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We've spent a couple years now (right?) tacitly approving rioting as an acceptable response to feeling disenfranchised. Now we're surprised when the same medici

• sjg007 6y ago
  The best thing is for republicans to admit that they are lying about election fraud.
  • aksss 6y ago
    I'm not convinced about a critical amount of 'fraud' in the election, but I think you're off your rocker if you think the US election system generally has sufficient controls in place not to be easily abused. This year saw even more loosening of the control structure because of knee-jerk reactions to perceived pandemic limitations (warranted or not, I don't care). I also don't care what your politics are or which team you root for, but from a systems perspective there are very obvious control deficiencies in how elections are carried out in this country. Claims of fraud would be far, far, far easier to dismiss if a better control structure was in place. Maybe a national certification (a la NIST) that would be optional for states to adopt, but would at least would provide a framework for transparent state and local alignment (or misalignment) with best practice.
    • sjg007 6y ago
      Nonsense. Go work a polling place or for the Secretary of State for any State and come back here if you still believe that.
      • aksss 6y ago
        Well, I have, and it's not nonsense IME. Our state currently has a candidate under felony investigation for election fraud. We have multiple counties whose decisions are made by razor-thin margins. I mean, to repeat someone else (I don't even remember who) politics is one of the few truly zero-sum games out there, with much to lose. To think that humans (particularly politicians) are above pushing the envelope to the point of breakage in such circumstances strains credibility. Your easy dismissal may strike some as being a bit naïve. If you're assuming all the bad ones get caught, I have a drug war to sell you.
        • kmbfjr 6y ago
          You are using one local example to bolster claims of fraud across at least four states, if not the entire nation. Trump lost by what, 8 million votes? Does dirty shit happen? Absolutely. Was it in this election? Yep. Was it enough to sway the outcome? No freaking way.
          • throwaway33292 6y ago
            I posted in a sibling thread but there is evidence that it was enough to sway the election. Check out the Navarro Report, for instance, which provides several dimensions of evidence for this claim. The cheating only really needs to occur in a handful of key urban counties to sway a national election, so it doesn’t actually need to be wide spread.
          • aksss 6y ago
            Context is important - I was responding to someone asking for local experience(“go work at a polling place”). But examples seem all too easy to find. A better response is to consider what concessions in the control structure can be made to restore confidence. You may have faith that everything is okay, but that does little to satisfy those with experience of fraud or hearing stories of fraud. One can see a local example and easily (and not irrationally) imagine that the systems work similarly in the neighboring city, county, or state. Whether your intention or not, it’s easy for your attitude to come across as accepting of deficiency - and an endorsement that may run out when the tables turn (and in American politics, they always do). The unending cycle of dismissal by each side to the other’s sincerely held concerns is getting us nowhere but a bad place.
  • foolinaround 6y ago
    how about following Ted Cruz's request, even if it is an academic excercise at this point, that will assuage the hot tempers on both sides?
• ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  > We've spent a couple years now (right?) tacitly approving rioting as an acceptable response to feeling disenfranchised. We have? You mean the police response, thousands of arrests, riot gear, national guard deployments across the US was "tacitly approving rioting?"
  • aksss 6y ago
    I think so, yes. The stand down orders given to police departments in major metro areas, for example. The discretionary lack of prosecution for many of those arrested. The allowance for protestors and counter-protestors fighting to become spectacle/sport. The national media coverage I watched and listened to was largely sympathetic to the idea that understanding was needed in the face of the burning and looting rather than reactionary exercise of control to enforce order.
    • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      You're just saying things but they aren't always true. Your argument relies on this bending of the truth. Here's an example of protestors still being prosecuted: https://triblive.com/local/allegheny-co-das-office-refiles-charges-against-pittsburgh-protesters/ https://triblive.com/local/allegheny-co-das-office-refiles-c... “Recently, at the direction of Mayor [Bill] Peduto, the Pittsburgh Police presented to my office tangible evidence for the refiling of these failure-to-disperse charges in the form of body camera footage, as well as surveillance video and more comprehensive investigations,” Zappala said in a statement on Friday. “The demonstrative evidence shows that the individuals being charged were repetitively directed by the police and given ample opportunity to disperse, often over an extended period, and failed to heed these notices.” Again, I disagree. There is no tacit acceptance. That is just false.
