have gotten the words out but the thoughts were great.”

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@bondibox @bondibox

have now fallen into disfavor as something that isn't accurate and doesn't matter much, there are far fewer people paying attention to that data. Lee Camp himself said he kept getting people from the election integrity community trying to talk him down. But "talking him down" didn't mean resolving the issue quickly by showing how the electronic voting machines work, letting him or anyone see the code, and proving, or at least showing evidence, that the results were legit. Or they could have done it another way: showing a pattern, preferably global and over a great deal of time, where exit polls disagreed with actual results and therefore proving they are garbage. Or even putting forth an explanation of why, if exit polls are garbage, the United States government uses them as a benchmark for whether or not a country is a democracy or not.

Basically, even people with quite independent minds are now trivializing exit poll data, so it's not surprising there isn't a huge rush to analyze it. Combine that with all the people who would rather not ask the questions, and all the people who are paid to prevent questions being asked, and you end up with a very sparse data landscape--and a very sparse analytical landscape.

I wonder how that guy got hold of the raw data. That would be a good thing to know. I wonder if Lee Camp would divulge it? Maybe he could share the data with other analysts. I'd like that a lot. Because you're right, more analysts and more analyses would be better.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@bondibox

the real tell, just as George W. Bush's response to 9/11 was the real tell.

An honest person, or organization, would want to investigate anything that threatened either election integrity or national security (assuming it was a REAL threat), and investigate it thoroughly--if only to firmly establish their own integrity in the public mind.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@bondibox

https://truthout.org/articles/new-court-filing-reveals-how-the-2004-ohio...

I may have more (and I know there's more). Will have to look through what's left of my older bookmarks.

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

@laurel

Hope they're not redundant to what's already here.

https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/2004votefraud_ohio.html

https://www.commondreams.org/views06/0601-34.htm

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

enhydra lutris's picture

I grew up with and the political facts that it was based on, and the humor of prior periods available in libraries and histories makes it clear that this has always been the case. Ballot box stuffing, bribery, buying votes, using thugs to dissuade the wrong people from voting, cronyism, patronage, and on and on; these were not idle fears and worries, not fantasies and phantasms, but everyday reality. This is US political history. Crooked and corrupt since almost day one, and possibly even then. Tammany Hall, Teapot Dome, Boss Tweed, Robber Barons, Billy Sol Estes, the synonimity of "campaign promise" and lie sufficient that the former verbiage in and of itself invokes, grins, chuckles, snorts and guffaws.

Timeworn joke: "Sheriff Jones embezzled vast sums to build a road out to his cabin that serves nobody else, how in the hell could you vote for him again?" "Easy, silly, he already has his road."

This is part of the American subconscious, everybody knows and is aware of it at some level, but they hope, hope, hope that it will be different this time, or that candidate jkl is different, and can often find some specific case they can point to which has all the appearances, at least, of being on the up and up. They know but repress and block and hope because the truth is too unpleasant. Beyond that, it means that they have been and are being manipulated and people don't want to acknowledge that, not even or perhaps especially not to themselves. And, they always want the next Prince Valiant to be real.

Think back and you'll recall that you know and have known that the con begins with the parties always choosing candidates and platforms that will sell but will, in the bright light of day, require you once again and again and again to vote against rather than for, to try to suss out by some process of divination the "lesser of two evils". They are and always have been but 2 wings of the one big Fuck-The-Proles Party and you know this and always have. Who cares if Oceania is at war with Eurasia or Eastasia? What matters is that the ruling class is always continuously and has always continuously been at war with the hoi polloi and they facilitate this by presenting you with a fake choice between two fake parties with fake platforms run and fronted by scoundrels and insiders.

All we do and all we can do, day in and day out, is educate; contradict the myths and propaganda, exposing the falsity of the false expectations that dominate national consciousness and hope thereby to drive them to accepting that we must totally change the system, if only by going multi-party, which itself will require a lot of work to remove a lot of barriers. What is crazy is that the right seems more hip to this than the left. They have spawned Dixiecrats, Tea Party, Pat Robertson's splinter group and more as powerful cliques demanding concessions and coalition governance, while the left consistently dribbles out little localized groups that can't get any real traction. The first real campaign of the Peace and Freedom Party was knowingly not about getting anybody elected, but merely to garner enough votes to force their inclusion on the next election's ballots. The Working Families party seems to have a wee bit of clout, but outside of NY?

have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@enhydra lutris

What I call the "menu aspect" of American culture.

