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Author Topic: 2020 Election Commentary  (Read 185004 times)

Mistwell

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #945 on: November 15, 2020, 01:08:45 AM »
This is quite the massive conspiracy the Democrats are able to pull off if you think they control that many state elections and the Federal Government and the judges. With competency like that, why are you bothered by them?
Are you really trying to pretend that the Federal Bureaucracy is not overwhelmingly left, as the left grows and sustains the bureaucracy?

https://freebeacon.com/politics/federal-government-workers-donating-overwhelmingly-democrats/
https://www.fedsmith.com/2020/01/27/federal-employees-unions-political-donations/

And competency to do what? To fuck over the middle class? To shred the rights of those with "wrongthink", to try to take all the guns? Fuck your "competency."
It took 2 states to steal the election in 1960 for Kennedy. This time, it took 3 to 5. It's not unbelievable in any way, shape or form.

Edited to remove ad hominem.

Being left is no more special than being right and is not itself related to being successful at pulling off a massive conspiracy.

Biden won 5 states that Trump won last time. And not just in those states, but in many counties in those states. And you are saying Democrats are so highly competent they not only arranged for a conspiracy in all of those places simultaneously, but also the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and literally dozens of judges many of which were appointed by Republicans are all in on it. Some Republican Governors are also in on it.

But also, for some bizarre reason, they didn't use those same ballots to vote in Democratic Senators, Democratic legislators, or Democratic House members. In fact they must have, apparently, voted for Republicans down ticket on those ballots. For...reasons?

If you really think they are that competent and efficient, you should support them. Fuck, imagine what they could do for the success of the U.S. if they have that much power and competency and efficiency.

Or, and this is just possible, or this is fiction manufactured as part of grief to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes with expecting your guy to win and then he loses. The kind where you grasp onto any evidence, any biased source, and spin it as best you can to try and explain how this thing which feels unfair because it's not what you wanted or expected is actually real and happening. Even though you know in your heart it does not, in fact, add up to nearly enough to make it so that your expectations were reality.

It's OK. It's difficult to learn Santa isn't real. Which is not me mocking you, it's just an analogy to a feeling which I understand. Trump lost. And that's difficult to take in complex and meaningful ways. But, it's true.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2020, 01:40:52 AM by Mistwell »

Aglondir

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #946 on: November 15, 2020, 01:30:44 AM »
Allow me to break it down for you.

That's actually not bad. Where do you put Marx in that?

Spinachcat

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #947 on: November 15, 2020, 02:01:09 AM »
Gore had 37 days to deal with one state issue, but Trump only has 8-9 days left?

We can laugh about this all (I am enjoying the shit-talking), but I am really concerned that the confidence of Americans in our media and electoral system has been permanently damaged by these events.

Hogwash!

We have tremendous confidence that the US media is absolutely full of shit and the electoral system is completely corrupted, and neither can be trusted whatsoever.

That confidence is riding at an all time high!

EOTB

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #948 on: November 15, 2020, 03:58:44 AM »
We have to get over the feeling that it can’t happen here.

It’s been happening here for years.  The US is not special; it’s people are, but not the apparatus nor the process. 

The desire to believe money and power work differently here because we have the Constitution is very helpful.  To some.
A framework for generating local politics

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Kyle Aaron

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #949 on: November 15, 2020, 04:05:19 AM »
"Then you will have to fight in your country as we fight here."
"Yes, we will have to fight."
"But are there not many fascists in your country?"
"There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes."
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Mistwell

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #950 on: November 15, 2020, 11:56:49 AM »
We have to get over the feeling that it can’t happen here.

It’s been happening here for years.  The US is not special; it’s people are, but not the apparatus nor the process. 

The desire to believe money and power work differently here because we have the Constitution is very helpful.  To some.

Are you even open to the possibility that Trump lost?

EOTB

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #951 on: November 15, 2020, 01:15:28 PM »
I am open to a full forensic audit of the vote and using the secret service ink database to see if the VBM or absentee votes have normal distribution of ink types.  So I'm not shut off from the possibility.  But I'm absolutely not open to the idea that the media and political actors of this country would respect the process.
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oggsmash

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #952 on: November 15, 2020, 01:25:55 PM »
  What is the saying, "Enjoy the decline."   I would give it a 6-10 year timer on full blow insurrection.

myleftnut

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #953 on: November 15, 2020, 01:40:45 PM »
Have you guys been paying attention to the news?   The copioid epidemic has reached a critical level and the national salt mine has been moved from the left side of the internet to the right.  Crazy. 

rawma

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #954 on: November 15, 2020, 02:24:11 PM »
Pennsylvania court: Secretary of state lacked authority to change deadline 2 days before Election Day
Judge ruled ballots that were previously set aside should not be counted

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pennsylvania-court-secretary-of-state-changed-deadline

I just checked Marc E. Elias's twitter feed and apparently Trump and allies have one win against 20 losses. The single win which you report affected ballots in Pennsylvania which had not been counted or added to anyone's total. Not a case that's going to affect the 66,000+ Biden lead in that state at all, let alone swing a state result.

