Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Al_U_Card]

There is something seriously wrong with anyone who is adamant that large numbers of illegals voted last month, and if you give that some thought, you'll realize that to be true. (There's no evidence for it, and it flies in the face of common sense.) When something like that happens, it makes sense to be suspicious of that source in the future, no matter how adamant.

And as long as that is in open discourse, it can be seen as well as be seen to be disproved. Driving it away only ensures its success elsewhere and creates a lack of awareness that may eventually lead to the elite not just discriminating against a minority but a potential majority (if only of the electoral kind...).

[Kaitlyn S]

There is something seriously wrong with anyone who is adamant that large numbers of illegals voted last month, and if you give that some thought, you'll realize that to be true. (There's no evidence for it, and it flies in the face of common sense.) When something like that happens, it makes sense to be suspicious of that source in the future, no matter how adamant.

I do know that I saw a videotape of Democratic Party operatives discussing voters traveling across state lines to vote in states where it doesn't matter. I also know that most conservatives are telling me that this tape is damning evidence and most liberals are telling me that the tape was doctored or taken out of context. In light of that, wouldn't you think that most people that aren't going with "doctored or out of context" are going to believe the narrative?

 

Now I am not convinced that a large number of illegals voted last month. I'm not convinced that they didn't. Since I've been here, your entire posse has been telling me that anything the conservatives have said is pure bullsh*t and I'm just stupid if I believe any of it. To me, it would seem as though you would say it if it were true, or you would say it if you were brainwashed to think it was true, or you would say it if it were the Democratic Party narrative. Personally I think that odds that (say) ten thousand illegals voted is very small. But I can't put it at zero no matter how ridiculous you are telling me it is. Because none of us know the whole truth. If they did so, they likely did it with little risk - using the names and social security numbers of dead people rather than their own identity.

 

The New Haven mayor wanted to let undocumented immigrants vote. He is probably not the only one and it isn't at all unlikely that if people know that the local bigwigs are OK with undocumented immigrants voting, that those immigrants are less likely to get caught, especially in a sanctuary city - and Lord knows there are tons of them. Also, some undocumented people are uneducated and ignorant, and may be pretty gullible when told that it's OK if they vote. After all, if the Republicans can take Obama's message out of context and say he wants illegals to vote, why can't the Democrats do the same? Nothing bad happens to the Democrats if the undocumented immigrant gets caught, and politicians of both parties have been known to be pretty sleazy. So yes, the probability is non-zero. You can't just say it's totally ridiculous and that anyone who thinks it's possible it totally witless, because people can reason that it could be possible albeit unlikely, and that your stance is the type of arrogance that has driven people to vote for Trump.

 

What I'm saying here is that once an undecided sees that one of the things you are calling ridiculous is possible, they may question all the rest of your "facts" too. Once they do that, your entire narrative goes out the window, because even if you're right about most things, people won't believe you.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong about illegals not voting, you are probably right. But to say that it's ridiculous and stupid to think otherwise, is going to alienate anybody that think the "otherwise" is possible.

[mike777]

With trump winning there does seem to be a lot of talk of Russia voting for example in Wisconsin. I think they are suppose to vote from Russia so they do not worry about being deported.

 

Chicago my hometown has long been famous for having the dead vote, vote early and vote often.

 

with all of that said I have read reports of up to 97 million legal voters, not voting so I can understand Russia and the dead wanting to take up the slack.

[Winstonm]

This is rather incredible and rather sad and rather apt, given the preceding comments. (emphasis added)

Team Trump seems to genuinely believe that facts don’t matter.

 

During an appearance on “The Diane Rehm Show” on Wednesday, Donald Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes tried to defend the president-elect’s entirely baseless claim that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for “millions of people who voted illegally.”

 

“Well, I think it’s also an idea of an opinion,” Hughes said. “And that’s — on one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other half, there are many people that go, ‘No, it’s true.’ And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts — they’re not really facts.”

 

She continued, “Everybody has a way — it’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not truth. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.”

