Glenn, I'm curious if you believe that the entire brouhaha over the 2020 election being stolen is a deeper reflection of a deficiency in our national character. Whether in the domestic or international realms, Americans seem to possess a sore loser mentality. We're very good at gloating about being number one and feeling good when we're on top, but we frequently cast scorn and vitriol towards others when they outcompete us, denouncing them as frauds or cheats. I feel like other countries don't embody this sort of mentality to nearly the same extent. Maybe there's something radically individualistic and dog-eat-dog about American society that encourages this, but I'm skeptical that the kind of polarization that we've seen in recent years is sustainable long term.
What's been really fascinating about the fight over the 2020 election is how little legitimacy many Americans place in their own democratic system. Americans might not be generally aware of this, but in China, democracy in the form of one person one vote is fairly common at the village level. As political scientist Daniel Bell points out, Chinese governance becomes less democratic and more meritocratic the higher up one goes, from the village level to the national level where ultimately the CCP rules with an iron fist. Bell argues that interestingly enough, the level of confidence towards government increases the higher up one goes. For instance, many newsworthy instances of corruption in recent years in China have been at the local level, such as allegations of corruption by local officials in the construction of schools in Sichuan in the aftermath of the 2008 earthquake. By contrast, most Chinese tend to view the central government as highly competent, a few recent hiccups over zero Covid aside.
One gets the feeling that in America the opposite is true and that American views of government tend to decline as one goes from the local to the national, as evidenced by the generally angry and conspiratorial nature of American political discourse, with its frequent claims of the deep state and elections being stolen by the opposition. Anyway, I'm sure this contrast reveals something interesting about the shibboleths that we as Americans have based our philosophical worldview on, but alas I digress.
Carol is absolutely correct. There was the lie over the laptop, as perpetrated by the 50 “intelligence” officials, the changes to voting procedures in violation of the US constitution, the propaganda media, and the DOJ and FBI failures. This is in addition to all the election irregularities. I’ve been independent my entire life, until this year. I was independent because I didn’t like the hypocrisy from either of the 2 main parties, but the democrats have set themselves on fire this time with their unhinged, “anything goes” attempt to hold onto power and the attacks on our constitutional rights.
I try to understand the Conservative viewpoint, I honestly do. I tried listening to the audio version of Jason Riley’s “The Black Boom”, but found the task impossible. Riley begins by essentially saying Trump is a bigot and a racist (my interpretation). He then presents data to show that Blacks benefited economically from the Trump Presidency. This may be the problem. Riley is telling me that I’m about to be presented with an elegant meal, but it will be served on a slimy, smelly, rat infested platter. Since I am not in dire financial circumstances, I’m already rejecting the meal. Herein lies the problem, Black Conservatives want me to ignore the racism and enjoy some meager economic benefit. Where I sit financially, I saw little financial benefit. I was comfortable before, during, and after Trump. I refuse to accept Trump’s embrace of the racists (Like he didn’t know David Duke, or why Duke supported his campaign). I understand what Riley was trying to do, but like Carol Swain, I tune him out with no loss of income.
Sick and tired of being sick and tired. Jesse Waters views Blacks as thugs who will purchase Trump mugshot tshirts. Waters had the supposed discussion with his fictional garbage man, not his neighbor. The actual T-shirt people were buying was one with a white chair ageist a black background depicting the Alabama Brawl where Black people came to the rescue of a Black man was about to be murdered by a group of unruly white people.
Black Conservatives are in the same bubble as the other Conservatives.
Glenn, one should not dignify a lie by inviting a supporter of the lie to an interview. In the same way that Holocaust denial is not just “another opinion,” neither is election denial. Further, by giving your guest a forum to express a totally debunked conspiracy theory, you do damage to an already fragile democracy.
