The most enraging part of the manifest cheating in the Presidential election is the massive ongoing effort to gaslight people into thinking that the cheating did not occur. This is fraud on fraud.
Friday, April 19, AD 2024 5:19am
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Indeed, Don. And a disturbing amount of that gaslighting is coming from the same National Review/WSJ/Fox News axis that, if not avidly anti-Trump for mostly selfish reasons, have been at best lukewarm in their support and were quick to throw in the towel after the overnight ballot dumps took away Trump’s victory. I had a mostly cordial, but disturbing, exchange with one such person on another Catholic blog site yesterday, in the course of which I was informed that I am fantasizing massive fraud to avoid the harsh reality that “Trump lost.” He at first insisted that court rulings against Trump’s team have been on the merits, rather than purely procedural, but even though he finally relented on that point, he continues to advance the position that fraud did not determine the outcome. I cannot comprehend such seemingly willful blindness.
I learned yesterday from my son Matthew on This Week program that the real problem facing America is the anarchic Republican base. Of course precisely the opposite is true. The MSM are inveterate liars and manipulators. .
“I am fantasizing massive fraud”
Yep, just like we were fantasizing all those historic bellwether counties that predicted a Trump victory:
https://nationalfile.com/data-trump-won-95-of-bellwether-counties-making-biden-win-statistically-improbable/
When McCain and Romney lost, although in retrospect the country dodged a bullet both times, I didn’t like it but I made no argument that the results were fraudulent. In this case, the results reek of fraud, and it is intellectually dishonest for people to reject out of hand the possibility without confronting honestly the various red flags of fraud which exist in regard to this election.
We have absolute proof of massive, China Joe vote fraud: the criminal enterprise masquerading as the Democrat Party refuses to allow anyone to conduct a reasonable audit of their crimes.
China Joe Didn’t Win. We Were Robbed. We Know What They Did Last November.
Seen on Instapundit: The odds that China Joe overcame President Trump’s massive, Election night vote leads in four swing states were one in one quadrillion. That’s likely on overstatement. The odds were more one in a million.
[A] disturbing amount of that gaslighting is coming from the same National Review/WSJ/Fox News axis that, if not avidly anti-Trump for mostly selfish reasons, have been at best lukewarm in their support and were quick to throw in the towel after the overnight ballot dumps took away Trump’s victory.
It’s not limited to the usual suspects:
“The President’s conspiracy-mongering [my emphasis] after losing to Joe Biden is a case study in why character, though not all that matters, is important. Instead of shoring up his legacy on the way out, Trump is leading his followers into the fever swamps [ditto] while floating the idea of running again in 2024.”
Or then again, maybe it is. The embedded link in the quote goes to a Rod Dreher piece, and Dreher’s as looney as they come, Trump derangement wise. Also a < a href=https://www.catholicworldreport.com/author/blake-nathanael/>perfunctory glance at the author’s other posts at CWR suggests he’s out there on whatever branch of conservatism The American Conservative represents.
I want to call it the Waiting for Godot branch, since they, it seems to me, support the general direction of Trumpism (for lack of a better term), but can’t stand the standard bearer.
I think Dreher’s problem (besides writing at the American Conservative, which I have a hard time seeing as such) is that he shares a great deal of the personal biases of the Elite that stole this election and has poisoned political discourse and the common good since Nov. 9th, 2016.
Not that he voted that way or wished for it. Rather, being a member of that class, he can’t see what is happening around him.
Even solid examples of election fraud linked in the comments section of his posts are ignored or completely denied. I don’t think he took this much suspicion into his analysis of the Russian Collusion claims.
Again, his Elite bias.
I loathe the Left.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/dominion-software-intentionally-designed-to-influence-election-results-forensics-report_3617675.html
The problem with Dreher is he’s in the wrong line of work.
But then, I can’t think of what the right line of work for a guy as emotionally fragile, and self-referential about it, as he is would be.
Motivational speaker? Self-help guru?
Stray thought: On of our problems is we’ve somehow created a system that allows mediocrities with a talent for self-promotion to thrive at he expense of crowding out excellence. Maybe that’s the inherent flaw in democracy. Or maybe it’s something about the American character.