      • aksss 6y ago
        Portland: https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/10/multnomah-county-da-declines-to-prosecute-70-of-portland-protest-cases.html https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/10/multnomah-county-da-... Philly: https://www.radio.com/kywnewsradio/articles/news/charges-against-those-arrested-during-unrest-to-be-reviewed https://www.radio.com/kywnewsradio/articles/news/charges-aga... Just google the term by each major city or location where buildings were lit up. I’m certainly not claiming that prosecutions didn’t happen, but when a city declines to prosecute a great many arrests and national organizations are paying bail money for those arrested, along with police stand down orders, it sends a message.
• ncann 6y ago
  > The lesson here is to condemn all rioting, set expectations that are equally applied to all segments of society. I can't agree with this more. Through this event and what happened last year I can see how incredibly bias the media is when portraying protests and riots. During BLM, there's barely any coverage on the looting and destruction caused by "protesters" on mainstream media. There was a very clear attempt to downplay the severity of these actions.
  • chii 6y ago
    Yep, the BLM rioting and looting was not covered well by the leftwing media, in the same way that the right wing media covers only the sections/events they want to display to make their point and distort their truths. Both sides is guilty of such.
  • minikites 6y ago
    Weird how it's only looting when black people do it, whereas when white people occupy and steal from a government building they're just voicing their displeasure with government. If you don't see the incredibly stark contrast in how the authorities handled and prepared for the Capitol insurrection (yes, the insurrection plans were public and known weeks in advance) compared to BLM protests, I don't understand how there can even be a debate about this because we are clearly operating in two different realities.
    • whoooooo123 6y ago
      Have you heard about the federal courthouse in Portland that "protestors" laid violent siege to for weeks? If not ask yourself why you don't know.
      • minikites 6y ago
        https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/portland-protests-fact-check.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/portland-protests-fact... >Several fires have been set near the courthouse, which federal officials have said could spread to the building and harm the agents inside. If you think this is on the same level as the mob of violent insurrectionists who invaded (and planned to take hostages) inside the highest legislature in the land simply because "their guy" didn't win the election, I don't think there is anything I can tell you that would convince you otherwise. The Portland protestors were both less violent and actually had legitimate grievances (decades of police brutality and state violence against people of color).
• noahtallen 6y ago
  While I agree that all protests and riots are a response to feeling disenfranchised or angry about a situation, it’s important to think of the cause in each case. For BLM protests, the cause is partly real police violence that lots of people have experienced. Lots of people have this firsthand, negative experience with the police, and are frustrated that they cannot feel safe in the hands of people meant to protect them. For the voter fraud protests, the cause is a propaganda and disinformation campaign. For months and even years, Trump has been saying that things are stollen from him, that the election would be stolen from him, etc. He really incensed this narrative of voter fraud with a lot of lies. The cause is not people’s firsthand experience of voter fraud: republicans were not turned away from the polls nor were their votes discarded. It’s that they were told by Trump and other republicans that if they loose elections, then it must be fraud. The response, then, is totally different. In the one case, addressing the cause means to reform the police. In the other case, addressing the cause means... what? I would say it is addressing the propaganda campaign. This is what news orgs and social media sites have tried to do. No matter how secure this election was, or how many policies got implemented, the election fraud claim would persist because the cause is propaganda, not evidence. People (even republicans) who know way more elections than I do say that this election was one of the most secure ever. The few instances of fraud that occur — and always occur in events of this scale — are hardly proof of a sinister campaign. While I’ll agree to make voting as secure as possible (I’d support voter ID if it didn’t take 5 hours at the DMV just to be eligible to vote), that’s not really the narrative voter fraud protests are about. That’s why we push back when people try to say that the election was fraudulent: these folks are really trying to say that they should have won. They are not (primarily) trying to say that we should fix the handful of fraud instances that happened even though it wouldn’t change the result. If I said “you’re right to be angry here,” I would be heard as saying, “you actually should have won.” Therefore, I must be honest and say “you’re wrong to be angry about this. The evidence of fraud will not address your anger about this loss.” And let me be clear: I support trump folks right to protest because of their anger over loosing. But I cannot agree that it ought to be addressed as they say it should be.