I think Carol seems like a kind and pleasant person, but her stated reasons for believing there was election fraud don't seem to justify her degree of certainty. Election irregularities aren't tantamount to election fraud. Additionally, for her position to be validated, she would have to believe that Joe Biden cheated and Donald Trump did not. While it is difficult-to-impossible to demonstrate the absence of cheating, Trump's withholding of funds to Ukraine as pressure to link Hunter Biden to Burisma, even though true, demonstrate a willingness to operate outside the bounds of the rules of a fair electoral process, and the issue of whether he cheated was superceded by the fact that he lost. I think Biden and Trump both seem too old to be running again, and while I don't believe their degree of corruption to be on equal footing, I do think they both seem too corrupt to qualify for the presidency.
Biden should pardon both Trump in exchange for him not running and his idiot son, Hunter, and then declare he's not running again so the country can have a clean break and move forward.
One of the striking things to about today's right wing is its deep pessimism. There's a lot going on that people have every right to be upset or worried about, but the US has always had a lot of that going on.
On the right, today, there is no one with a broadly appealing optimistic message. Tim Scott tries to do it, but whether the fault is with him or his audience he is not breaking through.
I was never politically on the same side Ronald Reagan in policy terms, but... he was an optimist through and through. A believer in the imperfect greatness that is the USA. From my perspective, maybe the best thing about him was his optimism.
A huge part of Trump's message is exactly the opposite - America is a terrible, awful place now and (he claims) only he can fix it, although he didn't when he was in office.
I'd like to believe that there is room to acknowledge our problems while also being optimistic. But there seems to be very little room for that on today's right.
Republicans in Texas closed school libraries in minority neighborhoods in Houston. We know the intentions of Conservatives. We will not forget or forgive your actions.
Authoritarians.
Edit to add:
Even prisons have libraries. We are much more tired of Conservatives than they are of us!
You sound very ignorant of American history. Do you know about the corrupt bargain that deprived Andrew Jackson of the Presidency in 1824. Or the crooked Presidential Commission that ended Reconstruction by giving the Presidential election away in 1876? How bout the strange story of the electoral college votes in Texas and Illinois in 1960? Or Bush v. Gore, etc....
"Appointed by Trump" is a misleading trope to valorize a politicized judge. Federal judges are determined by the Senators of their state, who have a hold or veto power on appointment. So the crooked special counsel currently on Trump is a nominal Republican from Delaware who is in reality deeply tied to the Biden crime family, because otherwise no Democratic Senator from Delaware would allow the appointment to go forward.
Conservative scumbag Rudy Guiliani lost the defamation suit filed by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the two Black female election workers terrorized because of Guiliani’s actions. Give Carol Swain a head’s up.
Of course the 2020 election was stolen. Hundreds of thousands of unsolicited mail in ballots sent out based on dirty voter rolls, in a pandemic year where lots of people relocated (unsolicited = state sends out ballots without the voter requesting; no signature, ID or authorization needed). And then mail-in rules for envelopes going back were changed without state legislatures in key battleground states (e.g., no address).
So you change the rules unconstitutionally and flood the zone with illegal ballots; change election from election day to election week; do God knows what with machines (i.e., monitor real-time tallies during election week and keep feeding the machines with fake ballots).
Here was Biden's alleged margin of victory in battleground states:
AZ: 10.5K
GA: 11.8K
MI: 154.2K
NV: 33.6K
PA: 81.7K
WI: 21.7K
~313 total votes shaped 79 electoral college votes.
Motive means and opportunity are three components to every crime. The motive is in your face: "stop a unique existential threat by any means necessary". Do you guys think cancel culture takes a reprieve on election day? Means: it's the US gov't, we've been rigging elections around the world for decades Opportunity: Pandemic.
They’ve got Trump on likely 5 indictments with GA case to begin before Super Tuesday. Let’s stop pretending that anti-Trump wouldn’t steal an election, it’s in your face. Baked into the “stop a fascist with fascism” mentality. Cancel culture has more interest in elections than they do trivial Twitter posts.
Many of the crazy allegations made by Trump and his various supporters and those filing lawsuits on his behalf included wild nonsense like:
1. Hugo Chavez was part of a plot to corrupt the software used by the largest manufactorers of voting machines. (For the reality-based community, Chavez died in 2013).
