US Presidential Election 2020

[brainpanhandler]

There likely is some level of factionalism within the deep political system, and some interesting aberrations that pop up sometimes. One such example is the apparent rivalry between Karl Rove and Steve Bannon, seemingly manifesting in a rare blue shift in favor of Doug Jones (the favorite of Alabama's GOP and business establishment) against Roy Moore. But overall, the objectives of the behind-the-scenes string pullers seem to be pretty consistent, and even the factions are likely being played off by forces higher up in the food chain. Just my own speculation, of course, but it's what I've come to believe after looking at election rigging and the other forces that intersect with it.

Bolding mine. I guess this is where my mind reels and cannot grasp what those objectives seem to be if not a smoldering wreck of a planet with fictional billionaires hunkered down in apocalypse silos. And since I cannot imagine my way into the mind of the death cult I find myself falling back into relatively saner factionalism and basic self preservation as guides for human behavior. Otherwise I have to start imagining that the "forces higher up" are EVIL.

[Belligerent Savant]

.I'm sticking to my speculation that Trump is part of a controlled opposition operation, of a sort. It goes without saying that Trump certainly is no solution to the common American's ills; he's a criminal along with his peers at the top, but he certainly presented the optics of such an alternative, to great effect, as he successfully tapped into growing frustration among the increasingly disenfranchised.

I think this has to be the case, although it is difficult to imagine when and how this came about. I have cultivated relationships with Trump supporters that can speak in complete sentences so as to have access to what they think and why. This often involves some interpretation. If Bernie had gotten the nomination in 2016 I believe a large enough number of Trump supporters would have voted for Bernie that Bernie would have won. That could not be allowed to happen. Not that there wouldn't have been solutions available.

Spot-on.

[dada]

If I were a behind-the-scenes string-puller, my objectives wouldn't be my own. There's always someone with more pull and more money whose objectives I'd be beholden to, and the ones with the most pull and money have very little compared to the institutions they are beholden to.

I end up drawing the conclusion that the death cult is just corporate culture. And those at the top are as powerless to act independently as the upwardly mobile strivers in every tax bracket.

[Marionumber1]

If I were a behind-the-scenes string-puller, my objectives wouldn't be my own. There's always someone with more pull and more money whose objectives I'd be beholden to, and the ones with the most pull and money have very little compared to the institutions they are beholden to.

I end up drawing the conclusion that the death cult is just corporate culture. And those at the top are as powerless to act independently as the upwardly mobile strivers in every tax bracket.

I am inclined to believe that it is exactly that. As monolithic as my worldview might seem to some, I don't really think there is one big conspiracy with some puppetmaster individual or group at the top. I think the system has been built as a kind of sick, self-reinforcing feedback loop that nobody truly runs. There is a complicated mess of 1%-ers, military and intelligence operatives (part of an apparatus set up by the 1%-ers to subvert democracy and protect their financial interests, but not devoid of these operatives' own personal interests either), organized crime, mind control programmers, and numerous local cabals that have some interaction with the national power structure. They are frequently natural allies and yet are also fighting to maintain some level of control over the other groups so that they aren't subverted themselves. But out of a complicated mess of individuals with their own personal objectives, a broader overall direction can emerge, and seemingly has in the so-called deep state/shadow government/cryptocracy/whatever you want to call it.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Yes, though if i was to pick a nit, i wouldn't say those at the top are 'as powerless' in aggregate; there will be a subset that have power to influence more so than others.
Each 'tier', at all levels, have their influencers, however brief or tenuous such roles may be over time.
Unfortunately, the decisions/agreements made at the higher levels -- regardless of system-based restrictions -- have far more impact on the majority than whatever decisions are made by the average tax payer.

This can't be underscored enough.

Power structures/dynamics may well change, or be replaced, as they have over time. But power structures tend to exploit, and repeatedly, include cycles of particularly egregious exploitation. Seems we're in such a cycle right now.

[dada]

I think people choose their influencers. It's the same at the bottom as it is at the top, or wherever they consider themselves to be located on the people pyramid. I think they even choose what it is they consider to be the bottom and the top.

