They call themselves Christians but really it's a degenerate form of Christianity. — Wayfarer

Maybe? Watch for generalization across conspiracy theorists. And the "no true Christian" thing. Well, the QAnon'ers are goners anyway.

, the US conspiracy theorists are largely Christians, though (but vice versa surely not all Christians are conspiracy theorists).
Maybe a variation of 's Voltaire quote could be something like ...
"If you've come to believe enough absurdities, then what's one more?"
Might be evident to some extent:

A particular strength of our findings is that we assessed the interactions of a converging set of cognitive biases in a single theoretical model that explained several types of supernatural beliefs — Cognitive biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in life’s purpose (2013)

Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional. The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories. — Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds (2014)

The results showed that supernatural beliefs correlated with all variables that were included, namely, with low systemizing, poor intuitive physics skills, poor mechanical ability, poor mental rotation, low school grades in mathematics and physics, poor common knowledge about physical and biological phenomena, intuitive and analytical thinking styles, and in particular, with assigning mentality to non-mental phenomena. — Does Poor Understanding of Physical World Predict Religious and Paranormal Beliefs? (2016)

more radical participants displayed less insight into the correctness of their choices and reduced updating of their confidence when presented with post-decision evidence
[...]
our findings highlight a generic resistance to recognizing and revising incorrect beliefs as a potential driver of radicalization — Metacognitive Failure as a Feature of Those Holding Radical Beliefs (2018)

A first-hand account, which the author then relates to the US:

Fascism is Not an Idea to Be Debated, It’s a Set of Actions to Fight (by Aleksandar Hemon on Literary Hub; Nov 1, 2018)

I'm guessing Hemon has read Umberto Eco.

Those who don't learn mistakes from the past are doomed to repeat them — paraphrasing Santayana

Anyone know how much truth there is to this stuff?

• Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General (The New York Times; Jan 22, 2021)
• New York Times: Trump and DOJ attorney had plan to replace his acting AG and undo Georgia election result (Washington's Top News; Jan 22, 2021)

The Georgia runoffs later seemed to confirm the election results.

, I can heartily recommend the Bernie meme inauguration threads out there for a good laugh.

Haven't read the two articles yet, just glossed over a few paragraphs.

Every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult. [...] Apart from prohibiting interference with the freedom of others, liberalism does not have any particular positive doctrines about how people are to conduct their lives or what personal choices they are to make. — The Liberalism of Fear by Judith N Shklar

Just FYI, there is some history to this take on liberalism/liberty/freedom. Elements can be found in the Cortes of León (1188), the Codex Holmiensis (1241), ..., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), this one in particular (which Thomas Jefferson aided in putting together):

Article IV – Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law. — Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789

The French Revolution was nasty business, but they did seem to flesh some things out well for the future — only equal freedom in principle limits individual freedom.

Embedding morals in political codes doesn't seem easy, but restricting freedom to non-cruelty is certainly intuitive. Looking forward to actually reading the articles. (y) :)

, dang, I'll have to watch the movie again, s'been a while. :)

Seesaws Built On U.S. Border Wall Win Prestigious Design Prize (NPR; Jan 19, 2021)

Seems kind of symbolic.

Extremists sometimes quote each other interspersed among others:

Yes, It Was a Stolen Election (John Perazzo; Frontpagemag; Dec 23, 2020)

(The Federalist, Breitbart, The Epoch Times, Washington Examiner, The Daily Wire, Project Veritas, ...)

Questionable Source
Factual Reporting: Low
Extreme Right, Propaganda, Conspiracy, Anti-Muslim — Media Bias Fact Check: Frontpage Magazine

Free expression with accountability of some sort seems like a good idea.
There are people out there only getting their news from such publications, e.g. having been told everything else is ungodly deception and lies, and when that turns to action, problems happen.
If I told my hopeless colleague that drinking a liter of Vodka + bleach would take care of their headache, then I might just be right, and I'd definitely be immoral and have committed a crime.

The lighter side of the darker side :D

Don't know how representative this is ...

The Trump Mob In Their Own Words (5m:55s; The Bulwark; Jan 13, 2021)

... but those people are reciting the conspiracy theories.

Parler refugees — Banno

They also have other echo chambers and propaganda sites, like Gab (gab·com) and Turning Point USA (tpusa·com).
I'm sure their user-bases have gone up recently.
I think the former is hosted by Azure. The latter is transparently McCarthyism.
Anyway, seems likely at the moment that they'll find other (Presidential) candidates down the line.