2. There was some plot involving Italy, satellites, and thermostats that was used to steal the election. Yes, thermostats.
3. In Arizona, there were accusations that huge numbers of ballots were smuggled in from China, and that this could be proven because the ballots were :laced with bamboo."
A lot of the other allegations raised in court filings were either easily disproven facts or things that happened but weren't indicative of any wrongdoing.
There were allegations that in a particular county in Michigan, boxes of ballots were being moved in trucks. Well, yes. That county's practice is to count the ballots in a centralized location, so all of the ballots were moved.
There were allegations that more votes were cast in some jurisdictions than there were registered voters. These allegations were untrue and easily disproven. One of the allegations in a lawsuit challenging Michigan results made this claim, but ran into the problem that "many of the municipalities cited in the Michigan (MI) document, such as Albertville, Houston, Monticello, Runeberg, Lake Lillian, Brownsville, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, and Kandiyohi, are located in Minnesota (MN)."
Allegations were made that 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia - these were provien false in multiple recounts. Georgia identified something like 10 dead people who "voted."
Rudy Giuliani took a short snippet of an hours long election night video in Georgia that showed a Georgia election worker either pulling a trunk full of ballots out from under a desk or pushing it under, I forget which. Rudy claimed this was fraudulent. However, if anyone watched the full length video, which the state of GA posted on line, what actually happened was obvious: at some point a decision was made to stop counting for the night and ballots were stored securely in trunks, then the decision was reversed and the ballots were taken out and counted. Rudy pulled a snippet on which he could craft a narrative of fraud. The Trump campaign doxed this election worker and she had to flee from her home due to harrassment. Trump actually raised this issue in his call with the Georgia Secretary of State, who offered to provide the full unedited election night video - and Trump wanted no part of it - he preffered Rudy's snippet.
Glenn, I'm curious if you believe that the entire brouhaha over the 2020 election being stolen is a deeper reflection of a deficiency in our national character. Whether in the domestic or international realms, Americans seem to possess a sore loser mentality. We're very good at gloating about being number one and feeling good when we're on top, but we frequently cast scorn and vitriol towards others when they outcompete us, denouncing them as frauds or cheats. I feel like other countries don't embody this sort of mentality to nearly the same extent. Maybe there's something radically individualistic and dog-eat-dog about American society that encourages this, but I'm skeptical that the kind of polarization that we've seen in recent years is sustainable long term.
What's been really fascinating about the fight over the 2020 election is how little legitimacy many Americans place in their own democratic system. Americans might not be generally aware of this, but in China, democracy in the form of one person one vote is fairly common at the village level. As political scientist Daniel Bell points out, Chinese governance becomes less democratic and more meritocratic the higher up one goes, from the village level to the national level where ultimately the CCP rules with an iron fist. Bell argues that interestingly enough, the level of confidence towards government increases the higher up one goes. For instance, many newsworthy instances of corruption in recent years in China have been at the local level, such as allegations of corruption by local officials in the construction of schools in Sichuan in the aftermath of the 2008 earthquake. By contrast, most Chinese tend to view the central government as highly competent, a few recent hiccups over zero Covid aside.
One gets the feeling that in America the opposite is true and that American views of government tend to decline as one goes from the local to the national, as evidenced by the generally angry and conspiratorial nature of American political discourse, with its frequent claims of the deep state and elections being stolen by the opposition. Anyway, I'm sure this contrast reveals something interesting about the shibboleths that we as Americans have based our philosophical worldview on, but alas I digress.
You seem to have a great deal of empathy. I don’t see YOU uplifting other sides. You heap praise on Coleman Hughes. You appear biased.
Carol is absolutely correct. There was the lie over the laptop, as perpetrated by the 50 “intelligence” officials, the changes to voting procedures in violation of the US constitution, the propaganda media, and the DOJ and FBI failures. This is in addition to all the election irregularities. I’ve been independent my entire life, until this year. I was independent because I didn’t like the hypocrisy from either of the 2 main parties, but the democrats have set themselves on fire this time with their unhinged, “anything goes” attempt to hold onto power and the attacks on our constitutional rights.
