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Replying to AgnosticBoy in post #138]
AgnosticBoy wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 4:15 am
I think both sides need evidence. I've held a similar position to the guy you responded to but for different reasons. I also never concluded that the elections were fair or unfair. I withheld drawing conclusions because I questioned if there was enough security to catch cheating, especially given the unprecedented amounts of mail-in ballots during the 2020 elections.
“Not free and fair” could be interpreted differently, ranging from the extreme claim the election was stolen through a massive conspiracy, to the opposite extreme of claiming there were some fraudulent votes. The allegation that the election was stolen was purely an irrational conspiracy theory, with all the problems they always have. I'll assume you weren't there. Given the closeness of the election in swing states, it could be reasonable to think there might be some issues in some states, but I can't see how anyone could think there was much of a chance of there being sufficient fraud to change the national outcome. But everyone's threshold of skepticism is subjective - the important thing is to apply that threshhold consistently.
The guy I was conversing with was a conspiracy theorist. He told me that he first came to believe the election was stolen on election night, when the lead changed. This amounts to jumping to conclusions, which anyone might do who didn’t understand the nature of the “red mirage” that was expected, but one should then abandon that assumption when he learns the facts. But conspiracy theorists like him are tenacious in their belief. If the lead change is demonstrated to be reasonable, they then look for new excuses to maintain their belief.
I think it is even broader than prior beliefs in some cases. Some conspiracy theorists may be looking for a reason to doubt the results because they didn't like the outcome. I couldn't believe how much Trump sounded like a conspiracy theorist during his most recent interview on Meet the Press when he kept saying he won in 2020. At this point, I'd even call his thinking delusional.
It seemed clear to me that Trump was pushing a conspiracy theory from the beginning. He was told to expect the “red mirage” in advance of election day, and yet he used that as his first basis to claim the election was stolen. There’s an audio recording of Steve Bannon (from pre-election) telling people Trump would do this - so although Trump pushed the conspiracy theory, it's not so clear he actually believed it.
The best sign of a conspiracy theory is the practice of jumping from one claim to the next, as each gets debunked. This demonstrates the belief in the conspiracy is not deduced from evidence, but rather that it's an irrational claim that looks for evidence to support it, and it’s incorrigible. Consider Trump pointing to the so-called evidence in the propaganda film “2000 Mules”. Even if it were true, this theory came out in 2022– so it couldn’t possibly justify a belief that was held by someone in Jan 2021. And yet, Trump (and many others) claimed this proves they were right. Being accidentally right does not imply one was rational to hold the belief. That’s a bit of a subtle point, but it does demonstrate the way conspiracy theorists latch onto anything they can regard as “proof” in a post hoc fashion. What caught my attention in Trump's recent interview is his saying that he "knew" the election was stolen because of his "instincts", which is ludicrous - and consistent with the way conspiracy theories start.
(Since I brought it up, I’ll mention that 2000 Mules is pure B.S. and I can easily demonstrate that, if anyone’s interested).