, Google and Apple stopped offering the Parler app in their app stores, Amazon took Parler offline (this is basically where Parler lived). Without the host (Amazon), there's no Parler. The app could be made available outside Google and Apple, and a web-based frontend might still access the Amazon backend hosting (much like Facebook or The Philosophy Forum, for example). Anyway, those companies are capitalist.

Would this count as a high crime/misdemeanor, going by the definition (per ), or is that not the spirit of the law?

Trump has stated multiple times that he lost the election due to fraud, a punishable crime.
Trump has not prosecuted anyone for that.
Or established that to be the case, which would be a prerequisite for prosecution.
Trump has a legal apparatus at his fingertips and resources to thoroughly investigate.

I guess simply lying may not be a high crime/misdemeanor.

@Rafaella Leon, here's roughly what I'd (ask you to) do, to start making a case:

^{Draw up timelines for each relevant locale, places where votes were counted, that stuff.
Mark all relevant events on them, referring to evidence (the more evidence the better, the less the worse).
Stack the timelines, especially if something is relevant across locales.
Mark open ends, e.g. unknown origins of material evidence, whatever.
Draw up a chart of alleged actors, including unknowns.
Connect actors that (must have) cooperated or conspired together, include their (corroborated) statements.
Add (corroborated) statements of others, e.g. photographers, witnesses, and cross-reference timelines/evidence.
Determine alternate scenarios that might explain the evidence (the more weaker explanations the better).}

So, a technical thing, like forensics, reconstruction.
The allegations are fairly serious, I'd expect something fairly good to support them.

I wonder, though, why wouldn't the President have gotten someone to do that?
Sure would be better than some scattered unsourced photos of stacks of paper with some arrows and circles on them and such, or just saying so.

@Brett, FYI, I wanted to see for myself, due to rumors on the street and FBI warnings across most US states. The backend hosts apparently shut Parler down because of messages like those posted, lots of them. Make of it what you will. :shrug:
Personally, I'd be somewhat reluctant to just remove/ban it all, but that may just be me; other platforms do have means to force-tag posts, make it a bit slower to get to offensive posts, etc.

As far as I can tell (I know some of those guys), there's a McCarthyist type fear-dread of their faith/culture going away, which easily turns to hate. Things like "commies" "socialism" "taxes" "Marxists" "leftard" "big government" "globalism" are special loaded/pejorative/trigger words here. So, anyway, this contributes to far-right moves for (some) Christians. Not that there are that many communists in the US as far as I know (Sanders certainly isn't one) — unless you ask those guys. Trump has become / is their guy (to an extent).

_{Holy Hate: The Far Right’s Radicalization of Religion (Southern Poverty Law Center; Feb 10, 2018)
The Rapture and the Real World: Mike Pompeo Blends Beliefs and Policy (The New York Times; Mar 30, 2019)
Christian Nationalists Aim to Dismantle this Core Freedom (Religion Dispatches; Jan 15, 2020)
Pompeo claims private property and religious freedom are 'foremost' human rights (The Guardian; Jul 16, 2020)}

I was trying to get an impression of what was going on at Parler (now offline) ...

Parler is filled with coffee shop talk for Nazis (Nov 18, 2020) ugh :/

Apparently, someone grabbed terabytes of Parler posts, though I'm not sure if it's publicly available.
Head over to donk_enby's twitter feed for details.
I imagine it's just the usual rambling and raving littered with the usual keywords.





The tone of Trump and crowd have an undercurrent of certain sub-cultures, where loyalty trumps truth (pun intended), where alignment outweighs doing the right thing - a divisive or alienating Us-versus-Them sentiment.
"Us" have zeal, guns, leadership, a tint of fear hate paranoia, and sufficient resources to both pollute the general public, reinforce internal pseudo-trust, and further sweep up those disposed to fringe.
Not pretty.

Maybe the Trumpers are recruiting more folk?

Trump Supporters Invite BlackLivesMatter Protesters on Stage at MOAR Rally (6m:44s youtube)

I am talking about the “fake news” as a pretext for censorship — NOS4A2

• Veracity of statements by Donald Trump
• List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump
• AP FACT CHECK: Trump distorts record on National Guard in DC

I'm sure the lists are incomplete. :D When serial liars become the go-to authority for a lot of people with zeal and guns, then it could well make sense for privately owned platforms to kick them off.

Trump’s Legacy: Voters Who Reject Democracy and Any Politics but Their Own — Wayfarer

(y)

I guess there are different ways to protest...

