A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Why can’t Republicans quit the provably false claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election?
It’s a bold-faced fabrication, easy to leave behind, and yet they refuse to let it go. I understand why the ex-president clings to it—everything about him demands that he be seen as a powerful awesome winner for all time. But what about people like Rep. Steve Scalise, who refused to concede the election results were valid just last weekend on ABC’s This Week, or Justice Clarence Thomas, who devoted a lone unhinged dissent to that possibility in a Pennsylvania elections case on Monday? CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is meeting—in person, in Florida—this week, and it is devoting seven different panels to stolen elections, with titles like “Other Culprits: Why Judges and Media Refused to Look at the Evidence” or “The Left Pulled Strings, Covered It Up, and Even Admits It” or “Protecting Elections Part VI: Failed States (PA, GA, NV, Oh My!)”
Why is the lie so sticky for so many? MSNBC’s Marc Ambinder reminds us of one big reason to persist in the fiction: The lie serves the party’s ultimate goal of suppressing the votes of likely Democrats. It’s clear that while even Trump’s own agencies determined that this election was “the most secure in history,” the record voter turnout in the midst of a pandemic means that the sustainability of the GOP as a political party now lies in constricting the franchise, including placing needless limits on mail-in voting. The laser focus of state-level Republican efforts right now is thus to limit voting rights. Ari Berman reported this week on a new analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, showing that in the two months that constitute 2021 so far, 253 bills to restrict voting access have been introduced in 43 states, with Georgia serving as ground zero for experiments in restricting voting by mail, Sunday voting, and tweaking the Georgia runoff rules. Despite the fact that three recounts turned up no evidence of fraud in Georgia, the big lie with its reliance on false claims of rampant voter fraud remains the best way to ensure that the kind of people who vote for Democrats will be ever more challenged in their efforts to vote going forward. As Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, explained earlier this week, “Many of these bills are reactionary to a three-month disinformation campaign that could have been prevented.”
But it doesn’t stop at justifying vote suppression. The big lie does more than just work to preserve the hope of minority rule in future election cycles. And it does more than just tether the GOP to Donald Trump, which is clearly the path most of them have already chosen. The big lie also serves to cast doubt about the legitimacy of the Biden presidency, and the incredibly popular initiatives that are quickly being rolled out. So in addition to objecting to much-needed COVID-19 relief and other desperately needed measures, Republicans pressing the big lie serve to try to convince voters that the man who is currently governing in the public interest is a usurper who is only in office because of stolen votes. The “crime,” in this telling, is ongoing. The best way to persuade voters that they don’t want economic and lifesaving health care relief most of them really need is to cast doubt on the person who is offering it to them. As long as Biden’s efforts to correct for Trump’s negligence and mishandling of the various crises succeed, “stop the steal” will continue to be the deflection and distraction of choice.
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/republicans-cpac-stolen-el
ection-lie.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Why can’t Republicans quit the provably false claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election?
Oh oh, pick me pick me!
T
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Quote:The big lie, then, is not just nomenclature of those hellbent on restricting who can vote in the midterms and 2024. And it’s not just the language of the nihilism and denialism of those who want Joe Biden to fail and must feed the idea of his illegitimacy in order to do that. The big lie isn’t just aimed at election reform or undermining Democrats. It’s also aimed at elections themselves. It suggests, as do all seven of those CPAC panels, not just that people of color and poor people and young people in Detroit and Philadelphia cannot cast valid ballots, but also that elections themselves are “rigged” and “fixed” and that the courts and the media and state elections officials are all in on the tyranny. The endpoint, therefore, won’t simply lie in making it more difficult to vote, and more challenging to govern. The endgame lies in convincing voters that democracy itself is pointless. The big lie isn’t just an attempt to advantage Donald Trump in 2024 or Republican rule in the midterms. It’s an attempt to seed and nurture the forces of tyranny and autocracy, in precisely the fashion most big lies are intended.
Originally posted by THG:
Oh oh, pick me pick me!
T
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-15/the-u-s-can-lear
n-about-trump-s-big-lie-from-weimar-germany-and-ancient-rome
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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UNLIKE THE PARA ABOVE, THIS IS FROM THE BLOOMBERG LINK.
Quote:
For Hitler and the Nazis the Big Lie was the “stab-in-the-back-myth.” It said that Imperial Germany was never defeated in World War I, and that it collapsed, surrendered and suffered the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty only because Jews and socialists at home betrayed their country. These domestic traitors were henceforth the new enemies. They had to be eliminated to Make Germany Great Again.Trump’sHillary's Big Lie is that the 2016 November election was stolen fromhim — that he, not Joe Biden,her, that she- not Domald Trump-iswas the rightful president forthe nextfour years. All Americans who see it differently, including judges and civil servants who resistedTrump’sHillary's entreaties to reject the vote tallies, are what the socialists and Jews were to the Nazis:domestic enemies.Russian agents.
Now, that para is what I call an inversion of reality. It was HILLARY who started the "stolen election" accusation. It accuses Trump of doing what Hillary, the DNC, and Biden* have done, and are continuing to do: As far as I can tell, it is the DEMS who've introduced the phrase "domestic terrorism" to describe their political rivals, and worse than that, it looks like they (like Hitler) are planning on passing and enacting a law to make that concept legally-enforceable.
Quote:I think it takes more than one "big lie" to undo a nation, just like it took more than one "big lie" in Germany. The one Big Thing that led Germany on the path of Nazism was hyperinflation and joblessness. People were starving in the streets, and society was racked with misery and fear.
