I have to admit, it’s pretty fascinating to see who is still, on January 18th of 2021, bending over backwards to give Republicans way more credit than they deserve. Fascinating and baffling.
I would say that this kind of eats into my theory in the other thread that education will solve a lot of our problems with poor thinking and susceptibility to propaganda. But frankly, I’ve seen too many actuaries deride the value of a liberal arts education, and I gather it’s because most actuaries have never really taken the time to acquire much of an education outside of STEM. So I think my thesis is still fine.
People need to stop repeating this lie. Of course there was fraud. Fraud was discovered in Pennsylvania even.
There’s always fraud.
What absolutely positively did NOT happen though, is a quantity of fraud sufficient to impact the election results even in a single state, let alone enough states to swing the whole election.
McConnell and many other Republicans were pretty clear about this on January 6.
I think it’s extremely important to acknowledge that imperfections occurred. Turning a deaf ear to this truth just fuels the fire IMO.
The problem with the Republican argument is they want to strengthen the requirements for identification to address the risk of the fraud of a person voting for someone else while pushing the costs associated with the new requirements onto the individual voter. Those costs act as a poll tax which is unconstitutional.
I think your thesis is a theoretical ideal that can’t work in practice. You can give people an education but you can’t make them receptive to it. I was a teacher and it would be a wonderful job if it weren’t for those who don’t want to learn, unfortunately the majority.
I’m European and in my country you used to have to pay if you were over 18 to get the standard Math and English qualifications. Those classes were wonderful to teach as even the weakest were trying their best.
The government made those courses free. They became horrible to teach, full of people who didn’t value the lessons and were a complete nightmare. They had better access to education but they learnt nothing.
I agree that they have already been investigated. I’m looking for a joint statement that both Rs and Ds can sign that contains all the detail of the investigations.
A secret, “trust us” commission isn’t going to do the job.
But, we are doomed unless we get to the point where we can agree on facts. Will we get there? I’m not optimistic. We may be doomed.
You want someone to compile all the lawsuits? That’s publicly available information that people already choose to believe or not believe. I fail to see how putting it all together in one place will make a difference.
Other than the fact that we often regard anything that wastes Congress Critters’ time as a good thing in that it’s time they’re not f—-ing up the country… I don’t see any value in getting Congress involved in something that is better suited to being a 10th grader’s Social Studies homework assignment.
The interesting thing about facts is they just are. Facts are facts. Alternative facts are falsehoods. So it does not matter if we disagree or agree on facts. It does matter that We seek and find the most accurate facts, we replace facts for perceptions, and we don’t turn away from facts even when they are uncomfortable.
I read it as him wanting some sort of statement from people in congress saying “the issue has been settled, move on” - with the signatures of most, if not all, representatives from both parties. Doesn’t have to be an official vote in the chambers or anything - even just a soundbite from each of them saying “the election was valid - that has been shown with sufficient evidence”.
If the statements made on January 6 by the likes of Mitch McConnell, Pat Toomey, Lindsey Graham, and Mitt Romney (who most of these folks voted for a mere 8 years ago) weren’t sufficient then I doubt something that was ALSO signed by Democrats will be.
I agree with the first two sentences, but not the third.
The people who stormed the capital are convinced that there was massive fraud in the election. If they didn’t believe that, they wouldn’t have stormed the capital. That matters a lot.
Maybe you’re reading some words differently than I intended.
The point is not to put it all in one place, but rather to get the Rs and Ds to both sign the same document that says “We looked at all these allegations. The arguments for and against (which are right here if you want to review them yourself). We find that, time after time, the allegations melt away when they are examined carefully. There is no evidence of fraud at a level that could have swung the presidential election.”
And then there are guys like Cawthorn in the house and Hawley in the senate and you realize reconciliation is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogn way away
This is really a conversation for the other thread, but for now I will just say: I have been a public school teacher myself, and “can’t work in practice” is much too strong a stance imo.
I can’t say I ever met a single student that was completely uninterested in learning. I did meet students that were being taught the wrong curriculum, and students with shit home lives who would have been more receptive to education if they were a few rungs higher on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and I saw students who had such terrible teachers that any desire to learn had been forcibly beaten out of them over time. But I never saw anything to convince me that universal liberal arts education is completely impractical in and of itself, or that it’s an impossible goal to strive for.