I try to understand the Conservative viewpoint, I honestly do. I tried listening to the audio version of Jason Riley’s “The Black Boom”, but found the task impossible. Riley begins by essentially saying Trump is a bigot and a racist (my interpretation). He then presents data to show that Blacks benefited economically from the Trump Presidency. This may be the problem. Riley is telling me that I’m about to be presented with an elegant meal, but it will be served on a slimy, smelly, rat infested platter. Since I am not in dire financial circumstances, I’m already rejecting the meal. Herein lies the problem, Black Conservatives want me to ignore the racism and enjoy some meager economic benefit. Where I sit financially, I saw little financial benefit. I was comfortable before, during, and after Trump. I refuse to accept Trump’s embrace of the racists (Like he didn’t know David Duke, or why Duke supported his campaign). I understand what Riley was trying to do, but like Carol Swain, I tune him out with no loss of income.
Sick and tired of being sick and tired. Jesse Waters views Blacks as thugs who will purchase Trump mugshot tshirts. Waters had the supposed discussion with his fictional garbage man, not his neighbor. The actual T-shirt people were buying was one with a white chair ageist a black background depicting the Alabama Brawl where Black people came to the rescue of a Black man was about to be murdered by a group of unruly white people.
Black Conservatives are in the same bubble as the other Conservatives.
Glenn, one should not dignify a lie by inviting a supporter of the lie to an interview. In the same way that Holocaust denial is not just “another opinion,” neither is election denial. Further, by giving your guest a forum to express a totally debunked conspiracy theory, you do damage to an already fragile democracy.
You are better than this.
I think Carol seems like a kind and pleasant person, but her stated reasons for believing there was election fraud don't seem to justify her degree of certainty. Election irregularities aren't tantamount to election fraud. Additionally, for her position to be validated, she would have to believe that Joe Biden cheated and Donald Trump did not. While it is difficult-to-impossible to demonstrate the absence of cheating, Trump's withholding of funds to Ukraine as pressure to link Hunter Biden to Burisma, even though true, demonstrate a willingness to operate outside the bounds of the rules of a fair electoral process, and the issue of whether he cheated was superceded by the fact that he lost. I think Biden and Trump both seem too old to be running again, and while I don't believe their degree of corruption to be on equal footing, I do think they both seem too corrupt to qualify for the presidency.
Biden should pardon both Trump in exchange for him not running and his idiot son, Hunter, and then declare he's not running again so the country can have a clean break and move forward.
One of the striking things to about today's right wing is its deep pessimism. There's a lot going on that people have every right to be upset or worried about, but the US has always had a lot of that going on.
On the right, today, there is no one with a broadly appealing optimistic message. Tim Scott tries to do it, but whether the fault is with him or his audience he is not breaking through.
I was never politically on the same side Ronald Reagan in policy terms, but... he was an optimist through and through. A believer in the imperfect greatness that is the USA. From my perspective, maybe the best thing about him was his optimism.
A huge part of Trump's message is exactly the opposite - America is a terrible, awful place now and (he claims) only he can fix it, although he didn't when he was in office.
I'd like to believe that there is room to acknowledge our problems while also being optimistic. But there seems to be very little room for that on today's right.
Republicans in Texas closed school libraries in minority neighborhoods in Houston. We know the intentions of Conservatives. We will not forget or forgive your actions.
Authoritarians.
Edit to add:
Even prisons have libraries. We are much more tired of Conservatives than they are of us!
BREAKING NEWS: Rudy Guiliani loses defamation suit. Lol!!!!
Mitch McConnell just froze while talking to reporters again. This is going to call his health into question again.
You sound very ignorant of American history. Do you know about the corrupt bargain that deprived Andrew Jackson of the Presidency in 1824. Or the crooked Presidential Commission that ended Reconstruction by giving the Presidential election away in 1876? How bout the strange story of the electoral college votes in Texas and Illinois in 1960? Or Bush v. Gore, etc....