Think back and you'll recall that you know and have known that the con begins with the parties always choosing candidates and platforms that will sell but will, in the bright light of day, require you once again and again and again to vote against rather than for, to try to suss out by some process of divination the "lesser of two evils".

He who sets the menu, has the power. Anyone who's had kids knows how this works. It applies to both economics and politics around here, and deserves its own essay.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

enhydra lutris's picture

Who was it that set up a system
Supposedly democratic system
Where you end up always voting for the lesser of two evils?
I mean, Was George Washington the lesser of two evils?
Sometimes I wonder ...

`` Tuli Kupferberg

The republican and democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the republican-democratic party, represents the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.

With either of these parties in power one thing is always certain and that is that the capitalist class are in the saddle and the working class under the saddle.

Eugene V. Debs

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

We are not in a courtroom. There is no presumption of innocence just as there is no presumption of guilt. There are no rules of evidence, which is good because the popular conception of what constitutes evidence tends to be a bit on the feeble side. There is a cultural overlay, or undertow, as the case may be, to presume innocence, to always assume the best, especially as to the behavior and motives of ones neighbors and fellow citizens, and to be quick to forgive transgressions and to deem prior failings as not necessarily predictive of future behavior. We at least give lip service to this bundle of ideas if nothing more, but they do effect our thinking.

A better but also false analogy is the laboratory, but we do not design experiments, but simply watch and participate in events that roll by. We have never to time to carefully analyze and measure the events, the outcomes, and the pre-conditions. Nonetheless, we have to try to ascertain the reality of things and the truths being revealed, as least to the extent that we can select what to include in and exclude from our model of reality.

With the goal of fact finding as the focus of activity, I always try initially to eschew ideas of good and bad, wickedness, evil, saintliness and the like because such concepts tend to cloud our thinking. Then, as in everything else, I tend to rely upon something I think of as Russell's Dictum:

I wish to propose a doctrine ... which may, I fear, appear wholly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe in a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing that it is true.
``` Bertrand Russell

Empirically, it is very difficult (impossible) to prove a positive assertion, but but one can disprove such by simply finding a counter-example. Alternatively, the assertion can be cast in the negative and a proof of the negative can be sought.

All that in mind, have we real, solid evidence that our elections are not rigged, that they are fair, that they serve anybody other than the ruling elites, that our parties differ in any material respects other than how to divvy up the spoils and all of the other twaddle underlying our great two party system, including the belief that it is somehow democratic and reflective of the will of the people? If not, then the burden of proof lies with those who assert to the contrary, and that whole pile of crap has no place in our model of reality until somebody can demonstrate otherwise.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@enhydra lutris

and particularly for engaging with this aspect of the problem. It's been bugging me for a long time, but I, too, have the value of "presuming innocence," so it took me a long time to be able to articulate what my problem was, even to myself. It occurred to me pretty late that perhaps a moral value can have a context, emerge from a context, for a reason, and may not be applicable universally.

I need to chew on your Bertrand Russell quotation. I think that I agree, but there's more there (I think) than is immediately apparent.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

enhydra lutris's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
It was originally penned, iirc, as commentary upon religions and dieties. There are things that are not and cannot be evidentiary and/or evidence based. Ethics and mores come to mind. Kant's categorical, for example, is not based on evidence.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Anja Geitz's picture

I will believe this until such time as I encounter significant evidence that that situation has changed. To put it simply, I’m ceasing to give the establishment the benefit of the doubt.

Difficult subject. You tackled it well.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Anja Geitz

And thanks for stopping by.
Is there a time it would be good to talk on the phone? PM me.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Anja Geitz's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

before technology presented us with hackable voting machines.
A guy got elected on absentee voting. By the day of actual voting, nobody from his precinct even showed up. They had already voted.
His Dad worked at Budweiser Brewery. Seems the candidate went to people's doors, watched them fill out their ballots, gave them a 6 pack of Budweiser Beer. He is justice of the peace to this day, 20 years later.
Seems that polling place closed, loaded up the boxes of ballots, somehow showed up at the courthouse for the count 3 hours later. The polling place was 20 minutes' drive from the courthouse.
That district judge was married to the county judge in one of her 3 counties of jurisdiction. The voting machine in the precinct was, by order of the county judge, placed in his office. For safety. All voters were observed by his secretary.
I could give many more examples, but at this point, fair elections from top to bottom just do not exist.
I have decided I will skip voting this November.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981