"A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that 55% of Republicans falsely believe Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election was the result of illegal voting or rigging."

"Additionally, 60% of Republicans incorrectly agree that the election was stolen from Republican Donald Trump." 

CNN reports, aggressively inserting the view that the people who were polled are wrong. I believe that's a very unusual way to report an opinion poll, with insistence that the opinion is wrong and apart from any factual reporting that makes it perfectly obvious that the opinion is mistaken. 

This displays a desperate fear of the opinion, and I don't think it does much good. The urge to stamp the opinion out will tend to make those who hold it grip more tightly: What are they afraid of? Are they trying to get me to move on, telling me there's nothing to see here?

CNN continues:

What is perfectly clear, however, is that Republicans' lack of faith in our current election infrastructure is a direct result of Trump's historic efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 results.

It's "perfectly clear" why people have this opinion? This is a news article, reporting a poll, and it's making an absolute assertion about why human beings believe what they do. That doesn't inspire confidence. It makes people suspicious, perhaps paranoid. 

FROM THE EMAIL: Cheryl writes: 

“Election infrastructure...” 

Seems like that word is being softened up to mean anything they want it to mean. Wonder why. 

Good catch. I'll boldface the word in the quoted text above. Cheryl's right. There's been a lot of talk lately from Democrats around the word "infrastructure." I was just saying: "It's a propaganda word to the core."

AND: Temujin emails:

The only thing missing from this article was the word 'debunked' as in, these false theories have been clearly debunked. Which, of course, they have not.

The key to this is that the fraud, or at least the appearance of fraud has never been fully examined, investigated, or allowed to be. Even those few court 'appearances' were mostly tossed out of court for 'lack of standing' or due to lack of evidence. Yes, it's hard to obtain evidence when your discovery time is extremely short, and the states have it locked away, or thrown away, or it has simply 'disappeared'.

What we have had, since the surprising closing of the polls late in the evening in 4 key cities, and the more surprising change from a massive Trump lead to a Biden surge taking place while the polls were 'closed' at 1-4 am, is a barrage of media sources, Big Tech, and 'expert' talking heads telling us all how this was clearly a clean election, no fraud, and all questions have been answered, all theories, debunked. I personally will go to my grave not believing that 80 million Americans — more than voted for any previous person in our history- got out and voted for Joe Biden who had spent the previous 18 months locked up in a basement with an occasional outing to mispronounce names or forget where he was.

There are roughly 74 million people in this country walking around right now with a nagging nervousness in their gut, like a wound that will not go away. Too many of us, and I clearly include me in this, strongly suspect a massive foul play — a coup — took place on November 3. We are suspicious of what took place before, during, and certainly after election day. Demanding we believe the networks is hardly the answer to clearing this up.

And the overall complete and total censorship and dismissal of the topic — by Big Tech, the networks, major news outlets, and talking heads — only exacerbates our suspicions. That CNN- the network most famous for promoting the Russia! Russia! Russia! hoax, purposely misquoting Trump on his Charlottesville comments, showcasing preposterous liars with fabulous stories about Justice Kavanaugh, calling flat-out riots destroying our cities 'peaceful protests', and sporting insurrection tears — has a show called "Reality Check" is all you need to know about the USA in 2020, 2021.

That the Reuters/Ipsos poll only shows 55% of Republicans still questioning things shows how much work the media has already done to make this all disappear. That number should be at 80%. It probably is. We know how inaccurate our polls have been over the last few years. Yet we still crank them out — daily.

Owen writes:  

Remarkable behavior by CNN, as you point out. Reminds me of the line, “The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

And mezzrow says: 

On truth and elections. Here’s a definition of what term 'liberal' means from my favorite reactionary. On these terms, I will always proudly identify as liberal. It’s the only identity politics that has meaning to me.

There exist two interpretations of the popular vote, one democratic, the other liberal. 

According to the democratic interpretation what the majority resolves upon is true; according to the liberal interpretation the majority merely chooses one option. 

A dogmatic and absolutist interpretation, the one; a skeptical and discreet interpretation, the other. – Don Colacho

And Tim writes: 

Somehow, both Hayes and Kennedy avoided going down in history with an asterisk beside their name. I do not think Biden is going to avoid that fate. A big part of both Hayes and Kennedy avoiding that fate was their attempt to reconcile with their foes. But Biden has never been the sharpest pencil in the box.

AND: Bob Boyd writes:

That doesn't inspire confidence. It makes people suspicious, perhaps paranoid. 

I think this kind of thing does inspire confidence in those who choose to believe The Narrative.

CNN knows what it is doing with this stuff. It's not a blunder. It's not poor journalism. It's the new journalism. Their role is not to report facts, it's to report their expert determination of the correct opinion.

There is no factual reporting included because it is not the role of news consumers to determine which opinion is correct and which is mistaken. Facts are for experts to sift through, who will then report their determination of the correct opinion. Wise consumers will adopt that expert opinion. Failure to adopt that opinion is a clear indication of a serious character flaw.

Am I being paranoid?

And Wild Swan writes: 

Believe is kind of a funny word which may make "falsely believing" an impossibility. What would Wittgenstein say? Can I "falsely believe" in the sense that I would be able to say "I falsely believe?"

