Paying Attention

[Ondrej]

In one of our other conversations I mentioned something like "you are not paying attention". However, I realize, given one's natural limitations, it is impossible to pay attention to everything. Obviously, one cannot pay attention to everything. But when we discuss things there are thousands of bits of information we have seen or heard that we are pulling from that have changed how we react to and feel about different situations.

I envision this thread to be a repository of articles, video links, etc that can help to fill in what the most important bits of information are.

I've not given much thought to how this should be structured. Perhaps we can come up with a better way than a single thread.

[Ondrej]

In case it changes I grabbed a link from Wayback instead of the original.

TIme Magazine
"The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election"

https://web.archive.org/web/20210204110 ... -campaign/

And brief (video) commentary here.

https://rumble.com/vdmqgp-the-times-exp ... vlawg.html

[Barney]

Ok I've finally got around to reading (most of) this article and then watching the video.

The guy seems really upset and angry and I don't quite understand why. If "saving" an election is the same as "changing" it, then I want everyone do do as much of that kind of changing as possible. He also seems to assume, without any evidence, that this coalition of people are actually out to defeat Trump, in spite of claiming that they're out to keep the election democratic.

In response to the sentence "The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory," he just says "hogwash." How does he know that? Why is it so impossible to believe that this sentence is true? Is there really so little trust in American democracy left that even people working to protect it are accused of working to undermine it? I doubt he would've made this video if Trump had won, as everyone agrees he did in 2016. And I seem to recall that the left was just as desperate to prevent him from winning back then, yet they conceded that he had won. Is he saying they've just become 10x more sinister and immoral than they were four years ago? What's his evidence for saying "hogwash"?

In response to this chap writing: "Trump has made it clear that this will not be a fair election, and that he will reject anything but his own re-election as 'fake' and rigged." he simply says, "that is confession for projection - accuse your adversaries of doing that which you are doing so as to create confusion." Again he doesn't seem to have any evidence for this. He is just reading with the most suspicious lens possible in order to see the blackest picture he can see. He doesn't seem able to credit that anyone who didn't want Trump elected would still have preferred a functioning democracy even if that means Trump gets elected.

In short, I don't see what this guy's issue is or what I can learn from him. Can you help?

[Ondrej]

This isn't really the place to do this because we're not going to have a list we can refer back to but I'm also not sure how else to discuss and keep a list so here we go...

He also seems to assume, without any evidence, that this coalition of people are actually out to defeat Trump, in spite of claiming that they're out to keep the election democratic.

I do not think for a moment you are so naive as to think you can trust everything someone claims especially when it comes to politics. So them claiming they are keeping the election democratic is meaningless we have to actually examine what went on.

I’m not sure why you would need much evidence that this coalition of people were out to defeat Trump. But they basically insinuate as much in the article

Election night began with many Democrats despairing. Trump was running ahead of pre-election polling, winning Florida, Ohio and Texas easily and keeping Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania too close to call. But Podhorzer was unperturbed when I spoke to him that night: the returns were exactly in line with his modeling. He had been warning for weeks that Trump voters’ turnout was surging. As the numbers dribbled out, he could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.

The liberal alliance gathered for an 11 p.m. Zoom call. Hundreds joined; many were freaking out. “It was really important for me and the team in that moment to help ground people in what we had already known was true,” says Angela Peoples, director for the Democracy Defense Coalition. Podhorzer presented data to show the group that victory was in hand.

If they were only concerned with the accuracy of the election not the outcome there would be no wringing of hands that Trump was on course to win. “victory was in hand” doesn’t mean the election was accurate, it means the desired outcome would be had.

Why is it so hard to believe that partisan actors would work for a certain outcome? Is it just that they claimed they were “fortifying” the election. It is mostly the writer of the piece spinning it that way.

In response to the sentence "The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory," he just says "hogwash." How does he know that? Why is it so impossible to believe that this sentence is true?

Given the above quote, also consider the following:

They created a force of “election defenders” who, unlike traditional poll watchers, were trained in de-escalation techniques. During early voting and on Election Day, they surrounded lines of voters in urban areas with a “joy to the polls” effort that turned the act of casting a ballot into a street party. Black organizers also recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places would stay open in their communities.

So they got BLM activists to be poll workers. I assume you are aware of the continual riots from BLM and that they are highly partisan.

And again:

More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition.

with his network of contacts across the progressive universe: the labor movement; the institutional left, like Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace; resistance groups like Indivisible and MoveOn; progressive data geeks and strategists, representatives of donors and foundations, state-level grassroots organizers, racial-justice activists and others.