Spike

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #955 on: November 15, 2020, 02:56:39 PM »
Allow me to break it down for you.

That's actually not bad. Where do you put Marx in that?

Hegel and the German Idealism Movement follows Kant with the idea that reality is unknowable to the Mind due to the imperfection of the Senses.   Marx was a student of Hegel, indirectly but quite explicitly, and generally follows with the ideals of the Counter Enlightenment in roughly its third generation of philosophical transmission.


To expand from the whole Counter Enlightentment, without going completely off topic, if you've ever been confused by the left-right dichotomy of political discussion, and how explicitly socialist movements such as Nazism and Fascism can be placed on 'The Right'... well, let me explain:

We have at least THREE different political divides being used concurrently in modern political discourse, and while to some extent they actually do line up reasonably well, this only hightens the confusion.

The classic divide comes from the French Republic, with the Liberals (The Republicans) on the Left and the Conservatives (the Monarchists, which is no longer relevant) on the Right, from their seating arrangements, of all things. 

The second is the divide understood by the American Founding Fathers, in which Left and Right were largely arbitrary, but where Statism is on the Left and Individualism is on the right, and where the course of the country should lie somewhere in the squishy middle.  Thus American Conservativism tends to differ greatly in tone from European Conservatism, as it is less based on Traditionalism and more on Small Government Individualism, which is why on the 'far right' Conservative has... being largely viewed through a European/Globalist perspective... become something of an epithet.

The final divide in our trio (I'm sure there are other left/right divides) is the purely Counter Englightenment Left Right divide between International and National branches of Socialism. Don't ask me how ALL of the classic Counter-Enlightenment thinkers managed to find their way to Socialism... its too big a topic for me to do it proper justice.  Anyway, they went on and on in this debate about the left and right in their own terms for at least a century, only ending when the German Final Solution made any serious attempts at National Socialism a public relations nightmare, thus ending the debate entirely, but leaving the traditional 'right wing' assignment... which is as noted ONLY Valid within discussions of Socialist divisions... to confuse everyone who isn't actually a socialist.  In this particular case it doesn't appear to have started as a means of bowlderizing language to engage in the standard sophist argumentative techniques so beloved of the entire spectrum of Counter Enlightenment defenders... but that would lead me to a discussion about Year Zero thinking, and my lunch break is already over, so...
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rawma

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #956 on: November 15, 2020, 05:02:13 PM »
Gore had 37 days to deal with one state issue, but Trump only has 8-9 days left?

A difference of 537 votes in a state with almost 6 million votes cast justifies a lot more care than the present clear victory by Biden; care that was never taken then until the next year, when a full recount under a consistent standard showed that Gore would actually have won. And of course many of the problems that 2000 showed us were subsequently fixed; more importantly, Democrats were ready this time for the level of hypocrisy and dishonesty Republicans would inevitably put forward.

How many days do you think would be appropriate for finalizing an election in states with differences of 10 to 20 thousand out of fewer votes than Florida in 2000? Unlike Republicans in 2000, Democrats have no objection to the full recount in Georgia. And the Republicans, who criticized Gore so much for going after only some counties in Florida, ... are now selectively targeting individual counties in multiple states.

Quote
That confidence is riding at an all time high!

Keep denying the results! For me, every day is like enjoying a new Biden victory!

jhkim

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #957 on: November 15, 2020, 05:29:41 PM »
Our Electoral system has always had problems, but the extreme polarization of the political parties are putting additional stress on the Electoral system. It is worth putting additional resources into strengthening the electoral process, and this should be accomplished by non-affiliated people who are not earning a living as either part of the government or private industry/Corporations. Plus what Rawma says above. Too  many shitnags trying to unduly influence the elections for personal gain. 
Gamedaddy - Both Pat and I responded to your earlier claim. You stated that the odds are 308 to 1 that the vote would be that close in the three states.

What do you suppose the odds are statistically speaking that we have elections in three states PA, GA, AZ with a combined population of 15,400,000 people voting, and the separation of all three combined vote tallies is less than 50,000.

The odds are 308 to 1 the vote should be that close in three states combined.

So this is not an accident. Nor is the narrow race apparently the result of people just voting.

This is flatly bad logic. I can see how you calculated 308 to 1 here. The underlying assumption is that there is a flat random chance that Trump would get anywhere from 0% to 100% of each state. But I believe that assumption is completely off-base. If Trump got either 3% or 97%, those aren't equally likely to getting 50%.

I don't want to drop this because people keep claiming "so many red flags" - but when any given red flag is challenged, they just drop it and move on to a different claim. At least Tucker Carlson, for example, is willing to issue an apology when he falsely claimed that a dead mailman, James Blalock, voted in the Georgia election.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/525980-tucker-carlson-issues-on-air-apology-over-georgia-voter-claims

In his segment, the Blalock case was specifically cited out by Carlson as the prime example of dead people voting. Carlson says "No one embodies this story like James Blalock" before going on to detail specifics.

