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Thread: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

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    Default "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    "This is the inside story of the conspiracy...."

    "...a well-funded cabal of powerful people...working together behind the scenes to...change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information."

    tinyurl.com/1or24w01


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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    A great article in Time Magazine, detailing how Democrats and Republicans agreed to count every vote, to have an honest election.


    The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

    A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.

    The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.

    Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster.

    A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.”

    In a way, Trump was right.

    There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

    The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.

    Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.

    For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election. The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.” His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics. Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.

    The democracy campaigners watched with alarm. “Every week, we felt like we were in a struggle to try to pull off this election without the country going through a real dangerous moment of unraveling,” says former GOP Representative Zach Wamp, a Trump supporter who helped coordinate a bipartisan election-protection council. “We can look back and say this thing went pretty well, but it was not at all clear in September and October that that was going to be the case.”

    This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”

    That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.
    A long article, so I won't quote it all.

    Read the rest at:

    https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    I saw this a couple of days ago. The thing that amuses me is the writer's near perfect demonstration of Doublethink: The ability to have two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind and believe both of them to be true.

    A conspiracy took place, but people who think a conspiracy took place are conspiracy theorists...
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    "Definition of cabal
    1: the contrived schemes of a group of persons secretly united in a plot (as to overturn a government)
    also : a group engaged in such schemes"

    See also, "self-own"

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    I saw this a couple of days ago. The thing that amuses me is the writer's near perfect demonstration of Doublethink: The ability to have two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind and believe both of them to be true.

    A conspiracy took place, but people who think a conspiracy took place are conspiracy theorists...
    Making the conspiracy realists.

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Ah yes, the boys of false equivalencies. Still at it, I see.

    I, for one, am grateful that this group of influential persons aligned to protect the access to and votes of and counting a these hundreds of millions of Americans. When I retire, I am determined to give some time in my state to continue the same struggle for access and accurate counting. Truly, we must not take access to and counting of our votes for granted. This will, forever more, be the fight. For the entire month of November I blasted every lying or deluded yahoo I came across in every platform I participated in and every in-face discussion. I did burn out, but I did what I could say at the time. My friends told me not to bother, but that is exactly the attitude that yields the space to disinformation and nefarious trends.

    Already, the forces of some conservative GOP influencers are attempting to restrict voting access by changing state voting laws. No surprise there! Here we go. The fight over suffrage and access continues. The first thing that will be attacked is mail-in voting. Look for false claims of fraud or the ginned up fear of fraud to be used in these arguments. It's coming! Look for, "We've never had to do it this way before." Look for, "American democracy is built upon the tradition of the polling place." Etc. Look for, "Foreign countries might hack us." It's all coming.
    Last edited by TSherbs; February 7th, 2021 at 07:37 AM.

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Well, fellows, what evil do all you see in liberals and conservatives having agreed to do anything they could to reinforce an honest election even while the pandemic made it dangerous for older people, as well as for groups packing tightly together in polling places?

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Working across the political divide on behalf of suffrage and access and stability is evil! It's the Deep State! It's a Never-Trump cabal! My fears and anxieties are all confirmed! 😋

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    welch (February 6th, 2021)

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    This French-Canadian lawyer, who has an interest in the goings-on in the U.S., offers his opinion.

    Objective person who sees through the bullshit, or delusional conspiracy theorist? Depends on what flavor of kool aid one drinks...

    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    How does someone become an
    " objective person who sees through then BS"? Is it when they agree with your BS?

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    Inkflow (March 9th, 2021)

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by welch View Post
    Well, fellows, what evil do all you see in liberals and conservatives having agreed to do anything they could to reinforce an honest election even while the pandemic made it dangerous for older people, as well as for groups packing tightly together in polling places?
    welch,

    All this time I thought you lacked a sense of humor, then I had to chuckle at your joke that rigging, er, fortifying the election was to save older people from being packed together. Like being packed together at planned post-election riots: "...website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets."

    Seems appropriate on Super Bowl Sunday that the liberals tag line denying their conspiracy/cabal was made the centerpiece of a commercial:

    tinyurl.com/79zlydm8




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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    How does someone become an
    " objective person who sees through then BS"? Is it when they agree with your BS?
    No, Chuck, it's when a person sees through the BS no matter who's shoveling.

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    dneal (February 7th, 2021)

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by kazoolaw View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    How does someone become an
    " objective person who sees through then BS"? Is it when they agree with your BS?
    No, Chuck, it's when a person sees through the BS no matter who's shoveling.
    Thank you. z

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by kazoolaw View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by welch View Post
    Well, fellows, what evil do all you see in liberals and conservatives having agreed to do anything they could to reinforce an honest election even while the pandemic made it dangerous for older people, as well as for groups packing tightly together in polling places?
    welch,

    All this time I thought you lacked a sense of humor, then I had to chuckle at your joke that rigging, er, fortifying the election was to save older people from being packed together. Like being packed together at planned post-election riots: "...website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets."

    Seems appropriate on Super Bowl Sunday that the liberals tag line denying their conspiracy/cabal was made the centerpiece of a commercial:

    tinyurl.com/79zlydm8



    Do not post while drunk.

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by kazoolaw View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    How does someone become an
    " objective person who sees through then BS"? Is it when they agree with your BS?
    No, Chuck, it's when a person sees through the BS no matter who's shoveling.
    More false equivalency.

    A co-ordinated effort to do good is not the same as a co-ordinated effort to do evil. The former is commendable; the latter is both execrable and often criminal.

    Like I said, I look forward to doing more in the future to broaden access and accuracy to voting (that, I call "good").

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by TSherbs View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by kazoolaw View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    How does someone become an
    " objective person who sees through then BS"? Is it when they agree with your BS?
    No, Chuck, it's when a person sees through the BS no matter who's shoveling.
    More false equivalency.

    A co-ordinated effort to do good is not the same as a co-ordinated effort to do evil. The former is commendable; the latter is both execrable and often criminal.

    Like I said, I look forward to doing more in the future to broaden access and accuracy to voting (that, I call "good").

    Pfff... another way of saying the ends justify the means.

    Doing evil in the name of the good is not the good. Silencing opponents is not the good. Circumventing the constitution to win an election is not the good. Trump wasn't a threat to democracy or any of the other nonsense the left shouted. He was a threat to globalists and bureaucrats.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    How does someone become an
    " objective person who sees through then BS"? Is it when they agree with your BS?
    The answer is contained in what you omitted.

    Reading if fundamental.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    How does someone become an
    " objective person who sees through then BS"? Is it when they agree with your BS?
    The answer is contained in what you omitted.

    Reading if fundamental.
    "if fundamental" LOL!! DA!! Perhaps writing is also fundamental.

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by TSherbs View Post

    More false equivalency.
    TS-
    You must understand that no matter how often you keep repeating a new term you've found that is doesn't apply to everything.

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    Default Re: "a conspiracy unfolding...." "...a well-funded cabal....

    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Naill View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by kazoolaw View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by welch View Post
    Well, fellows, what evil do all you see in liberals and conservatives having agreed to do anything they could to reinforce an honest election even while the pandemic made it dangerous for older people, as well as for groups packing tightly together in polling places?
    welch,

    All this time I thought you lacked a sense of humor, then I had to chuckle at your joke that rigging, er, fortifying the election was to save older people from being packed together. Like being packed together at planned post-election riots: "...website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets."

    Seems appropriate on Super Bowl Sunday that the liberals tag line denying their conspiracy/cabal was made the centerpiece of a commercial:

    tinyurl.com/79zlydm8



    Do not post while drunk.
    C'mon Chuck, that was funny!

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