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What Precisely Was the Big Lie?
C. S. Lewis’s character Professor Kirk was right to ask why they don’t teach logic in schools these days. Our absurd political circumstances have rarely, if ever in human history, needed logic more. Let’s do what we can to shed some logic on the talk about Trump’s talk of the 2020 election, shall we?
An enthymeme is an argument with an unstated step, usually an unstated premise.
Aristotle explains that enthymemes can be useful rhetorically. You don’t always have to spell out every step, talk like a robot, and lose your audience. Sometimes it’s ok to just say, “The defendant was seen at the pier on the night of the crime, and therefore did not commit the murder,” without explicitly telling people who already know the local geography that the pier is a long way from the crime scene.
But enthymemes have a darker side, like when you say “Alex is Polish, so he’s stupid” (Richard Purtill‘s example of a bad enthymeme).
Obama gave us a fine example of a bad enthymeme in 2008. He used to diss John McCain by saying that McCain agreed with George W. Bush 90% of the time. (Or maybe it was 95%. Or maybe he varied his estimates. Hard to remember exactly. Let’s just stick with 90%, shall we?)
Obama’s argument against McCain depended on a premise that Obama did not say out loud–the premise that says just how often Bush was actually wrong. If the premise was that Bush is wrong 100% of the time, then the premises of the argument do a good job beating up McCain, but one of the premises is plainly false: No one is wrong 100% of the time.
But if the premise is only that Bush is wrong 65% of the time, then Obama’s argument only establishes that McCain is wrong 58.5% of the time. If the premise were that Bush is wrong 55% of the time, then the argument would establish that McCain was only wrong 49.5% of the time–in other words, that he is usually right!
So Obama had to keep it quiet just how often Bush was wrong. Whatever the premise was, if we said it out loud, we’d start thinking for ourselves instead of doing what Obama wanted, which was to scurry along from a hastily drawn conclusion that McCain is wrong a lot into an enthusiastic vote for Obama. If Obama had let his other premise out into the open, then it would have been easy to see two things:
1. There’s no general agreement on how often Bush was wrong, and therefore little clarity on how powerful Obama’s argument against McCain actually is.
2. The most powerful versions of the argument would rely on an obviously false premise.
Now, back to Trump. A lot of people are using enthymemes against Trump these days. Trump tells the Big Lie, we are told, and therefore he is a big liar, a big problem, a threat to the Constitution, and so on.
What I don’t understand is: What exactly is it that Trump said that was a lie? There is an unstated premise here.
Is the premise that Trump lied when he said the 2020 election was rigged? If so, then the Hemingway book shows that the premise is false–it actually was rigged.
Is the premise that Trump lied when he said that there was a lot of fraud? But in that case, the currently available evidence indicates that the premise is false–there was some fraud, and there was probably a lot of it.
Is the premise that Trump lied when he said that illegal actions flipped swing states? That’s probably a false premise too–illegal actions probably did flip swing states. Maybe the ones considered in Teigen vs. Wisconsin Elections Commission, for example, and almost certainly the million-plus Biden advantage in mail-in votes cast in violation of the state Constitution of Pennsylvania.
Or is the premise that Trump lied when he said the election was stolen electronically? If so, then we need to talk. We need to talk about how, without even talking about 2020 specifically, electronic fraud actually looks pretty plausible because we have vote-counting machines with internal modems and no processes in place to ensure that the modems are switched off during the vote-count. And after talking about that, we’d have to figure out what sort of evidence there is either for or against some of the machines having been hacked in 2020.
Is the premise that Trump lied when he said that the Senate should not have certified the Electoral College vote? If so, then the premise is wrong because Trump honestly believed it. But at least I can agree that he was mistaken about that.
Or is the premise that Trump lied when he said that the election was stolen when Dominion applied an algorithm and the voters “broke the algorithm” before some jerks brought in some fake ballots or whatever? Lots of details in there–likely at least partially mistaken, although still not a lie as such because he honestly believed it.
Is the premise that Trump lied when he said that we knew all that stuff at the time? Yeah, maybe that was a lie. I sure didn’t know it at the time; I was barely figuring out some of the early bits and pieces. I still don’t know exactly what happened in 2020.
Or is the premise that Trump lied when he said the election was stolen? I’ve heard it said that this is exactly the premise, but this is why we have to have big vocabulary words instead of nice things. Vocabulary words like “enthymeme.” An election could be “stolen” in any of the ways mentioned above. If that was the lie, then we still don’t know what the premise is.
What is the premise of the argument against Trump? What exactly was the Big Lie?
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More specifically, it’s only “remarkably durable” as long as those running elections etc, follow the rules.