"Appointed by Trump" is a misleading trope to valorize a politicized judge. Federal judges are determined by the Senators of their state, who have a hold or veto power on appointment. So the crooked special counsel currently on Trump is a nominal Republican from Delaware who is in reality deeply tied to the Biden crime family, because otherwise no Democratic Senator from Delaware would allow the appointment to go forward.
Conservative scumbag Rudy Guiliani lost the defamation suit filed by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the two Black female election workers terrorized because of Guiliani’s actions. Give Carol Swain a head’s up.
I love ya for bringing in diverse viewpoints, Glenn, but this chick is kook.
Of course the 2020 election was stolen. Hundreds of thousands of unsolicited mail in ballots sent out based on dirty voter rolls, in a pandemic year where lots of people relocated (unsolicited = state sends out ballots without the voter requesting; no signature, ID or authorization needed). And then mail-in rules for envelopes going back were changed without state legislatures in key battleground states (e.g., no address).
So you change the rules unconstitutionally and flood the zone with illegal ballots; change election from election day to election week; do God knows what with machines (i.e., monitor real-time tallies during election week and keep feeding the machines with fake ballots).
Here was Biden's alleged margin of victory in battleground states:
AZ: 10.5K
GA: 11.8K
MI: 154.2K
NV: 33.6K
PA: 81.7K
WI: 21.7K
~313 total votes shaped 79 electoral college votes.
Motive means and opportunity are three components to every crime. The motive is in your face: "stop a unique existential threat by any means necessary". Do you guys think cancel culture takes a reprieve on election day? Means: it's the US gov't, we've been rigging elections around the world for decades Opportunity: Pandemic.
They’ve got Trump on likely 5 indictments with GA case to begin before Super Tuesday. Let’s stop pretending that anti-Trump wouldn’t steal an election, it’s in your face. Baked into the “stop a fascist with fascism” mentality. Cancel culture has more interest in elections than they do trivial Twitter posts.
Many of the crazy allegations made by Trump and his various supporters and those filing lawsuits on his behalf included wild nonsense like:
1. Hugo Chavez was part of a plot to corrupt the software used by the largest manufactorers of voting machines. (For the reality-based community, Chavez died in 2013).
2. There was some plot involving Italy, satellites, and thermostats that was used to steal the election. Yes, thermostats.
3. In Arizona, there were accusations that huge numbers of ballots were smuggled in from China, and that this could be proven because the ballots were :laced with bamboo."
A lot of the other allegations raised in court filings were either easily disproven facts or things that happened but weren't indicative of any wrongdoing.
There were allegations that in a particular county in Michigan, boxes of ballots were being moved in trucks. Well, yes. That county's practice is to count the ballots in a centralized location, so all of the ballots were moved.
There were allegations that more votes were cast in some jurisdictions than there were registered voters. These allegations were untrue and easily disproven. One of the allegations in a lawsuit challenging Michigan results made this claim, but ran into the problem that "many of the municipalities cited in the Michigan (MI) document, such as Albertville, Houston, Monticello, Runeberg, Lake Lillian, Brownsville, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, and Kandiyohi, are located in Minnesota (MN)."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/20/trump-lawsuit-mixes-up-red-flags-michigan-minnesota/6362056002/
Oops.
Allegations were made that 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia - these were provien false in multiple recounts. Georgia identified something like 10 dead people who "voted."
Rudy Giuliani took a short snippet of an hours long election night video in Georgia that showed a Georgia election worker either pulling a trunk full of ballots out from under a desk or pushing it under, I forget which. Rudy claimed this was fraudulent. However, if anyone watched the full length video, which the state of GA posted on line, what actually happened was obvious: at some point a decision was made to stop counting for the night and ballots were stored securely in trunks, then the decision was reversed and the ballots were taken out and counted. Rudy pulled a snippet on which he could craft a narrative of fraud. The Trump campaign doxed this election worker and she had to flee from her home due to harrassment. Trump actually raised this issue in his call with the Georgia Secretary of State, who offered to provide the full unedited election night video - and Trump wanted no part of it - he preffered Rudy's snippet.