 

The really frightening part is that to 60 million or so people in the U.S., this seems to be true.

[Al_U_Card]

With trump winning there does seem to be a lot of talk of Russia voting for example in Wisconsin. I think they are suppose to vote from Russia so they do not worry about being deported.

 

Chicago my hometown has long been famous for having the dead vote, vote early and vote often.

 

with all of that said I have read reports of up to 97 million legal voters, not voting so I can understand Russia and the dead wanting to take up the slack.

Sad but true...a most abstruce observation but thanks for bringing a little light back to the proceedings ;)

[hrothgar]

And as long as that is in open discourse, it can be seen as well as be seen to be disproved. Driving it away only ensures its success elsewhere and creates a lack of awareness that may eventually lead to the elite not just discriminating against a minority but a potential majority (if only of the electoral kind...).

 

It has been repeatedly pointed out that most of what Al posts in the global warming thread is factually incorrect.

In said thread, he openly admitted to knowingly posting inaccurate information and stated that he is justified in doing so because the "warmists" do it as well.

 

If only if were possible to drive him away...

[mike777]

Since many of them drive or get benefits of one sort or another perhaps they should also get to vote, if 97 million others dont bother to vote..

[Winstonm]

The New Haven mayor wanted to let undocumented immigrants vote. He is probably not the only one and it isn't at all unlikely that if people know that the local bigwigs are OK with undocumented immigrants voting, that those immigrants are less likely to get caught, especially in a sanctuary city - and Lord knows there are tons of them. Also, some undocumented people are uneducated and ignorant, and may be pretty gullible when told that it's OK if they vote. After all, if the Republicans can take Obama's message out of context and say he wants illegals to vote, why can't the Democrats do the same? Nothing bad happens to the Democrats if the undocumented immigrant gets caught, and politicians of both parties have been known to be pretty sleazy. So yes, the probability is non-zero. You can't just say it's totally ridiculous and that anyone who thinks it's possible it totally witless, because people can reason that it could be possible albeit unlikely, and that your stance is the type of arrogance that has driven people to vote for Trump.

 

First off, I do not think you are stupid - far from it. I think you are naive and gullible and maybe (as I was in my 30s and 40s), intellectually lazy.

 

You seem to easily buy into conspiracy ideas - can you tell me what "local bigwigs" means in the real world? Have you volunteered to work in voter registration or worked in a polling place? Do you really have an idea of the inner workings of the actual vote and the safeguards that are established. Can you name (not even a person but a position) in local city government that has the power to overcome the real safeguards in place to protect the integrity of elections, i.e., name your "bigwig", and explain how he or she might accomplish that without resorting to fictional conspiracies?

 

I have wasted a lot of time online debating with the religious about their beliefs - and what I find quaint about your ideas is that they borrow the exact same argument - that if an idea cannot be disproved 100% then it must have some merit - as much as 50% merit as an opposing idea.

 

That argument was nonsense in a religious setting and gains no traction when applied to politics instead.

 

What you have to show to make a case is first, a likely and realistic scenario where a single illegal voted, then explain how and why that scenario would be recreated 3 million times in California, and then explain the motivation that would cause those 3 million to carry out such an organized plan of action, and how all 3 million avoided detection.

 

And even with all that, you would just reach the level of making a reasonable claim. You should be too smart for the positions you take - and I think you are. There is another motivation that drives your choices - I think it is faith, a religious-like belief in conservative policies. But even then, when the preachers start to lie, it should be time to call them out.

[Kaitlyn S]

I have wasted a lot of time online debating with the religious about their beliefs - and what I find quaint about your ideas is that they borrow the exact same argument - that if an idea cannot be disproved 100% then it must have some merit - as much as 50% merit as an opposing idea.

 

That argument was nonsense in a religious setting and gains no traction when applied to politics instead.

Some of my point is that it doesn't matter whether your idea is right, even if you're 100% sure it's right and you can prove it; as long as a large enough portion of the voting populace believes the alternative is possible, they are going to see your argument as being arrogant and unsubstantiated, and will start to have doubts about your other ideas too.