• Baton Rouge killing: Black Lives Matter protest photo hailed as 'legendary' (Jul 2016)
• Protests in Minneapolis and across the US following the death of George Floyd (May 2020)
• 'I am notoriously naked': Portland protester dubbed 'Naked Athena' is revealed as a sex worker in her 30s who says her face-off with police was unplanned (Jul 2020) :D
• The Story Behind Banksy (Feb 2013)
• Flower Power (photograph) (Oct 1967)

As far as I can tell, the 1960s movement did have impact throughout the West, for better or worse.
This is different:

• Holy Hate: The Far Right’s Radicalization of Religion (Feb 2018)
• Some of the Most Visible Christians in America Are Failing the Coronavirus Test (Apr 2020)

With a large growth in readily available (dis-mis-mal-)information, demagoguery, and confirmation bias, the stage is set.
I (personally) tend to run with free expression - combat crap with more free speech.
The dark side thereof is now on display.
By the way, has Pompeo made any statements or something? (haven't seen anything myself)

I guess people know, just thought Gravel Institute made a fair point (apologies in advance for the spamminess):

, congratz Georgia et al (y)

:D

Apparently some folk are betting and biting nails over this:

Election Needles: Georgia Senate Runoffs (The New York Times)

Republicans have taken a narrow lead in the tabulated vote, but the Democrats are clear favorites in both races. The overwhelming majority of remaining votes are in the Atlanta metro area, and while the race remains competitive, there's no indication that the Republicans are poised to outperform expectations. The big Democratic vote left: the DeKalb County early vote. We expect these 170,000 votes to break for Ossoff by an 85-15 margin.

(Will the conspiracy theorists also see faces in the clouds here...?)

Would this be applicable here?
§ 21-2-604. Criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; penalties :: 2016 Georgia Code

Or, I guess Trump could try suing Raffensperger for recording the call? :D

Dang, lawyering must be good business these days.

, the block-verse model doesn't specify the indexical here-now, you have to plug it in.
Call it a feature or incomplete if you like; the model has use.
(e.g. Time and such)

Someone should set up some ghosts for those QAnon people to chase. :D
The elusive "Anti-QAnon organizations" that perform magical rituals to deprive them of their souls, and eat their children with a good Chianti, ...
Actually, it seems they're already chasing their own ghosts.

So, what's up in Trump-verse these days?

:D

L. Lin Wood ← cracked pot

the whole show was to (1) keep him the centre of attention, as always, and (2) to wreak vengeance on Americans for not voting for him and (3) possibly also exploring whether causing a shutdown would enable him to declare martial law and stay in office — Wayfarer

Bad, sure, but that bad? :o

Anyway, thought you might enjoy these:

I might just skip past the misleading verbiage and say that seeing is interacting. And, as parts of the world, we interact as (parts of) the world is. Does that work?

Some chit-chat found elsewhere ...

Mark my words. Trump is going to try to restart real estate project discussions in Russia after he leaves office, which will go a long way to explain why he was so averse to criticizing Russia during his presidency, even taking the word of Putin over the unified assessment of America's intelligence services regarding the Russia attack on our election, and explaining why he is now dismissing the present Russia cyberattack. He doesn't want to offend the potential spigot of money from Russia. — RM

Without the legal support of the DOJ and presidential immunity he may defect, but if he goes to Russia, he’s never coming back. Either US intelligence will kill him before he can divulge state secrets, or the Russians will find him a cozy place to dictate all the secrets. This because on top of being weak, he lacks moral fortitude and character. — JS

I'm not sure Russia will give a damn about him once he loses power. They might let him live next to Edward Snowden to pump him for information when it's convenient for them. But that might be all he's worth at this point. — RS

Ex-presidents are still given security briefings. Russia could exploit that. — RM

Keep in mind most of his real estate dealings with Russians aren’t in Russia. They are in New York, Florida, Kazakhstan etc. “Trump Moscow” is just going to be the least secret, but we already know he sold a lot of Trump Tower condos to Russian oligarchs, got a bonus $50 million flipping a Florida estate to one, etc. — MG

A tad bit speculative, but we'll see if RM's prediction holds I guess.
Either way, potential security/political interests inside the borders of Russia probably shouldn't count themselves safe.

, I wasted time looking at that data from The New York Times.
_{(FYI, the data they have is in json format, and was used for a kind of general running overview during the counting. I think other news also relied on it, while America tensely watched, with much nail-biting it seems.)}

Sure, there are some bumps and jumps here and there in the data. And those particular ones the conspiracy theorists zoomed in on, have more Biden counts than Trump counts. It's not that the Trump curve doesn't jump, but it jumps less than the Biden curve. By itself, this stuff doesn't prove anything, could be whatever.
_{(If anyone also wants to waste time, I can point them at the data, show how to extract things into tabular format, and load it up in whatever spreadsheet software. Getting fancy, load it up in, say, SageMath, Jupyter, Scilab, which is free software. Mathematica and Maple are commercial.)}

So, they needed to correlate the exact timing with something going on at the places where the votes were counted. Hence that footage where they'd grabbed frames, added red arrows and circles, and pointed out alleged crimes/criminals. That's what Brian Cohen commented on, in part anyway.

