All I gotta say now is if half of what Sidney Powell alleges is true...holy sh*t. Originally Posted by SecretE
Ain't that the truth. Since most if not all of the left on this board will not watch Fox News, the only place to get this information first hand without the filter of CNN and MSDNC, they will have no idea what we are talking about.
We learned through the Mueller report that indeed, Russia "attempted" to interfere in our election with fake news reports on the internet. They tried to get into voting machines but no such evidence was ever found that they changed a single vote.
What is being "alleged" now is that American's with the help of foreign actors, manipulated voting machines and did change votes from Trump to Biden.
I was stunned to hear some of the accusations about the "options" available on some of these machines, mostly those from Dominion. It was suggested that anybody with knowledge of the machine could actually rig it to give Biden 1.25 votes and Trump .75 vote. Why in the world would that ever be an option on the machine? Another allegation is that if the machine is programmed to recognize one candidate getting to far ahead of the other, the machine will make an automatic correction. Are you kidding me?
Then there is the question of the software used and how it has been used in other foreign elections like Venezuela for example. Say what? We are allowing software to be used in our elections that was not made by Americans? And what is this about sending ballots to Germany for counting?
This is just to much to believe which is why there must be a through investigation and like I said, if Sydney Powell can't prove what she said in a court of law, I would think her career as an attorney is over and she will be forever disgraced or maybe will become the biggest martyr the Republican party has ever seen and be the "go to" person from now on which will only further damage the Republican party.
One Republican talking head gave Trump some advice that he should stop what he is doing and concede as to not damage his chances for election in 2024. Could, would the Republican party be dumb enough to nominate Trump again? He served his purpose by getting textualists on the courts and pointing out some of the major issues we will face in the coming years but his time on the world state is over IMHO but I thank him for what he "clumsily" tried to do.
Yes Alice, I think we have officially entered the rabbit hole. Originally Posted by HedonistForever
The White House announced that there had been one million participants at this weekend’s MAGA March in Washington; the news media indicated this was ‘wildly exaggerated’, and that the number was actually in the tens of thousands. Seventy percent of Republicans are convinced that the presidential election was rigged, while a coalition of officials describes it as secure. What are we to believe?
A recent article—‘How Trump almost broke the bounds of reality’ (1)— uses language usually reserved for software to argue that ‘the disconnect from reality is a feature, not a bug’. As we ponder what led 70 million Americans to vote for re-electing the president, this is worth considering. Phrased another way, just as it is hard to argue that a movement embraced by almost half of the electorate is purely an aberration, it seems unlikely that its comfort with a worldview seemingly divorced from reality is an extreme manifestation; instead, it may be at the core of the movement. It made me wonder whether insights about the role of narrative and myth in personality and society might help explain the wide appeal of the current president, which is likely to persist in some form, even though its leader has been defeated at the polls.
The background of narrative psychology: The ‘storied nature of human conduct’, a term coined by the American psychologist Theodore Sarbin in the 1980s, emphasizes how humans come to understand their experiences by creating stories about them. This notion was expanded by his contemporary Jerome Bruner, who posited that two forms of thought—‘paradigmatic’ and ‘narrative’—are basic to how we see the world. In more contemporary thinking, Dan P. McAdams of Northwestern University has argued that the way we choose to put together our life stories is not just a reflection of personality, but in some sense is a part of personality, and can change what a person is like (2). This principle has been used in narrative therapy, which relies on a client rewriting their personal narrative as a path to healing.
Group narratives: An analogous type of reasoning has been used to argue the importance of narratives in holding groups or even societies together. Commonly held stories—sometimes labeled as mythologies—affirm membership in a group, describe its origins and how the world is understood, and justify a group’s practices. The leap of narratives from the individual, in the form of dreams or aspirations, to the group, has a long history. Sigmund Freud believed that a society’s myths were distorted primal wishes of the constituent individuals. Joseph Campbell suggested that myths are a public form of dreams, while dreams are private myths. A classic example was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I have a dream’, speech, in which an individual’s hopes and wishes were constructively used to help form an inspiring narrative for a group, forging an identity and a common purpose.
Applying the notion of group narratives to Trump supporters: As Julie Beck pointed out in an article exploring the role of narrative in shaping our lives (3), the dominant narrative of American life, going back ‘from the Puritans to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Oprah Winfrey’ has traditionally been one of optimism and redemption. It describes a path of ‘atonement, emancipation, recovery, self-fulfillment and upward social mobility’. One way to look at the rise of MAGA support is that many Americans no longer felt this was their story. The appeal is not based on policies, but rather rests on embracing another narrative or worldview, a formulation of freedom of the individual. Indeed it is so extreme that common rules of civility do not apply (1), and reality may be changed at will. It is but a small step to asserting—and believing—that we are rounding the corner on coronavirus infections, or that the election results were rigged. Thus notions that make little sense to persons with a traditional American narrative may seem reasonable to those who asserts the freedom of the individual to choose and promulgate any version of reality that suits them.
Another view of the rise of MAGA support is put forth by David Brooks (4). He emphasizes the spirit of Dionysus, the classical Greek god of wine, drama, and revelry, manifested in ecstatic experiences going back to the Hebrew King David as well as the early Christians. In his view, historically it has come out as a reaction ‘when elites try to quash the manners and impulses of the people’. Thus in the Middle Ages, the somber rigidity and hierarchical structure of the Church led to the spilling out of the revelry of carnivals. During these festivities, social rules were forgotten: ‘men dressed like women, the people could insult the king and bishops, drunkenness and ribaldry was prized over sober propriety’. Brooks argues that MAGA support is a Dionysian response to the growing inequality in our society, and can lead to populist revolts. If so, this too can be seen as the embracing of an alternative narrative, one which declares that in the face of rigidity and inequality about which one can do little, a viable response is to become irrational, mock social norms, and live in an imaginary world in which anything goes.
The formulations of the president's support as the embrace of extreme individual freedom or the expression of Dionysian impulses are just two of many ways of trying to understand its popularity. What they have in common is that a minority of people feel that the American story of redemption no longer applies and that alternative narratives better describe their place in the world. Seen in this light, arguments about a specific issue, for instance, whether wearing masks reduces the infection rate, are less likely to be resolved by only debating the concrete topic unless we also recognize that the debate is taking place between people with radically different views of how the world works, and their place in it. If we can first address this broader topic, and understand the forces that led to such different narratives, then we will be taking the first steps to come together.
The biggest thing I've learned from the election is the office of the president elect. I believe it was created to give the candidate more legitimacy. Not that there is any reason to believe he lacks legitimacy.
The office of the president elect sounds so official too. It makes it sound like there is no way to stop crazy uncle joe ''s inauguration short of a stroke.... what's that sound outside? Well it's a bunch of Trump supporters headed to the Supreme Court of the US. Wonder what's going to happen there?
To be continued... Originally Posted by goodman0422