[PassedOut]

I do know that I saw a videotape of Democratic Party operatives discussing voters traveling across state lines to vote in states where it doesn't matter. I also know that most conservatives are telling me that this tape is damning evidence and most liberals are telling me that the tape was doctored or taken out of context. In light of that, wouldn't you think that most people that aren't going with "doctored or out of context" are going to believe the narrative?

There is "locker room talk" from people with every political belief under the sun about what they've done or would like to do. That is not evidence to me -- and I am a conservative. If you point me to 12 or 13 people who say they've actually experienced what this locker room talker was saying, then I'd have to take a look at it. So would a lot of people.

[y66]

This seems as good a place as any to post this excerpt from Jennifer Senior's review of Michael Lewis' new book “The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds:

 

Mr. Lewis has always had a knack for identifying eccentrics and horde-defiers who somehow tell us a larger story, generally about an idea that violates our most basic intuition. In “Moneyball,” he gave us Billy Beane, who rejected the wisdom of traditional baseball scouts and rehabilitated the Oakland A’s through statistical reasoning. In “The Big Short,” he gave us an assortment of jittery misfits who bet against the housing market.

 

In “The Undoing Project,” Mr. Lewis has found the granddaddy of all stories about counterintuition, because Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Tversky did some of the most definitive research about just how majestically, fantastically unreliable our intuition can be. The biases they identified that distort our decision-making are now so well known — like our outsize aversion to loss, for instance — that we take them for granted. Together, you can safely say, these two men made possible the field of behavioral economics, which is predicated on the notion that humans do not always behave rationally.

and this excerpt from Robert Hackett's Fortune mag story based on John Cassidy's October 2016 interview of Kahneman:

 

For Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton psychologist and father of the discipline known as behavioral economics, the U.S. presidential election is more than just a political event. It is a case study for the kinds of irrational quirks and biases in human judgment that he has devoted his life to researching.

 

“I find it unbelievable, this phenomenon that is happening right now,” said the 2002 Nobel Prize winner in economics dusing an onstage interview at the New Yorker’s TechFest in New York City on Friday. “When you have a 7-year-old running for president—a very big 7-year-old,” he added, drawing laughs from the audience. He continued, “the idea that that person can secure some 40% of the base of the electorate is just astonishing and I’m really quite worried.”

 

Kahneman, a self-described pessimist (“but not enough of one,” he said), referenced neither Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump nor Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by name during his chat. The conversation quickly turned, however, to the emergence of a political movement of a bygone era: the rise of Nazism in the early 20th century.

 

Mentioning how the 82-year-old Israeli-born academic had lived through the onset of World War II, the New Yorker’s John Cassidy, a sometime Fortune contributor, asked whether there’s any reason to believe that people would act more rationally nowadays and avoid such conflict.

 

“Absolutely not,” Kahneman replied, explaining that the Nazi movement grew partially out of economic chaos at the time. “Our brain has not changed since the last century, our impulses haven’t changed,” he said.

 

Kahneman offered an example of one bias he still sees in effect: people tend to prefer leaders who decide on things quickly, he said. “We don’t like people who deliberate too much, we lose the sense that they know what they’re doing,” he said.

 

“Our intrinsic makeup hasn’t improved and we’re still vulnerable,” he said.

 

Kahneman, author of the best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow, cautioned about the dangers of herd mentality and of succumbing to engrained biases. The conversation ranged from the potential of artificially intelligent bots to automate decision making to the future of business management to the possible displacement of workplace professionals by software algorithms.

 

“Individuals yield to social pressure,” he said with an air of academically-interested criticism on the political question. “This appeal to strength, this idea that being big and strong is highly valued—and masculine, I might add—that’s built in and hasn’t changed.”

Perhaps expecting people to act "more rationally" nowadays than historically or to presume they don't know best where their self interest lies is the best example of cognitive bias in U.S. history.

