Actual cheating is not necessary

A.R. Moxon quoted Ari Berman, who linked to an article in the Washington Post discussing the bill in the Texas legislature to suppress voting:

This is insane: “In a last-minute addition, language was inserted in the bill making it easier to overturn an election, no longer requiring evidence that fraud actually altered an outcome of a race.”

Moxon added:

Republicans are openly planning to end democracy in our country, and they're acting quickly. Democrats are busy trying to make it clear that they're willing to work with Republicans. This is really alarming. The only remaining proofs that Republicans intend to install white supremacist authoritarian Christi-fascism are the sorts that you only get after it’s too late. Democrats were elected to oppose this. They must do it now. We don’t have next election.

Judd Legum tweeted a bit more:

Texas Republicans just released the text of its voter suppression bill, SB7 Votes will be held before midnight Sunday The bill includes a NEW PROVISION that allows judges to OVERTURN AN ELECTION "WITHOUT DETERMINING HOW INDIVIDUAL VOTERS VOTED" This section appears to validate Trump's claims that he won various states because a certain number of people voted "illegally" without any other details Now people like Guiliani can take these absurd allegations to court and, with a sympathetic judge, OVERTURN AN ELECTION. Texas is poised to adopt this unprecedented and radical legal provision without ANY DEBATE IN EITHER CHAMBER It was negotiated in a secret conference committee and released on a Saturday of a holiday weekend. And there is plenty of other bad stuff in this bill.

Legum then listed major corporate donors to the legislators who sponsored this voter suppression bill. David Roberts responded to Legum:

Republicans are engineering minority rule, right out in the open, in plain view. Red flags waving everywhere. When they steal the 2024 election, Rs will *say* that they are simply defending against D cheating. And they will convince themselves of it. And they will bully the media into covering the whole thing as partisan squabbling. It won't matter that there was no D cheating. Crucial to understand: the whole cycle, the whole dynamic, works *whether or not there's any actual D cheating*. Actual D cheating is not necessary for Rs to convince themselves there is, or for them to bully institutions into behaving as though there was.

That was last Saturday. With the legislature’s session ending at midnight on Sunday the Texas House went into a long session. The Democrats worked to run out the clock, then, as Julián Castro tweeted:

Texas House Democrats aren’t letting democracy die in the darkness. They have walked out of this sham session as Republicans try to jam through their voter suppression bill. This is the kind of fight we need from our legislators.

This worked because their absence meant there was no longer a quorum. The session ended without passing this voting bill. Gov. Greg Abbott has vowed he will call a special session of the legislature, so the danger of this bill isn’t over yet. The date for the special session hasn’t been set yet. Nor is the danger over in other states. Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos Elections reported that committees in the Arizona House and Senate have passed a bill that would strip the ability to defend the state in election lawsuits from Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, and give it to Attorney General Mark Brnovich. This change lasts only until Hobbs’ term ends at the end of 2022. Since might run for governor the state GOP is hoping the next SoS will be one of their own. One line that gun lovers use is that we need a good guy with a gun to stop the bad guy with a gun. Doctor RJ of the Kos Community Contributors Team tackled that myth.

It’s a fantasy built upon long-held narratives of revenge that cast the average citizen as a lonely hero amid chaos, their gun simultaneously a symbol of freedom and savior from doom. This vision of American life accentuates a need for power that’s tied to a form of masculinity that ventures into the toxic. ... Instead of trying to deescalate violence, the philosophy plays into ego and displays of strength, pushing the option to “stand your ground” and legitimizing millions of scared people walking around with their weapons and their biases like tragedies waiting to happen. And to rationalize the cruelty, mistakes, discrimination, and loss of life that may flow from such a decision, the fantasy ultimately plays into the worst stereotypes, spreading a message that believes the worst about the people in one’s community for one irrelevant or bogus reason or another.

RJ listed related myths. Such as: We need a strong, silent hero with a gun. There have been lots of movies where the white guy resents the feeling of deprived status, that they were being displaced. The nasty guy cultivated that feeling. The resentment is eased by having a gun available. Another myth: Power comes through strength, force, and the will to act, not through law. There is a feeling – again backed up by cinema – that the good guys can be trusted, even when they have to use violence to get rid of the bad guys. These good guys are all that stand between civilization and chaos. See Captain America and the whole vast array of superheroes. That symbolism is transferred to real life police. The next myth: The world needs badasses to stop bad guys. This is an extension of the previous myth, saying that the good guy, because he’s a good guy, can (and is encouraged to) flagrantly abuse civil rights as long as the bad guys are vanquished. Even the late Justice Antonin Scalia used one of these fictional bad guys and fictional scenarios to justify a lawless act. It is these myths that are used to justify vigilante justice. And that leads to:

Civil rights are merely an impediment to justice. In the right-wing universe, anyone who questions the law must sympathize with criminals and hate America. In this viewpoint, the law is only there to protect white people and property … and perhaps to keep the wrong people from voting.

RJ discussed assumption under those myths and fantasies: Being black equates to being bad. Ending white supremacy equals the cataclysmic end to civilization. In real life a good guy with a gun really can stop a bad guy (it happens, but rarely). Commenter Ed Martin added:

The proposal that it takes a good guy with a gun to counteract a bad guy with a gun is based on the false premise that both should have a gun. The obvious solution is to remove having guns from the proposal, making it impossible to shoot each other, or anyone else.

For many decades, China had a one child policy. A couple was allowed to have only one child. This was an attempt to slow the growth of the country’s population. A few years ago China allowed couples to have two children. A news item in the last few days was that China has raised the limit to three. The reason given was that the birth rate had dropped too low. Soon the younger people wouldn’t be able to support the retirees. That reasoning has also been used in America and in other developed countries. Dratler of the Kos community explained why this is a dangerous myth. These local or country-wide predictions are based on abstract speculation. And they miss the big picture by a mile. That big picture – meaning the whole globe – is that there are too many people. We have a hard time feeding that many, giving everyone the standard of living we all want, and handling the pollution. A slower population growth is a good thing and, in the long run, vital to human survival. The alternative is catastrophic decline from such things as war (including nuclear), pandemics, and famine. Any of these could be made worse through climate change. Dratler added four reasons why controlling the population is good. Quality of life matters more than the quantity. Who would want to live in teeming ghettos? More people does not mean more good ideas. Sparsely populated Greek city-states came up with the fundamentals of democracy, justice, and civic virtue. Many great thinkers of more recent times – Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein – came from classes or came to places that allowed room to think. Increased population density leads to increased distraction and delusion, which prevent deep and original thinking. And automation means not so many youth will be needed to support the aged. We don’t need a race to see which nation can grow the fastest. John Burke discussed a simple intervention that could make our cities much better, that is line our streets with trees. Street and sidewalks are cooler. Trees reduce rain runoff. They support wildlife, linking isolated habitats. People who live on tree-lined streets need fewer antidepressants. For every 10% increase in the urban canopy there is a 15% decrease in violent crime and a 14% decrease in property crime. Trees also scrub pollutants from the air. Burke cited studies that support these claims. A half-minute video showing a bird’s-eye view of juggling. I can manage to do what happens in the last second.