To Gamedaddy - are you willing to discuss your "308 to 1" odds claim, and address criticism of the calculation? Or possibly admit that it was wrong?

Mercurius

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #958 on: November 15, 2020, 05:38:57 PM »
Who needs votes or even Democracy if all that matters is "reasons and feels" and not the actual process of legitimate and fair elections.

Allow me to break it down for you.

Way back in the seventeenth century the Enlightenment thinkers, perhaps most fundamentally Locke, determined that Reason alone could determine objective truth.  Needless to say this caught on like wildfire and saw such developments as Twitter and TikTok.

Kant, who largely agreed with the enlightenment thinkers, however, had a problem in that he was a pretty religious guy and Religious thinkers all the way back to the eleventh century and probably earlier, had recognized that too much reason eventually led to a loss of Faith.  Faith, of course, holds that Objective Truth is only available through God*.  So, Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason, which holds that the mind (the seat of Reason) cannot know objective reality because it doesn't directly interact with reality... it only knows what our deeply flawed and imperfect senses tell us.

Now, to speed this up: This eventually spawned a 'Counter-Enlightenment' which is fundamentally defined by its opposition to Reason. Kirkegaard (spelling. I know.), among other post-Kant philosophers of the Counter-Enlightenment, enshrined Emotion as the arbiter of Truth, to put it exceedingly crudely.  This, btw, is also where you find Nietzche (Spelling, again. Fuckign moon languages, man...) and his 'Will to Power', which is fundamentally what I used to consider Telelogical thought, but can now see as more clearly Counter-Enlightenment.

Socialists were all quite happily on the Counter-Enlightenment side, as are most modern Progressives, which is bizzare when you realize their political philosophy is attached at the hip to the idea of science and smart guys leading us all to a perfectly ordered techno-utopia.

In conclusion (or TL;DR if you like): While most modern Leftists are probably not remotely cognizent of all this (though to be sure the Post-Modernist philosophers such as Foucalt and Derrida absolutely were), the have been immersed in a milieu informed entirely of this means of looking at the world for most of their lives.  For them rejecting Objective Truth and Reason in favor of Feels is not a bug, its a feature.   Whether they know it or not, they simply don't respect Reason.


*Yes, I know. There are OTHER religions out there.  Don't be a pedant.

Nice little narrative there, but...is your implication that Righties have better respect for Reason? Certainly, many libertarians tend to fetishize Reason, but most on the Right aren't really libertarian, at least ideologically.


Spike

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #959 on: November 15, 2020, 06:28:36 PM »

Nice little narrative there, but...is your implication that Righties have better respect for Reason? Certainly, many libertarians tend to fetishize Reason, but most on the Right aren't really libertarian, at least ideologically.

You must have missed the closer of my follow up post responding to the last question I received about the post you quoted.

The quoted post is the philosophical underpinnings of broad movements. Specific attitudes of right vs left are discussed about two posts above yours.  From a purely analytical position, I make no moral judgement about the correctness of the Counter Enlightenment movement, all the way up to Postmodernism. I disagree with them, fundamentally, and see myself as more in the Enlightenment 'branch' of modern philosophy, if you will, but I accept, among other things, that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason makes a valid argument, though I would suggest that Descartes's Demon makes an interesting counter-argument, though I don't believe it was intended as such.   

So when you ask if "The Right" has a better respect for Reason, not only are you asking about the wrong side of the political divide (you should be asking the obverse question: Do I believe the Left doesn't respect Reason?), to answer it I have to ask: Do You mean the European Traditionalist Right, the American Individualist Right, or the Counter-Enlightenment Nationalist Socialist Right?

In general I believe most people don't actually concern themselves with the foundations and intellectual underpinnings of their political beliefs, and left to their own devices most people default to 'magical thinking' over rational or, alternatively, counter-Enlightenment Irrationalist Thinking, so asking about 'most people' is a fools errand' by any metric.


Of course, we can also make the argument that none of this is particularly new.  Nietzche is rehashing the tired old arguments of Heracletius (I think... this was someone elses thesis, and I might have forgotten which discredited ancient greek philosopher they tied him too...), the Post-moderists are largely relying on argument techniques demonstrated by teh Sophists back in the day. Revolutionary movements (such as Socialism) have always bowlderized language until they are in power, or alternatively destroyed by those in power, at which point the near first order of business is always to re-assert the propriety of language, as documented by Thucydides.

We've been here before, and no matter what happens between now and January 20, and beyond, we will be here again. The big question is just how bloody it will get in the meantime.  I, for one, hope that our inevitable dark age... call it the Atomic Age Collapse... doesn't happen during my lifetime.  I'd like to think we have a few more centuries, but if I could tell the future I wouldn't be posting here, I'd be playing the lotto and living it up on some tropical beach with dancing girls.
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