[Winstonm]

Some of my point is that it doesn't matter whether your idea is right, even if you're 100% sure it's right and you can prove it; as long as a large enough portion of the voting populace believes the alternative is possible, they are going to see your argument as being arrogant and unsubstantiated, and will start to have doubts about your other ideas too.

 

And I think you miss my point. I am not trying to prove anything to you; I am asking you to prove things to yourself.

 

One thing I have learned over my 65 years is that I cannot compel another person to change, that change only comes from within. With that as my basis, the reason I have pointed out the seeming racist nature of some of your views and the flawed reasoning in many others is not to "prove" myself right and you wrong but was done in hopes that you over time might examine yourself, your own ideas and you own reasoning. My goal is not to sell a narrative but to encourage all of us to adopt critical thinking as our foundation for forming beliefs.

[nige1]

Actually BBF TOS specify no hateful material:

A complaint about abuse from hrothgar or mikeh just confirms that they have a sense of humour :)

[jonottawa]

People who serially abuse, violate and ignore the rules of THIS forum (that Diana posted) and then call for ME to be banned because they object to some of my RETweets on Twitter are beyond hypocritical. People bringing up places I worked over a dozen years ago or medical mishaps from ~7 years ago ... That's just creepy. I guess my Twitter feed is fair game, I don't make a secret of who I am, but not if it's being used as evidence that I broke the rules HERE. I follow Twitter rules on Twitter. I follow BBF rules on BBF. Retweet does not mean endorsement.

 

Mr. Hargreaves, I strongly suggest you delete that last defamatory attack against me & refrain from future defamatory libel. My patience and tolerance has limits. You don't like me. Fine. Then ignore me. Your delusional aspersions against andrei and I have passed any bounds of decency or sanity.

 

As for this spurious 'advertising' argument, that rule is to prevent people advertising outside services/products on THIS forum. Not to prevent/discourage advertising (sending people to) THIS forum on outside social media like Twitter.

 

Kaitlyn, thanks for telling it like it is.

 

Now, back to the topic at hand:

 

Great speech by President Trump yesterday and great appointment for SecDef, General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOpXknRIQk

[PassedOut]

Kaitlyn,

 

I think that this is the sort of whine that makes you put someone in the "snowflake" category:

 

Mike, I strongly suggest you delete that last defamatory attack against me & refrain from future defamatory libel. My patience and tolerance has limits. You don't like me. Fine. Then ignore me. Your delusional aspersions against andrei and I [sic] have passed any bounds of decency or sanity.

Am I right?

[hrothgar]

A complaint about abuse from hrothgar or mikeh just confirms that they have a sense of humour :)

 

I don't recall that either of us complained that Jon should be removed from the forums for hate speech...

[PassedOut]

Retweet does not mean endorsement.

What does it really mean then when you retweet neo-Nazi rants?

[Kaitlyn S]

And I think you miss my point. I am not trying to prove anything to you; I am asking you to prove things to yourself.

 

One thing I have learned over my 65 years is that I cannot compel another person to change, that change only comes from within. With that as my basis, the reason I have pointed out the seeming racist nature of some of your views and the flawed reasoning in many others is not to "prove" myself right and you wrong but was done in hopes that you over time might examine yourself, your own ideas and you own reasoning. My goal is not to sell a narrative but to encourage all of us to adopt critical thinking as our foundation for forming beliefs.

I appreciate what you're saying. Even though I mentioned the word "arrogant" in two of my posts, I don't think you are arrogant, you seem like one of the more reasonable posters. However, someone who didn't know that may read your posts as being arrogant, and I was pointing that out.

 

However, I would like to address one point. I'm not trying to disprove what you're saying, in fact the way I'm using what you said may be a bit surprising.

 

First off, I do not think you are stupid - far from it. I think you are naive and gullible and maybe (as I was in my 30s and 40s), intellectually lazy.