The emerging spontaneous order wiki page has some good food for thought. Here's a selection I'm chewing on:

"Defining structure and detecting the emergence of complexity in nature are inherently subjective, though essential, scientific activities. Despite the difficulties, these problems can be analysed in terms of how model-building observers infer from measurements the computational capabilities embedded in non-linear processes. An observer’s notion of what is ordered, what is random, and what is complex in its environment depends directly on its computational resources: the amount of raw measurement data, of memory, and of time available for estimation and inference. The discovery of structure in an environment depends more critically and subtly, though, on how those resources are organized. The descriptive power of the observer’s chosen (or implicit) computational model class, for example, can be an overwhelming determinant in finding regularity in data.[24]

On the other hand, Peter Corning argues: "Must the synergies be perceived/observed in order to qualify as emergent effects, as some theorists claim? Most emphatically not. The synergies associated with emergence are real and measurable, even if nobody is there to observe them.""

Is that really an on the other hand, though? The descriptive power of Peter Corning's chosen (or implicit) computational model class can be an overwhelming determinant in his finding regularity in data.

For me the essential question becomes, is the whole an emergent property of the parts, or are the parts emergent properties of the whole? If the latter, then mind would not be an emergent property of physical systems, but physical systems the emergent property of mind. And if mind is an emergent property, it is emerging from the other direction.

Same with life and chemistry. We might also entertain the idea of a simultaneous emergence. Order and chaos become something akin to aesthetic judgements of what is neither order or chaos.

But I think most people prefer chaos over what is neither order or chaos. Like they prefer evil over what is neither good or evil. The things which are neither are the most frightening things of all.

[brainpanhandler]

If I were a behind-the-scenes string-puller, my objectives wouldn't be my own. There's always someone with more pull and more money whose objectives I'd be beholden to, and the ones with the most pull and money have very little compared to the institutions they are beholden to.

I end up drawing the conclusion that the death cult is just corporate culture. And those at the top are as powerless to act independently as the upwardly mobile strivers in every tax bracket.

Turns out maximizing shareholder value is the ultimate puppetmaster. The devil made me do it.

[Joe Hillshoist]

I think this has to be the case, although it is difficult to imagine when and how this came about. I have cultivated relationships with Trump supporters that can speak in complete sentences so as to have access to what they think and why. This often involves some interpretation. If Bernie had gotten the nomination in 2016 I believe a large enough number of Trump supporters would have voted for Bernie that Bernie would have won. That could not be allowed to happen. Not that there wouldn't have been solutions available.

I think it evolved over the presidential campaign. Trump obviously didn't want the job and was rude and a jerk all thru the Republican debates. So maybe it was people working with his kids and Kushner.

I think some people recognised that the sort of support Brexit, Bernie and later Corbyn got would translate to Trump and went for it.

[Elvis]

This is some rich coverage on the subject—thanks as always. A lecture with slides comes to mind. Also the case of Mike Connell reminds us of how the Rove circle enforces the scheme (more on Connell always welcomed).


viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41980&start=465#p692160

I have long been inclined to see Trump as controlled opposition, but I think the implications of that go farther than you outlined here. At least at the highest levels of political control, I don't believe that there has been much substantial division at all. Acknowledging that politics is largely controlled by behind-the-scenes forces while still subscribing to the idea that the two parties are duking it out for power feels to me like one hasn't really embraced the full implications of that type of duopolistic control. (An aside: my perspective very much inspired by the late Dave McGowan's book Understanding the F-Word, which I think is an essential read even if, as is the case with me, you don't agree with all of it.)

At least when it comes to electronic vote tampering (mainly 2000 onwards), there appears to be just one election rigging enterprise that has operated throughout the years in general elections and primaries of both parties. Whether it is rigging Bush's initial election in 2000 and re-election in 2004, or spiking the 2008 New Hampshire primary vote to maintain Hillary's viability, or screwing over Bernie in 2016, or installing Trump in 2016, the markers tend to be the same: right-wing-favoring discrepancies in exit polls, anomalies in cumulative vote share analysis, complicity of local officials in suppressing any attempted recounts or audits, and even some of the same personnel rotating from place to place (e.g. Michael Vu who oversaw the rigged 2004 Ohio recount in Cuyahoga County and then went on to run elections in San Diego where he oversaw a corrupt audit of the 2016 primary there). I haven't seen a particular reason to doubt that it's the same long-running enterprise, and the inside information that Jonathan Simon (of Election Defense Alliance), Cliff Arnebeck (lawyer for the case surrounding 2004 Ohio), and Dana Jill Simpson (whistleblower on Karl Rove's operation) have received backs up the idea that the same forces surrounding Karl Rove have always been the key fraud players.