Go back and read my comment again. You’re missing the point. You don’t even know what the topic is. It’s not about accusation and conviction. It’s not about the election being stolen. It’s not even about 2020!
You were responding to my comment:
I was clearly talking about 2020. I presumed that your response to my comment was on the same topic.
Recommend you read the comment more carefully. I told you what it was about. It was about assessing what we know about electronic election security prior to any investigation of specific allegations of electronic election fraud.
If we can get that far, then maybe we’ll be ready to talk about 2020. But you’re not ready. It doesn’t look like you’ve even begun. I’m not ready either. I’ve barely only begun.
On-line capability for vote tabulation is a strict no no. Any well trained election integrity observer knows that.
The rookies in the election integrity movement go in as observers on election night. If they are bright and thoughtful people, they very well might notice that there is indeed on-line internet capability. When they mention this to the top election official at the facility, that official will cheerfully but insistently explain, “This is allowed so we workers can deal with our email.”
No that is not for that. Election law prohibits that. It is for hanky panky that has to do with the vote count.
That is one of the tricks top election officials use when dealing with election observers.
That, and sending them home for the night while counting continues…
Why isn’t one of these things the fact no one took seriously the left calling for people to move to GA to vote? With on the spot voting registration, what prevents that kind of thing?
And why doesn’t anyone think that’s an error in the system?
Computer security involves the need to have protection and assurances against intervention from unauthorized sources that can modify program results. Unnecessary online capability introduces such risks and should be thought the opposite of computer security. The two reasons I have heard for on-line capability for vote tabulating machines is for election officials to transmit email and to furnish vote tabulation results to news media, both unnecessary since they can be handle externally from the machines.
The fact audit related documents were destroyed nearly immediately in raises some HUGE alarm bells. Maricopa county had their records deleted.
The last two times I moved my residence I had to show proof of my residence address in order to get my drivers license. Voter registration was part of the process. Did the above include that?
Would we know? Seriously. With no enforcement of law, no consequences at all, what is stopping it? Didn’t the election. Take place in January? From Nov 8 to January, you have enough time to get an apartment with a bill. Do it in groups, it’s cheaper.
Such is certainly possible but clearly subject to charges of voter fraud and not likely to succeed without detection with any semblance of enforcement. I suspect if this procedure was used in Georgia it was probably done with no verification of residency at all.
Same-day registration is just asking for cheating, really. Even if they do a “provisional ballot” there’s no way it would get held until the address etc are verified. States need to set and enforce serious registration time limits, and then actually do something if the registration confirmations come back “no such address” etc.
Many places seem to be almost proud of the fact that they do little or no checking.
The have been many allegations of wrongdoing but most authorities don’t bother to follow up.
When I lived in Arizona, I would read at each election time that numerous voter registration confirmations (postcards, I think) would be returned as “no such address” etc. As far as I know, no official checks were ever done. Only a few independent papers etc would look into them at all.
It seemed pretty clearly intentional, if the officials didn’t look at the evidence of fraud, they felt free to claim “no fraud exists.”
My understanding is that GA voters wanted the SOE to do something about tightening up same day registrations so out of state temps couldn’t hijack the election. The GA administration response was to hand wave and ignore, which is part of the animosity against them.
There were celebrities encouraging moving to GA, and Social media campaigns from Reddit to Twitter.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/democrats-want-you-to-move-to-georgia-to-vote-in-the-senate-runoffs/
The major issue is that special run-off elections should be limited only to those who were registered on the official Election Day (November). To allow for this gives people the ability to vote in two state elections in one cycle. Is that right?
Of course it’s not right. Now ask the Left if they care.
Ever get an answer to your question, Aug’?
At the moment, it’s enough to just convince my side. I’ve never been evangelical. I’m more of a teacher than a converter.
Nope.
By the way, I hope you get to come back to the US and teach at that new school. Even if it means you have even less time for Ricochet.
Of course not.
https://ricochet.com/1008055/1-who-fact-checks-the-fact-checkers
https://ricochet.com/1334554/two-years-later-how-to-think-about-election-cheating-in-2020/
They didn’t let the state legislature decide the election procedures which violates the US Constitution.
I’m learning way more legal crap than the average citizen should ever have to know. I truly hate all of these people.
Excellent concise meme statement about our elections:
“If the huge populace of illegals were not going to be voting in the next election, then why would the Democrats be so extremely opposed to having valid ID’s before any individual can cast their vote?”
Although if they get everyone to “vote by mail” the ID question might become moot. Maybe they just want bodies to fill the addresses where all those extra ballots end up.
We share a brain on this one, KD.