Also, there was election fraud. There always is. Was it enough to turn the election? Who knows. To say that people shouldn’t be able to discuss it is mind-boggling to me. The only way we can have trust in our election process is if we can ask questions.
This is a wild misrepresentation of the opposing perspective. Nobody is arguing that we can't discuss election fraud.
The argument—which I'm sure you are actually aware—is that there needs to be some level of credibility to the idea that a) fraud occurred, and b) that it happened in meaningful quantities before we spend significant time, cost, and effort in investigating claims.
Simply having lost is not a credible claim to investigate widespread fraud. Finding one or two isolated cases in elections with margins of thousands or more votes is not a credible claim to investigate widespread fraud.
Further, fraud cannot simply be a claim that is made and then perpetually reinvestigated by decreasingly-reputable third parties until you are able to invalidate an election whose outcome you disagree with.
I think that's currently how the game is played. You can try to be better than that, but then the other side wins because they are still happy to play dirty.
Whatever gatekeeping rules you agree or don't with shouldn't matter. The gatekeeping is the problem. Being afraid of ideas and shutting down anyone who doesn't speak about approved topics is the issue not whether your gatekeeping rules have been met.
Zero people are being stopped from talking about election fraud. You and I are sitting here discussion election fraud right now. The only thing that has been stopped is investigations of claims of widespread fraud for which there is virtually zero evidence.
This is precisely the kind of wild misrepresentation that people—including myself—are tired of fighting. If you need to misrepresent your opponent in order to defeat them, maybe you should reflect: are we the baddies?
The comment 2 levels up by eggsmediumrare seems to be arguing exactly that.
It's funny that the party of "my body my choice" is so against people wanting a say over what goes into their bodies. I am personally vaccinated, but I think it's reasonable to let individuals make that choice.
Also regarding election fraud, when on election night you see charts like [1] with enormous one party spikes, it is entirely natural for people to be suspicious. Those people then asked for audits and were told to go to hell. If you want to undermine trust in the election system, that is exactly how to accomplish it.
None of this is "you aren't allowed to lie" it's "You aren't allowed to ask questions"
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/politics/us/2020/michigan-w...
Again, I don't believe there was widespread fraud but people who refuse to discuss what happened and refuse inspections sure aren't helping us becomong more confident.
Who was told to "go to hell"? There were plenty of recounts in all of the close states. Even the recent farcical commission checking fraud in Arizona didn't find anything.
As to the "spike" in that picture, a simple Google search of "Michigan spike voting" produces plenty of resources showing how the "spike" was not fraud. And if you're so worried about the spike in Biden votes later in the process, why are you not also worried about the spike in Trump votes at Nov 3 21:00 (on the graph on the right)?
You're being downvoted because these arguments are so bad as to almost clearly be in bad faith.
I'm being downvoted because some subset of people here view down vote as "I disagree". I used to be bothered by it. I don't think much about it anymore.
Edit:
I'm also fairly certain I've got some followers who take it upon themselves to go through my comment history and start downvoting other posts of mine just for good measure. You know, really sticking it to the man or whatever.
> It's funny that the party of "my body my choice" is so against people wanting a say over what goes into their bodies.
Unlike anti-abortion laws which force women to take pregnancies to term against their will, I am aware of zero proposed legislation that aims to force people into vaccination against their will. The one potential exception to this is for entry to public schooling, for which religious exemptions are (generally but not always) easy to come by.
If not bad faith or misrepresentation, then what?
> Also regarding election fraud, when on election night you see charts like [1] with enormous one party spikes, it is entirely natural for people to be suspicious. Those people then asked for audits and were told to go to hell.
It is reasonable for people to be suspicious. But far from being told to go to hell, people have been given repeated and convincing evidence for why these spikes occur (blue votes tending to cluster in high-density, high-population districts). There was even ample discussion in advance of the election about how, where, and when we expected these spikes to occur, why they're expected, and demonstrating their historical precedent.
Some people still demanded investigations of fraud. Most of those claims were dismissed through official processes due to lack of evidence. Being denied an investigation into claims that have been repeatedly debunked is not being told to go to hell. In fact some of those claims were investigated, but essentially zero systemic fraud has been found to date.
If not bad faith or misrepresentation, then what?
Just this week, Biden was talking about having people go door-to-door to push the unvaccinated to get the shot. Arizona publicly told him to get bent - they weren't going to do that in their state.
So, that's not "forcing" people, but it's too close for my taste. I'm going to presume that you wouldn't be fine with the state sending people door to door to push those who were pregnant to carry to term.
Why is there no uproar about this after decades of it...?
Can you acknowledge that—even taking this completely at face value—going door-to-door encouraging the use of a vaccine has absolutely nothing in common with legally forcing women to take unwanted pregnancies to term, regardless of which side of either policy you care to take?
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Trying to draw parallels between these two situations is absurd to the point of bad faith or willful misrepresentation.
> I'm going to presume that you wouldn't be fine with the state sending people door to door to push those who were pregnant to carry to term.
For reasons completely independent of "my body, my choice" which was the original goalpost.
This is an issue of public health for which we had to globally shut down international travel and social gatherings for a year and a half, and which had incalculable economic impact on billions. Can you also acknowledge that such consequences might perhaps clear a higher bar than that of a choice whose impact is fundamentally limited in scope?
Recognizing that difference in impact is why we've spent $20bn on vaccine development and who knows how much on the actual vaccine rollout.
"Fundamentally limited"? Given that a fetus is genetically human, and genetically different from the woman who carries it, it's clearly both human and not part of her body. There are plenty of completely reasonable people who see those two facts as putting abortion as being perilously close to murder, at best.
First, given that it's genetically a different individual, "my body, my choice" seems willfully blind to the rest of what's involved in abortion. Second, though, if you do regard abortion as murder, the death count per year is of the same order of magnitude as from Covid. So "fundamentally limited in scope" is assuming the answer to something that is, at best, very much still in debate.
Public health is public health, not purely your business.
> I am personally vaccinated,
Good on you!
> but I think it's reasonable to let individuals make that choice.
No, it's not and if you don't see why then you have a major problem with understanding modern medicine.