Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Not sure what I said that could remotely give you that impression. The point was, the Republicans are trying to disenfranchise people, if not at this point to bring us back to 1960 Alabama, and Sebby was pretending that's not such a bad idea, because something.
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Without basis, you assume the minority efforts I support are toward the negative. That logical fallacy needn't be further addressed. It fails on its face.
It is fact that critical thinking is rare among huge portions of the population. Thus, to get a majority, you're going to get a lot of dumb people and people who don't understand what they're voting for or even why they're voting. Many of them simply vote tribally. Even among the more intelligent voters, people succumb to emotion ("I could have a beer with that guy, but not the other one.").
I'm not saying a largely dumb or mal/un/educated majority can't vote for good policies. It can. But the idea that those policies are wise because a majority voted for them is application of the wisdom of crowds, which is in reality anything but wisdom. Consider the most successful art and movies of the day (the stuff that charts and sells like crazy) and you'll see the "crowd" is devolving to the infantile and base.
The majority needs to be controlled, manipulated, to avoid having it do really dumb things, like demand we build a hopelessly ineffective giant border wall. A cunning minority can and should do that.
Keep in mind, I am not excusing voter suppression in the moment. But it can be said and is probably irrefutable that, while people like you and I understand the valid criticisms of Trump that should inform voters' decisions, an overwhelming number of people voting against him do not. They are credulous members of the crowd, who only know of what they've seen in the media, or gotten from friends on Facebook. (The same goes for people voting against Biden or Democrats generally, without considering why - a very common phenomenon I'd chalk up to emotion and tribalism.) They may do a positive thing by voting against him, but they only do so by accident, playing as the Russians say, "useful idiots."
Useful idiots form majorities. They should be feared. To borrow Hank's example about Mississippi, they are just as often on the side of evil as they are of angels.
Or I could pose this argument to you in a couple questions:*
"Is it okay to legally suppress the votes of Trump voters in counties where we know Biden voters are being suppressed"
"Is it okay to legally suppress votes for local officials whom you know are going to vote for rules that effect voter suppression in elections?"
"If you can do it legally, is it okay to suppress voters for a candidate who says he embraces the Boogaloo Boys or Proud Boys?"
* By "legally suppress," I mean to manipulate procedures and laws to make it difficult or impossible for the targets of these efforts to vote.