As 2020 progressed, it stretched to Congress, Silicon Valley and the nation’s statehouses. It drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests, many of whose leaders were a key part of the liberal alliance. And eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy.

Here again, heavily partisan until eventually it reaches across the isle but only to those who are also against Trump.

Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative ... piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it. One component was tracking dangerous lies that might otherwise spread unnoticed.

The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place.

In the next paragraph they mention specifically Facebook and Twitter. Conservatives have been complaining for some time that they are being unfairly censored through shadowbans, removal of their content, suspended accounts etc. Of course, it has been very hard to prove there is a concerted effort much as it might seem obvious to the conservatives.

In any case, given the partisan leanings of everyone involved it seems quite sensible to call “hogwash” on a statement like “The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory.”

Is there really so little trust in American democracy left that even people working to protect it are accused of working to undermine it?”

I’m not sure what you mean by “American democracy” that one should put trust in. Do you mean that we should just blindly trust that everything is on the up and up without asking questions? I think the trust in “American democracy” comes from transparency, following procedures, and having appropriate oversight and checks. When ballots have complete chains of custody and recounts can be performed if questions arise. When it is a secret cabal of powerful people working behind the scenes and touching every aspect of the election process without any transparency or oversight, by their own admission, it raises serious concerns. That they claim to be working to “protect” it offers little comfort.

And I seem to recall that the left was just as desperate to prevent him from winning back then, yet they conceded that he had won.

Were they? I seem to remember pundits and experts claiming the whole run up to 2016 that Trump had no chance at all of winning. Now for four years we’ve had >90% negative media coverage. Trump is “literally hitler”. I would be quite surprised if there wasn’t significantly more motivation to beat him “by any means necessary”.

Is he saying they've just become 10x more sinister and immoral than they were four years ago? What's his evidence for saying "hogwash"?

He hasn’t claimed sinister or immoral, unless hogwash means something different to you. To me it just is a more tasteful way of calling bullshit. I think anyone being honest can look at the line up they claim and then look at the statement “The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory.” and recognize the bullshit. Especially when they admit in the article they were all biting their nails at Trump being ahead initially and were trying to calm themselves that their projections predicted this. They clearly wanted an outcome not just a proper election count.

[Barney]

Okay fair enough, I should have been clearer. I didn't mean to suggest that the people involved didn't care whether Trump was elected or not. I meant to suggest that they would not compromise the principles of democracy in order to get their own political desires. But even that is ambiguously worded, because to preserve democracy is also a political desire. The desires work at two levels: I want a certain leader to be President, but more than that I want a fair election and I'm committed to fair democracy. You seem to be suggesting that all these people had the commitments in the wrong order: that even if Trump had legally won, they would spin it so he lost. And that is really paranoid and cynical, although it's also as hard to disprove as all the other conspiracy theories, e.g. about Covid not being real, about the moon landing being fake, etc. If you have built around yourself a worldview according to which everyone is against you, then even those trying to disprove it are only confirming your argument. You have an airtight case.

[Ondrej]

So we can at least agree that the specific journalists who authored this piece have abandoned their journalistic integrity to spin a story that is not accurate. Do we agree yet that silicon valley is not being even handed in promotion and censorship?

If those on the left believe that Trump was as bad as Hitler it serves to reason that there would be plenty (not all) who would be willing to compromise on the principles of an honest election to see the "proper" outcome is achieved. That is to say, if you saw Hitler's rise to power wouldn't you perhaps take the opportunity to subvert an election if you could? And it wouldn't even take a majority of people just a handful who are highly motivated and in the right position. Surely if it were the other way around you would be highly suspicious of meddling and would want transparency and bipartisan oversight at every step to keep everyone honest. As well as an unbroken chain of custody for all the ballots.

[Barney]

if you saw Hitler's rise to power wouldn't you perhaps take the opportunity to subvert an election if you could?

It's an age-old question, whether it's okay to compromise on moral principles to stop someone truly evil from taking power. "Would you kill Hitler in cold blood if you had the chance?" is how it is usually framed.

For myself, I would answer no. If the only way to fight evil is to become evil, then I won't do it. If the only way to defeat Sauron is to take the one ring and become a dark lord just like him, then it's not worth it.

we can at least agree that the specific journalists who authored this piece have abandoned their journalistic integrity to spin a story that is not accurate

I'm not sure I agreed that, did I? Of course all journalism is biased, all journalism "spins a story" in that sense - including all the news stories you agree with and use to form your understanding of the world. What makes this story any different? All the evidence you have against it comes from the story itself. Do you think the journalists were so stupid as to accidentally include incriminating evidence against them in the very same article? I think if we reach that conclusion then something has gone very wrong with our manner of reading. And I think that "something" is the extremely suspicious "they're out to get me" attitude that I see in that chap whose video began that discussion. If you're convinced beyond doubt that the Left are evil and will stop at nothing, then you will interpret all the available evidence to support that conclusion, even if other interpretations are readily available or even more plausible.