 

I'd like to propose a scenario. Bill & Tom are running a business together. Bill keeps the books. At one point, Tom says he is bringing in a professional auditor to examine the books. That night their main office burns down. Bill claims that he was looking at both sets of books which are normally locked in a fireproof safe when fire suddenly broke out and Bill ran out of the building leaving all evidence of any financial transactions to be lost forever. What would you think?

 

Another scenario: Spouses Harry and Sally are out for a walk. Something Harry says makes Sally think that Harry is cheating on Sally. Sally demands to see Harry's cellphone because its GPS will show where Harry's been. Harry "accidentally" drops the cell phone down a well.which destroys it. What would you think?

 

If in the second one, you think Harry's getting Sally a Mercedes Benz for her birthday and doesn't want Sally to know that he went shopping at that dealership, then you are a hopeless romantic. And you are also quite gullible. And naive. And probably intellectually lazy. Now it's possible that Harry didn't go to his ex-girlfriend's as Sally expected. Maybe he went to his secretary's apartment. Maybe he went to a casino. Maybe he went to buy drugs. Maybe he went to see a divorce lawyer. But wherever he was, it was somewhere that he really didn't want her to know about. And it was probably something really bad.

 

Same in Scenario 1. Maybe Bill really was trying to make sure all the figures were OK and got really unlucky that a fire just happened to break out and he didn't think to grab one of the books on his way out. Far more likely is that Bill had something to hide, and it was something so serious that burning his main office down was not as bad as having what he wanted hidden exposed.

 

I hope that any of you that have a lick o' sense came to the same conclusions that I did in these scenarios, at least one of them. And if John was trying to tell you, say in scenario 2, that you were both silly and stupid to think that Harry had done something wrong, what would you think of their credibility? Would you not think that John was being both arrogant and wrong? Would you have a hard time believing other things that John told you on faith?

 

In each case, the person who is suspected of trying to hide something really bad has done it in such a way that (a) we will never know what it was he was hiding, and (b) he made sure we would never know - and having us suspect him was better for him than having us actually find out.

 

Now let's bring that scenario to real life. Just as Bill in Scenario 1 and Harry in Scenario 2 did, Hillary upon finding out that her emails were going to be subpoenaed, made sure they would never see the light of day. We will never ever know what she was hiding, but anybody with a lick of sense would equate it to one of the above scenarios. Only somebody gullible or naive or intellectually lazy or all of the above would assume otherwise. However, most of the liberals and the Democratic Party said "nothing to see here." Some even went so far as to say "You are stupid to believe that she's hiding anything." You can understand how anybody with a lick o' sense would now assume that anything else that came from anyone who said "nothing to see" was also not credible. That means that when they talk about climate change, it doesn't matter if they have a raft of scientific proof, the normal person that isn't in the know says "Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me." They know that the liberals have told them that they would be stupid to think Hillary is hiding something and by saying that, they have lost all faith in the liberals' credibility. So now they think that the climate change is a crock too. When the liberals point out that there is still rampant hiring discrimination, the standard response from the thinking but ignorant voter is going to be "Poppycock. It's that Hillary's not hiding anything all over again." Now when I started looking through articles, I found to my surprise that there is rampant hiring discrimination. I'm pretty sure it's true. But your average voter is not going to do the research I did, even though it took only a couple of hours. They are going to say, "The same people that told me that Hillary wasn't hiding anything and I'd be stupid to think otherwise are telling me that there is still racially biased hiring practices. You think I'm going to believe them? Haaeeellll nooo! I'll just believe my trusted Fox News; they haven't tried to tell me anything so outrageous!"

 

If only millennial votes counted, Hillary wins almost every state. When I mentioned lick o' sense, it doesn't apply there. Those are the people that might believe that Harry was trying to hide what Sally's birthday gift was. Those are the people that don't think Hillary's hiding anything. Those poor naive gullible kids just believe what their liberal professors tell them because they apparently haven't had enough life experience to equate it to Scenario 1 or Scenario 2. So, rather than think for themselves, they take the intellectually lazy way out and just believe what they are told.