For a republic, a Big Lie is less like an exploding bomb and more like a corrosive acid. It works slowly. Hitler failed in his attempted coup, the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, and even spent time in prison. He then kept failing for several more years. Incidentally, the Nazis never won more than 37.3% in an election. But Hitler nonetheless seized power in 1933.
If it took 14 years for the Weimar Republic to crumble, the terminal decline of the Roman Republic lasted a century. One analog between it and today’s America is an unhealthy rise in inequality, as rich Romans increasingly bought up the small farms of Italy and turned their former owners into plebeians in the slums of Rome. The U.S. equivalent is what Trump has called “American carnage.”
With this inequality came increasingly brazen corruption by the newly super-rich in Rome’s senate, assemblies and courts. This led to the rise of populism as a political style, as “populares” appealed directly to the mob to gain power and conservative “optimates” resisted them. Like many populists today, the populares — from the Gracchi brothers to Julius Caesar — were usually themselves members of the patrician upper class, but cynically exploited anti-elitism to amass power.
Then as now, taboos kept being broken. Political violence became commonplace in the Roman Forum and backstreets. And starting with Marius and Sulla, legions started being loyal to their commanders or charismatic individuals rather than the republic. An anxiety that this could also happen in Trump’s America recently motivated all ten living defense secretaries to issue a public warning against deploying the military in election disputes.
Once broken, taboos are hard to unbreak. And their damage is cumulative. Lies go unpunished, violence leaches from words into deeds, loyalties shift from country to parties or individuals. Gradually, the republic — its constitution, precedents and norms — becomes hollow. Citizens stop believing in it.
There are also a number of Big Lies underpinning America's demise, but the thing that will fell the USA will be finacial collapse.
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Pity would be no
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Because of SECOND's habit of quoting articles without using the quote function, it's impossible to tell where an article ends and where SECOND's opinion begins. Maybe he's trying to "borrow" credibility by framing his opinion as someone else's?
So, just to be clear:
Quote:is NOT part of the Bloomberg opinion-piece.
The big lie, then, is not just nomenclature of those hellbent on restricting who can vote in the midterms and 2024. And it’s not just the language of the nihilism and denialism of those who want Joe Biden to fail and must feed the idea of his illegitimacy in order to do that. The big lie isn’t just aimed at election reform or undermining Democrats. It’s also aimed at elections themselves. It suggests, as do all seven of those CPAC panels, not just that people of color and poor people and young people in Detroit and Philadelphia cannot cast valid ballots, but also that elections themselves are “rigged” and “fixed” and that the courts and the media and state elections officials are all in on the tyranny. The endpoint, therefore, won’t simply lie in making it more difficult to vote, and more challenging to govern. The endgame lies in convincing voters that democracy itself is pointless. The big lie isn’t just an attempt to advantage Donald Trump in 2024 or Republican rule in the midterms. It’s an attempt to seed and nurture the forces of tyranny and autocracy, in precisely the fashion most big lies are intended.
I don't know where SECOND got it from, but it's not from that link.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
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Quote:It is https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/republicans-cpac-stolen-el
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I don't know where SECOND got it from, but it's not from that link.
ection-lie.html
But I've read enough your writing to know that you will know nothing even after you read it. Signym, 1kiki, and 6ix have such tiny real life problems, but they have even smaller ability to solve the problems, such that your lives are plagued with difficulties that capable people quickly solve or adjust to.
Black experts were often those who most forcefully rejected the argument that Trump’s appeal to voters was primarily based on feelings of “economic anxiety” or that Trump’s ideas should be taken “seriously but not literally.”
Two Black political experts stand out in particular. The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer argued that many of Trump’s supporters backed him because of his harshness toward conservatives’ perceived enemies (“The Cruelty Is the Point,” a Serwer piece was headlined.). And Ta-Nehisi Coates, then at The Atlantic, dubbed Trump “The First White President,” arguing that his rise was best understood as a backlash to Obama. Those pieces were written early in Trump’s presidency but are still memorable because they ended up accurately capturing some of the main themes of his tenure in office.
Nine lessons I learned about political reporting while covering Trump
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nine-lessons-i-learned-about-poli
tical-reporting-while-covering-trump/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Speculate all you want about my "problems" SECONDRATE, they're nothing compared to your emotional ones.
:-)
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
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Quote:
SIGNY: I think it takes more than one "big lie" to undo a nation, just like it took more than one "big lie" in Germany. The one Big Thing that led Germany on the path of Nazism was hyperinflation and joblessness. People were starving in the streets, and society was racked with misery and fear.
There are also a number of Big Lies underpinning America's demise, but the thing that will fell the USA will be finacial collapse.
The financial collapse following the ongoing economic collapse 2000 to 20??
No comment, SECOND?
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
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SECOND linked Bloomberg to a plagiarized Slate, then trolled 3 posters for having a difference of opinion from Slate.
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Quote:This quote from a news article is a perfectly accurate representation of Echelon's poll results.
Poll: Democrat Voters’ Number One ‘Concern’ Is Trump Supporters
The Democratic Party and the leftist media has brainwashed liberals into purely caring about identity politics over substantive issues
A poll conducted by Echelon has found that while Republican voters are concerned with issues such as illegal immigration, lack of police resources, and high taxes, Democrat voters’ top concerns are supporters of President Trump, racism, and discrimination against LGBTQ people.
Echelon poll link below
https://twitter.com/echeloninsights/status/1364612121892388865
news article that led me to research the actual poll below
https://summit.news/2021/02/26/poll-democrat-voters-number-one-concern
-is-trump-supporters/
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