[Ondrej]

It's an age-old question, whether it's okay to compromise on moral principles to stop someone truly evil from taking power. "Would you kill Hitler in cold blood if you had the chance?" is how it is usually framed.

No, you miss the question. The question is not a moral one, "would you do x if y", it is more of a judgement of statistical likelihood. What is the likelihood that, given the rhetoric about Trump, some people would be willing and able to subvert the election to obtain the outcome they desired? I think the answer to this question is that the likelihood is quite high. This seems to me to be a quite reasonable position. One might argue that this happens with every election. Of course, absolutely! But the motivations are much stronger around this election, as the article shows quite clearly.

I'm not sure I agreed that, did I? Of course all journalism is biased, all journalism "spins a story" in that sense - including all the news stories you agree with and use to form your understanding of the world. What makes this story any different?

Well, the article says that they are reinforcing the integrity of the election and have no desired outcome either way but what they describe in their article is clearly a political campaign with a clear outcome in mind. So the framing of reinforcing the integrity of the election is the "spin" part to give you the framework through which to interpret the rest.

The main point of posting this article is to point out the existence of the "cabal" of powerful people controlling the flow of information (among other things). At what point do we say it is not a conspiracy theory anymore? Surely when the people themselves admit they are doing it?

[Ondrej]

Here is another example of the "cabal of powerful people".

This is a discussion about covid vaccines and the difficulty with even having a discussion about them if it goes against "the narrative".

It is quite long (3 hrs) but I thought it would be informative in its own right. I post it here as another chip on the pile of evidence of slanted/controlled media narratives.

Anyway here is the link https://youtu.be/-_NNTVJzqtY

[Barney]

At what point do we say it is not a conspiracy theory anymore? Surely when the people themselves admit they are doing it?

You seem to be missing an important distinction. Let's go back a step:

the article says that they are reinforcing the integrity of the election and have no desired outcome either way but what they describe in their article is clearly a political campaign with a clear outcome in mind.

This is ambiguously put. Of course they "have a desired outcome" - how could they not? Everyone involved in the election process presumably also wants one of the parties to win. If the people here employed leftist folk, perhaps it was because they trusted them to keep the distinction better in mind, between the goal of a fair election and the goal of their own candidate winning? After all, the whole premise of the article is that Trump and his followers have lost the sense of that distinction, and that Trump won't accept anything other than a win. So they can't employ Trump followers without undermining their own ultimate goal of a fair election.

It all comes down to how much you trust them. And the mutual trust in America has been eroding rapidly over the last decade. I'm not surprised you don't trust them, and I'm not surprised they don't trust you. The social contract is dissolving.

I post it here as another chip on the pile of evidence of slanted/controlled media narratives.

I'm sure you could make a much larger pile than that. It's the nature of conspiracy theories that those who believe them see evidence for them everywhere. "To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." It's part of human nature to see the whole world through the lens of whatever idea they happen to be obsessed with right now. When Silvianne was pregnant I kept seeing pregnant women everywhere on the street. Now I don't see them any more, but I see tons of babies.

This is a great article by a friend of mine on the massive increase in conspiracy theories like these in recent years.

Let me be clear about my position. You don't need to persuade me that Leftist media has a bias. All media has a bias, because all human beings sift and interpret data to make a narrative out of it. There is too much data to know it all, so we make a mental map to guide us around and help us make decisions. This map points us to the relevant or important data, allowing us to ignore the rest as irrelevant.

So in that sense, everything you're saying about "the left" and media I completely agree with. I just want to add that it's all equally true about "the right" and media. Fox News is the best example but the little independent non-mainstream things do just the same. Why does some random guy filming himself in car become so popular that millions of people uncritically accept what he is saying? Because he gives people a narrative to explain their world, one that pushes the right emotional buttons: fear of those different to ourselves or with a different agenda; anger at the abuses and lies of others; a sense of our own innocent victimhood or righteousness. Even better, he can give us a sense of being superior to others because we are non-conformists who refuse to go with the flow. We don't just buy what the MSM tells us: we investigate for ourselves and come to our own conclusion.

One thing you don't seem to know is that those on the left also blame media distortions for widespread opinions they disagree with. It's an easy thing to do because it allows you to sweepingly dismiss huge volumes of data as "biased" and thus not engage with the data it presents.