The consistent red shift trend doesn't make it seem like the two parties have been competing to rig votes. Virtually without fail, the general elections have been rigged for Republicans, and the Democrats have systematically ignored the evidence, aiding in the cover-up of fraud that is reducing the amount of political power they hold. This isn't the pattern we would see if there was any kind of substantial rigging competition between the two parties: it's what we would see if they're both complicit in the process of pushing the country further to the right. I'm sure that at lower levels in the parties, there are true believer operatives who are trying to cheat for their respective parties. Red shift trends are sometimes broken, such as in the 2016 general election in New York (a Democratic stronghold) where there was a blue shift. But the overall pattern is clear, which suggests a pretty consistent control of the mechanisms that allow wholesale fraud (as opposed to smaller, less influential retail frauds that both parties' operatives undoubtedly engage in).

You're quite right about how the poor arguments for pro-Biden fraud poison the well, and I do believe it's by design, but I don't think it's to prevent people from considering the possibility of pro-Biden fraud. As of now, I still highly doubt that the fraud went in that direction, and I suspect that it was really meant to poison the entire issue of election rigging. Democrats have been pushed into defending the electoral process as honest, and in turn looking like hypocrites if they ever do challenge a genuinely suspect election. Any concern about voting machines, meanwhile, is made to look like a freakish right-wing conspiracy theory. While Sidney Powell weaves her bullshit tales about China, Venezuela, and Cuba rigging the election, Dominion Voting Systems has been able to get away with blatant lies about how their systems can't be rigged. What this whole mess actually seems to protect is the preexisting fraud mechanisms that primarily rig for the right-wingers.

[Elvis]

We're moral beings struggling to live in an amoral social structure.

[Elvis]

I picked this up on Twitter and it seems legit even if I'm not sure of what I'm looking at. Anyway, it indicates that most all of the exit poll discrepancies favored Trump. Seems that maybe someone underestimated the number of flipped votes needed to win?

2020-Presidential-Table_Nov-5-2020.jpg

[Marionumber1]

An undercalibrated electronic rig for Trump is my suspicion, Elvis, based on those exit polls and also the significant barrage of false allegations of pro-Biden fraud that have reached such a level that they almost feel like deflection. At the same time, we don't know that the exit polls were accurate: they generally seem to be pretty good (good as in likely reflecting actual voter preferences, which is of course not the same thing as matching the official results) but the difficulties of exit polling in a pandemic with so much mail-in voting could have altered that trend. And I recall there were at least some anomalies regarding Biden's win that I did flag as troubling which I have to go back and look at.

About Michael Connell, you might also find the CAVDEF page on him of interest. And regarding Karl Rove's operation, here is a map produced by Dana Jill Simpson and her husband showing how a lot of players fit reportedly fit together:

[Marionumber1]

In other election-related news, Trump has been caught on a phone call urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the Georgia results and award him the win: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html (Yes, I know it's the Washington Post, and I still haven't found a straight answer on who exactly recorded and leaked the call, but this information is worthwhile regardless.) He and his team go through a number of fraud accusations that they claim obscured Trump's true win by hundreds of thousands of votes ( ), and Raffensperger's office responds by denying that they have any merit. At various points, Trump outright says that they just need to "find" a certain number of votes to put them over the edge, making it hard for this to seem like anything other than a last-ditch desperate attempt to reverse the state's outcome regardless of the actual vote. He also rails against how Stacey Abrams, in her successful efforts to make voting easier (such as the consent decree forcing the state to consult with voters who fail signature verification), "outsmarted" the Republican election officials like Raffensperger (that much is likely accurate).

Of course, the #Resistance pundits have responded in their standard ways, largely by making Trump's efforts out to be the apex of authoritarian antidemocratic shenanigans that will no doubt obscure all the more covert ways in which democracy is routinely subverted. And because Brad Raffensperger, a Trump supporter in favor of voter suppression, refused to go along with such a transparent sham by Trump's team, he is somehow being viewed as a principled individual, especially by all the standard "principled" "anti-Trump" Republicans such as George Conway.

[Elvis]

I was about to put these in The comedy/satire thread, but they merit placement here. If you haven't seen this new work by the South Park guys, check it out:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_jrebvmPlk

[thrulookingglass]

Deep fake! There's no way Donald Trump could read such a challenging document as a children's book.