Not sure I want to follow up on that, because it’s reminding me too much of Allan Bloom on Neitzsche.
I’d seen that elsewhere but couldn’t find the link again. Thanks Philip.
Sadly, too late, doesn’t matter, issue’s moot.
And if that fails, fake news.
Ernst.
I know.
What are those 5 stages of death again?
Me? Denial going into Anger.
This robbery will take some time before acceptance and healing set in.
I find that the simplest way to see if you’re going to make any progress in a conversation on fraud is to bring up the vote totals. Simply put: the narrative is that Biden was a bad candidate but he was able to win because everyone hated Trump so much. But does that make sense at all with Trump expanding his vote by over seven and a half million votes while Biden supposedly topped Hillary’s count by over 9 million?
If the response is “yeah that does seem a little fishy but maybe there’s another explanation for it” then you can have a conversation. If it’s “so? Biden had more votes and there’s no question that he won you conspiracy theorist.” then save yourself some time and end the conversation there.
Did I mention that I loathe the Left?
If I didn’t, well, I do;
https://www.theepochtimes.com/crucial-logs-missing-from-antrim-county-dominion-voting-machines-forensics-report_3617768.html
Antrim county is our stomping ground.
The beautiful Jordan River State forest has been a treasured landscape of the Nachazel tribe for over 100 years.
East Jordan is where my grandparents raised my dad and his siblings.
Please God. Help America.
Dreher’s not sharing any personal biases with any elite, nor has he been personally acquainted with them to any great degree. He went from the J-school at LSU to provincial metropolitan newspapers to The Washington Times to the New York Post to National Review to the editorial page of the Dallas Times-Herald to the Templeton Foundation to a work-from-home gig at The American Conservative. He went into the Catholic Church in 1996 thence to the Orthodox Church a decade later. His problem, really, is that he is other-directed and labile. When he writes, you see him processing emotional disorders and social anxieties. He’s been married for 20-odd years, so his wife is willing to work with that.
The problem with Dreher is he’s in the wrong line of work.
No, he’s in the right line of work. I’ll wager you put him in a client-contact position and he’d be spilling his guts to the wrong people every other day. His sister was a schoolteacher; I doubt he has the equanimity for that. Something like accounting would take him away from people, but he’s given no indication he has a flair for that sort of detail-oriented endeavor. He doesn’t have any trade skills at all. We learned that when Mr. Crunchy Con off-handedly admitted that the windows in his ducky little house in Dallas were all painted shut and he had the AC running every day. The man who had been for seven years running around with his hair on fire about the prospect of a priest molesting his son evidently gave no thought to his children being trapped in a burning house.
Stray thought: On of our problems is we’ve somehow created a system that allows mediocrities with a talent for self-promotion to thrive at he expense of crowding out excellence. Maybe that’s the inherent flaw in democracy. Or maybe it’s something about the American character.
Harry Truman once said when he was sworn into office as a Senator he said to himself “I can’t believe I got here”. After six months, he said to him self, “I can’t believe they got here”. Truman’s contemporaries in Congress managed after the 2d World War to prescribe a rapid demobilization which incorporated an 85% cut in military spending and balancing the federal budget in two years. The country also powered through an odd but quite deep recession during those years. The inflation of the time irritated people. Keep in mind in incorporated consumer prices increases of 4% per year on average. Wm. McC Martin took office as chief of the Federal Reserve in 1951 and the inflation was history within two years. (His successor Arthur Burns somehow got the idea in his head that this wasn’t possible. The 1970s were a slum of a decade in many respects).
Watching the U.S. Congress flail around for four decades while passing swag to one client group or another convinces one that one generation’s mediocrities compare favorably to another’s big time. Collectively, my contemporaries are not fit to kiss our grandparents’ filthy feet. Of course, the implicit message of schooling at all levels today is that we should despise my grandparents’ contemporaries because racism, prudery, and Lawrence Welk. .
he’s out there on whatever branch of conservatism The American Conservative represents.
