On audits, elections and public trust

[jpatterson]

Welp. Too bad Mayan Elephant rage quit the board because jpatterson doxxed him.

LOL, yeah that's what happened.

[Chap]

Thanks, Gad. I think it is sad, though, that ME has acquired such extreme and, I sincerely feel, irrational views. Perhaps he was just not very good at explaining what he really meant and his rationale for his opinions.

Perhaps.

But I also think it possible that he posted as he did not so much because he had a 'rationale' that he might potentially 'explain', but more because the material he habitually reads has trained him to a state of continual rage and frustration. That mental state makes him assume that anybody who questions his view must be utterly stupid, totally mendacious, or probably both.

By the way, will someone please tell me why he left the board? I have looked in Terrestrial, where the crisis appears to have broken, but it is not clear to me what happened up there. This is not so much a matter of regret for me as of curiosity.

[Gunnar]

Perhaps.

But I also think it possible that he posted as he did not so much because he had a 'rationale' that he might potentially 'explain', but more because the material he habitually reads has trained him to a state of continual rage and frustration.

Yeah. I think we both agree that there is way too much of that going around! There is no question in my mind that Trump and other authoritarian leaders and would be leaders like him are exacerbating that tendency for their own benefit and the detriment of almost everyone else. And the current pandemic probably doesn't help.

[Some Schmo]

I first "met" ME online about 16 years ago. I don't remember him being so flagrantly oblivious to his own posts. I remember him as a funny, intelligent guy.

But in this thread, he was just as guilty of everything about which he was complaining. I found it a bit surreal.

All his talk about "fault lines" and he had no idea that he was at fault with his own lines.

[Doctor Steuss]

[...]He made the news because he paid underlings hundreds of thousands of dollars to go out and find fake Biden votes. [...]

I'm not sure if this is the same incident, but the one you recounted was familiar enough that I figured I'd share: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 74590.html

[jpatterson]

By the way, will someone please tell me why he left the board? I have looked in Terrestrial, where the crisis appears to have broken, but it is not clear to me what happened up there. This is not so much a matter of regret for me as of curiosity.

Upon the request of Doc, I posted some Facebook direct messages between me and John Dehlin about a different subject that happened to mention his board handle. Not his real name (which I had blacked out).

He freaked out and claimed I was revealing private information about him (false) and demanded I take it down. When I asked for an explanation, he starting begging and said he would leave the board and delete his profile if I took the messages down.

Even though I still don't believe what I posted violated board rules, I decided to follow the spirit of the law after other posters (like Jersey Girl) recommended I do so, and I took them down.

ME then said something to the effect of "a deal is a deal" even though I had accepted no deal and told him explicitly I had no desire for him to leave the board. He left anyway, of his own volition.

[Chap]

Thanks, jpatterson!

I am not wholly surprised to find that ME seems to have acted in a way that (to the rest of us at least) does not make a lot of sense.

It's a pity he could not survive here for longer - but maybe he was beginning to perceive that all this insult-laden raging was hurting him more than it hurt anyone else, and was looking for an out.

[Gunnar]

It's a pity he could not survive here for longer - but maybe he was beginning to perceive that all this insult-laden raging was hurting him more than it hurt anyone else, and was looking for an out.

Whether he perceived that or not, I have little doubt that his insult-laden raging hurt him more than anyone else.

[honorentheos]

https://theconversation.com/conspiracy- ... 020-150844

The above is a little bit dated but may be of interest to those following the thread.

What exactly is political legitimacy and why is it important?

Let’s start with a definition of legitimacy. Legitimacy, in this context, refers to whether we should accept a decision, rule or institution.

It doesn’t require wholehearted agreement. For example, we might think a workplace decision is misguided, but decide that as an employee we should go along with it anyway.

Political legitimacy refers to the legitimacy of laws and authorities in the eyes of the people. It allows rules and public institutions to function effectively.

We will never all agree on exactly what the law should be — particularly in pluralistic societies. However, we can all agree that democratic decision-making is an appropriate way to make laws.

Of course, legitimacy has limits. If a democracy votes to enslave an ethnic minority, this wouldn’t be acceptable. Legitimacy only works when the outcomes are tolerable.

It goes from here to a discussion regarding forces threatening democratic political legitimacy from both the left and right in the US.

While the conversation here may or may not deserve that nomenclature, the meta-topic being discussed is one of the more pressing ones confronting us.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Speaking of which, honor:

https://www.newsweek.com/texas-ag-says- ... ng-1597909

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said former President Donald Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if his office had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

Mayan Elephant’s impetus for ridding our country of VBM becomes clearer in context of the broader discussion.

Harris County, home to the city of Houston, wanted to mail out applications for mail-in ballots to its approximately 2.4 million registered voters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the conservative Texas Supreme Court blocked the county from doing so after it faced litigation from Paxton's office.

"If we'd lost Harris County—Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them," Paxton told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon during the latter's War Room podcast on Friday.

So, it’s clear Republicans want to disenfranchise voters any way they can.

- Doc