Wittgenstein said no.. He said: I can believe a falsehood (false belief) but I am not able to carry out an action - "falsely believing" - that means believing and not believing?

Continuing on from him, I say: "Truly believing," as a description of the belief of many Republicans about the 2020 election means "sincerely believing," rather than "correctly believing." Its opposite is not "falsely believing" but "pretending to believe" or hypocrisy.

Go further. Can someone else truly say of me: "She falsely believes?" Is there such a thing as a psychological state which is a false way to believe, as opposed to a false belief. Can you falsely believe CNN or Jen Psaki?

The significance of the question is that a "false belief" implies that there is a truth somewhere whereas "falsely believing" is a nonsense phrase - something a bureaucrat or any other dullard is well able to say about the ciphers they ruin without the phrase ever diverting them into falsely questing for truth.

AND: Dwight writes: 

USA Today has been doing this for months regarding the election... "Trump falsely claims..."

I've been waiting for "Franklin Graham falsely claims there is a God".

*** 

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"There may be a new genre: liberals expressing 'buyers remorse' over the culture they have created."

"Here's a talk between Bill Kristol and James Carville on the 2020 election and what came after. You'd think the two would be ecstatic, exultant. Trump is gone. The Dems are spraying money on citizens like cheap perfume on a whore. White men make up 14% of the class at the many Ivy League colleges. Good times. But these two are somber.. Bill Kristol keeps begging Carville to tell him where the Democrats are going and Carville seems to think the Democrats have a flimsy, rickety coalition that will fall apart if the Dems keep saying 'people of color' and 'Latinix' and keep canceling people of whom the Amherst College English department disapproves. Carville seems to regard Biden as the man standing between the Dems and the deluge. Perhaps 'buyers remorse' isn't quite the term I'm looking for - maybe 'Belshazzar's Feast.'"

Writes Wild Swan in the email. I tried watching the video.... 

 

... but the video and audio on Carville's side is horrible. Unwatchable. Is he filming from a laptop on his lap? What a ridiculous place for a laptop! I don't know why the audio is also herky-jerky, and bad audio with his idiosyncratic manner of speaking is unintelligible. And that's quite aside from whether he's making good points (and good sense).

But — lo and behold — there's a transcript! I can skim, and I can cut and paste:

KRISTOL: You mentioned defund the police, you mentioned identity politics, cancel culture, whatever you want to call these things, but how worried are you about that complex of issues? Some the attacks may be unfair, some may be fair, but the Democrats, parts of the Democratic party coalition, giving enough oxygen to that stuff that allows Republicans to just scream and yell about it for two years or four years and really have an effect. You think it did have an effect 2020, certainly down ballot, right? The police stuff? 

CARVILLE: It did. It did. It is the thing that I’m most worried about. And because, first of all, who they are. I don’t know of anybody, and I talked to, I live in New Orleans, okay? It’s no secret. I don’t know of a single person that thinks of themselves as a “person of color.” I really don’t. I had Ruben Gallego, who’s a Democratic congressman from Arizona, and we did much better in Arizona than we did in Texas or Florida, and he said, “I’ve never heard anybody use the word LatinX.” And that’s just not the way people talk. It’s not what they — It’s just not the way. When people hear that — And it’s a little different because when you’re in the middle of it, you hear it so much it doesn’t stand out. When you’re out in the rest of the country — It was like the janitor at Smith College. That story. I give Tom [?] the credit for running the story, but there is a feeling — And I got to tell you, I’m a supportive, ardent Democrat, passion and everything, but the English faculty at Amherst has too much power in this party. They really do. And they come up with all of these different things and when people see that, they don’t like it because it’s not what their life is. I think Biden does a — Congratulations, he stays out of that.

"Belshazzar's Feast" is a fantastic Rembrandt painting, showing the Old Testament story about "the handwriting on the wall":

Wikipedia explains:

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar looted the Temple in Jerusalem and has stolen the sacred artefacts such as golden cups. His son Belshazzar used these cups for a great feast where the hand of God appeared and wrote the inscription on the wall prophesying the downfall of Belshazzar's reign. The text on the wall says "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin." Biblical scholars interpret this to mean "God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; your kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians."

FROM THE EMAIL: mezzrow writes: 

The memes gush from this like a fountain. 

1. The consiglieres of two warring dynasties unite and plot together after years of conflict to hold on to their waning power as they age and die. 

2. Have any members of the English faculty at Amherst failed to be informed of this exchange? If any are persons of color does this exchange become racist in fact, regardless of intent? Will this result in the cancellation of Kristol, Carville, or any persons adjacent to them? (stay tuned, this is what I’m watching.) 

3. The sheer boomerness of the technical incompetence of Carville is a delight to those youngsters who would dismiss him. They forget that he would happily watch their bones bleach in the sun before he would give them one ounce of his consideration. Treat it like Chin Gigante’s bathrobe and beware, youngsters. 

4. The biblical reference is timely on this Sabbath morning – I have long suspected that the winners of the last election are staring at the mess of pottage they currently hold in a suspension of disbelief. If they get to write the history of this, we’ll have one future. If they fail, we’ll have a different future. I say WE as if I’ll be here to see it, but life is filled with possibilities. We’re just passengers now, more than ever.

Great comment. I added the link.