It was founded by Pat Buchanan, Scott McConnell, and Taki Theodocogetdrunkfalldownchaseskirts in reaction to the run up to Iraq War. Buchanan had for 13 years been promoting a revival of his father’s interwar isolationism, but more congenially than the weird crank collection around Thos Fleming. Descriptions of McConnell at work give one the idea that he’s a trustafarian promoting odd collections of ideas to amuse himself. They’ve had several publishers over the years, among them the not-in-left-field-but-out-of-the-stadium Ron Unz. Eventually it fell into the lap of Buckley’s old pal Wick Allison. The editor for a time was Daniel McCarthy, who is, ironically, one model of what Samuel Francis derided as a ‘career conservative’. I used to participate in some of their boards. I was one of two examples of the conventional right participating. Some of the regular crew were leftoids amused by soi-disant ‘conservatives’ attacking the right all the time, while the rest were palaeocranks. It’s just an onanistic sectarian enterprise.
Y’know Art, I don’t mind playing George to your Gracie, but once in a while, can’t you let me dazzle, just a little?
(my way of showing appreciation for your insights –thanks)
Had a brief conversation about this in the comments of one of Andrew Klavan’s videos. He (and I think Ben Shapiro too, though I don’t watch him as much) are both on this thing about not wanting to be like the Russian collusion truthers.
On the one hand, from an objective standpoint, that is a fair question. How do you know if you’re not getting sucked into your own false conspiracy theory? But on the flip side, how do you know you’re not being lied to. Even Andrew and Ben admit the media played a coordinated role this election. (so why are they trustworthy now about the election???)
I think what’s frustrating for me is watching the narrative taking hold in real time. The Daily Wire says it’s moving to Nashville and wants to start becoming a media empire to challenge the MSM, but I wonder how effective they’re going to be when they keep letting the MSM set the narrative. Say what you will about him, Trump was good at and understood the need to fight the media on a narrative level. Maybe he didn’t always win, but he knew better than to just let them have an easy win.
Every day I’m understanding more and more Breitbart’s and Chesterton’s frustration with conservatives.
A couple of facts for those willing to integrate them into their opinions. The Republican party is never going to be the dynamic instrument of reform, Teddy Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln and John C. Fremont not withstanding. At best they are Horatio at the bridge a la Georgia Jan 5. On the other hand Democrat cheating is firmly bound in their dna beginning with the election of 1800 and extending down to the courthouse level of today. The only exceptions have been when the party itself split in 1860 and 1948 and neither group was able to deliver the correct amount of “winning” ballots. Was Trump genuinely defeated? Yes, by a combination of registration and ballot fraud, news suppression by social and media outlets and a genuine seditious group in congress determined not to let the true fact of Ukraine and the dems real Manchurian candidate come out. Republican simply don’t have that level of talent to rely on. The only Republicans to win by insurmountable margins were hero types like Eisenhower and Reagan and they adopted the party rather late in their political life. In the Old Testament a prophet cries to the Almighty asking why the evil man prospers. It has been ever so but the struggle must never cease as we are promised success at the final reckoning.
Nate,
What you are describing is a big part of why Gell-Mann amnesia works (i.e. the fact that people will know from experience that the media gets things horribly wrong in many areas, and then they nevertheless trust the media completely in areas where they can’t fact-check it). A lot of people just can’t carry through the idea of “the media is inaccurate, and often because they are lying” through to the necessary conclusions. If it is true, then it means that you can’t rely on mainstream reporting for anything, which in turn means that you will need to stay in ignorance about many things and rely on independent/anecdotal reporting for what you can learn about. This is hard for a lot of people because it means that you can’t be certain: there can be and there are inaccuracies from those types of reporting as well. So a lot of people will go back to the media, no matter how many times they’ve been lied to before, simply because it gives them some “certainty.” (I put that in quotes because to get that “certainty” they need to ignore the fact that they know the reporting they are listening is probably mistakes and lies.)
Mr. Link, I believe you are exactly right, and would only add one more item to your list of factors that, it seems, are resulting in Trump’s de facto defeat: a court system in which judges, including most irritatingly the three Trump appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court, were unwilling to allow the merits of fraud claims or Constitutional claims to be heard, for whatever reasons.
True, dat, Rudolph. That I have a long memory is probably a curse.