Sometime, they went on to point fingers at those vote-machines. "The plot thickens." Though it seems the company then warned Powell et al of lawsuits.

Ridiculous and bizarrely entertaining. :)

But what's of greater concern is there are people who believe that the unsupported allegations made in these legal actions are true and that their rejection by the courts is just another part of the "steal." — Ciceronianus the White

And some of them have guns. And Pompeo has railed China-fear-hate up among some, too. And socialism-phobia. "Crazies" to quote the late McCain?

In short...

Trump goes off the deep end with UNHINGED new conspiracy theory
Brian Tyler Cohen; 8m:14s youtube; Dec 13, 2020

Misc comments...

If he didn’t trust the machines why is he so convinced he won. — Kym Higginbottom

He only claims fraud in the states he lost. He is the fraud he speaks of. Guys a con man. — Anita Luca

What's really scary is that a lot of people believe every word he says. — Kerry Ellison

The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy
Hahl, Kim, Sivan; American Sociological Review; Jan 10, 2018

At it again...

Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud 'more than sufficient' to swing victory to Trump
Andrew Mark Miller
Washington Examiner
Dec 2020

I take the article itself with a grain of salt.
Haven't read the report (not yet anyway), might have to be taken with a grain of salt as well.
Either way, it seems clear that those people had decided "Trump won" and "fraud" before most of this (alleged) evidence was dug up.

, true and false are properties of propositions (or statements).
And claims about gods are such propositions.
They're not replaced, they're true or false.

we cannot just suppose that people were committing crimes without any evidence that crimes were committed — Metaphysician Undercover

That's kind of what I'm thinking as well. Guilty until proven innocent?

Someone had grabbed some footage, taken out some frames, added red arrows and circles, and added their comments, pointing out alleged criminals and "suspect" or "anomalous" behavior. As far as I can tell, none of the vote-handlers have been taken in and questioned. Wouldn't they at the very least be "persons of interest" or something? The allegations are kind of serious. By the way, the red arrows and circles looks like something you might find on UFO conspiracy theory sites. I don't think the footage counts as material evidence of a crime really; it's too pareidolic, too many different hypothetical narratives could be put on top of it; nah, they were likely just doing their jobs, with America tensely waiting.

The law needs material evidence, yes? Either there is none, or someone is withholding something. These lawsuits and theories go back, just about to when the counts had come in (that's not counting Trump's 2016 postulates of course).

• Suppose there isn't really much, no material evidence, which would explain the lack thus far.
Then what's the reason for the flurry of lawsuits? What's made Powell et al (apparently) believe Trump won?

• Suppose someone is withholding material evidence.
Then why hasn't it been provided, ending the waste of time/resources, getting conspirators questioned (and prosecuted), perhaps securing Trump a 2^nd term (which presumably is the goal)?

What is it that everyone supposedly is missing here...?

Isn't it odd, though, that some folk, smart and resourceful enough, would just run with Trump's word?
It's not like he has a record of relaying facts.
More like the opposite, we're talking alternative facts, post-truth'ery, bullshitting, exaggerating/downplaying/misdirecting opportunistically, incompetence, propagating/condoning conspiracy theories, sort of alarmist, exploiting the backfire effect, ...
Anyway, those folk apparently see "critical statistical anomalies" in data from New York Times (Edison and Scytl), here in processed json format (not the original source data): Pennsylvania, Wisconsin
(It's not difficult to parse out and plot, by the way; I can give pointers if anyone is interested.)
Other analyses: Security Debrief, Charleen Adams
Sample conversations:
Fan: "So is it over? Shit will start to go crazy?"
Conspiracy theorist: "it looks like we're approaching some kind of critical mass."
Sorry folks, the case here is just far too weak. :shrug:

Edit: Sorry, that was for and others in that line of chit-chat.

, they express "absolute certainty" that they have a rock-solid case with the Supreme Court.
Faulty proprietary algorithms in those machines, and "statistical anomalies", they boldly claim.
Actually, their "certainty" that Trump won has been around since he lost.
I wouldn't say these particular people are stupid, but they sure as heck are personally invested.

Well, those folk over there are now yelling "Trump won! 4 more years!" again.

(I occasionally chat with one or two of them; they are ... obsessed)

Hmm.

Demystifying U.S. Covid-19 death counts (Tam Hunt; Dec 3, 2020)

Death toll significantly overestimated...?
Either way, looks like an attempt at downplay.