 

Now, I'm not sure if you (Winston) was one of the ones that said someone would be stupid to think Hillary was hiding something but I have heard that a lot of times from left-leaning posters this fall. You have to understand how most Americans think. Even if she wasn't hiding anything, you have to understand that most Americans that think for themselves are going to think she was, and not believe much of anything said by somebody that insists otherwise. Especially when they are being told that they are stupid for thinking something that makes sense to them.

[hrothgar]

 

If only millennial votes counted, Hillary wins almost every state. When I mentioned lick o' sense, it doesn't apply there. Those are the people that might believe that Harry was trying to hide what Sally's birthday gift was. Those are the people that don't think Hillary's hiding anything. Those poor naive gullible kids just believe what their liberal professors tell them because they apparently haven't had enough life experience to equate it to Scenario 1 or Scenario 2. So, rather than think for themselves, they take the intellectually lazy way out and just believe what they are told.

 

 

Kaitlyn, given the number of fairy tales that you've been posting, it takes a special kind of stupid to be commenting about the "poor naive gullible kids".

How many times have you been caught posting ridiculous tall tales that can be falsified with five minutes work on Google?

 

How does that old proverb go

 

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

[cherdano]

I do know that I saw a videotape of Democratic Party operatives discussing voters traveling across state lines to vote in states where it doesn't matter.

LOL

[diana_eva]

Meanwhile Trump makes phone calls to world leaders without taking diplomatic advice:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/us/politics/trump-speaks-with-taiwans-leader-a-possible-affront-to-china.html

[jonottawa]

Kaitlyn, given the amount of fairy tales that you've been posting, it takes a special kind of stupid to be commenting about the "poor naive gullible kids".

How many times have you been caught posting ridiculous tall tales that can be falsified with five minutes work on Google?

 

How does that old proverb go

You have the unmitigated GALL to quote the MOTE proverb (which basically says 'don't be a hypocrite') when you're calling for someone to be banned for allegedly violating the forum rules (for his retweets on social media) when you are a SERIAL VIOLATOR OF THE FORUM RULES?

 

How about applying that proverb to YOURSELF?

 

What's wrong with you people? You want your 'safe space' and you want to be able to hurl nasty insults continually. I'm fine with EITHER, but not with BOTH. Pick one.

[jonottawa]

What does it really mean then when you retweet neo-Nazi rants?

I retweet tweets I find interesting. Even really stupid or extremist people occasionally make interesting observations. If Satan (or even Hillary) made an interesting observation, or linked an interesting article, I'd retweet him. Which neo-Nazi rant are you referring to?

[jonottawa]

I do know that I saw a videotape of Democratic Party operatives discussing voters traveling across state lines to vote in states where it doesn't matter.

 

LOL

What's funny? Did you not see the NSFW videos or do you dispute the content or ?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY&t=5shttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDc8PVCvfKs&t=4s

[hrothgar]

You have the unmitigated GALL to quote the MOTE proverb (which basically says 'don't be a hypocrite') when you're calling for someone to be banned for allegedly violating the forum rules (for his retweets on social media) when you are a SERIAL VIOLATOR OF THE FORUM RULES?

 

How about applying that proverb to YOURSELF?

 

What's wrong with you people? You want your 'safe space' and you want to be able to hurl nasty insults continually. I'm fine with EITHER, but not with BOTH. Pick one.

 

Jon, I know that its hard for you to process complicated ideas, so let me try to make this as clear as I can

 

1. I never said that you should be banned from the forums for violating standard of propriety or hate speech or retweeting social media

2. I said that you you be banned from the forums because you're a noxious little troll who (essentially) does nothing other than posting inane political rants.

 

I referenced your Twitter feed for two reasons

 

1. Your feed shows what a pathetic excuse for a human being you actually are and I think that its important that folks understand the individuals and the causes that you choose to associate with

2. Your feed suggests that your primary reason for participating on BBF is an attempt to show-off in front of a differnet social network

 

If I believed that you had any value as a human being I wouldn't care about your choice of language or even your politics.

 

Since cartoons pretty much seem to be your speed:

 

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png