Ignorant Certainty
Partisan politics: often in error but never in doubt
For all the verbal certainty, no one actually knows who won the election
The leftist media are colluding to make a Biden victory inevitable
The Democrats obviously cheated, but did they cheat enough to win?
Election integrity is infinitely more valuable than any one election
As of this moment, I don't know who won the 2020 presidential election, and neither do you. Actually, outside of the smoke-filled conspiracy lounges where every important world decision is purportedly made, no one else really knows either. Yet for all this widespread ignorance, there is no shortage of certainty.
While partisans on both sides are predictably emphatic about their candidate's victory, the US media cartel (which is functionally indistinguishable from the Democrat Party) is doing its level best to convince us that a Biden presidency is a fait accompli. Notices, like the following one from YouTube, appear on social media posts pertaining to the election, ironically (or perhaps especially) even on those presenting evidence of fraud.
Despite numerous ongoing lawsuits and evidence of foul play, a YouTube search for the word "election" delivered the following top results from major (supposedly unbiased) media outlets:
CBS This Morning: "Trump continues to deny election loss"
CBS News: "White House holds first press briefing since Trump lost election"
Washington Post: "Trump tries to overturn the election"
NBC News: "Trump Falsely Claims Victory In 2020 Election During White House Briefing"
CBS This Morning: "Rudy Giuliani and President Trump's legal team continue to undermine the election"
These headlines convey far more certainty than is warranted by the situation on the ground given that neither candidate has yet secured the minimum 270 electoral votes required to win. It is those votes -- and only those votes -- that will determine the winner; not CBS, NBC, the New York Times, the AP, Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg. For all their self-importance, they are not kingmakers. At least not officially.
It is interesting, however, to see them so cavalierly dismiss charges of fraud. These are, after all, the same people who couldn't stop carping about that very topic following Trump's 2016 victory. So consumed were they by the issue of election interference that it would dominate their coverage for the next three years. Hillary Clinton, we were repeatedly assured by the press, had the presidency stolen from her by Russian agents working on behalf of Donald Trump.
This oft-repeated claim, known more simply as "collusion," was ultimately revealed to be a hoax that originated with Clinton herself, but our investigative reporters were so busy finding out how Donald Trump colluded with Russia that they apparently couldn't take the time to find out if he actually did.
But now that the presidency is the Democrats' to lose, claims of fraud are dismissed as nothing more than the desperate flailing of a drowning administration; a useless attempt to "overturn" a "lost election." In short:
Biden won.
The election is settled.
Shut up.
This is hardly the first time the press has told Republicans to shut up, of course. Traditionally, this message was conveyed by attacks on a person's character rather than his arguments. "Racist" is the classic shutupism, but it is often found in the company of others such as "sexist," "Nazi," "homophobe," and other equally endearing terms.
In recent years, though, the shutuppery has become more overt. Instead of merely trying to shame us into silence, the media have taken to explicitly insisting that certain matters are "settled," and that "the time for debate has ended." These have become popular refrains within the climate alarmism movement, and have since been adapted to social media's suppression of any COVID-19 information that doesn't serve their big-government agenda.
Now they're pulling the same censorious routine in the middle of an election, though it's not because they know some truth that we don't, but rather because the truth is a potential threat to their agenda.
So the media have taken their stance, and the Democrats -- long accustomed to believing every utterance of their fellow travelers in the press -- are accordingly convinced of Biden's victory. But what of the claim by many Trump voters that the election was stolen? Allegations of interference, tampering, fraud, suppression, forgery, and the like, abound. But while these may be true, they may not have been sufficient to swing the election.
Now, did the Democrats actually cheat? Of course. They always cheat; it's in their ideological DNA. They cheat because they are pragmatists who believe that ends justify means. They cheat because they are materialists who believe there will be no ultimate reckoning for their crimes. They cheat because their ideas can't win in a fair fight. They cheat because people willing to kill babies are not likely to take exception to the infinitely lesser crime of election fraud. And they cheated because their thought-masters have spent four years ceaselessly preaching that Trump is a racist, misogynist, fascist, literal Hitler who represents an existential threat to the very survival of humanity. So yes, they cheated.
But their cheating is nothing new, and Republicans have long managed to pull off victories in spite of it. The relevant question now is not whether they cheated, but whether the magnitude of the cheating was sufficient to swing the election in Biden's favor. Hopefully, disclosures and hearings over the next couple of weeks will convincingly make the case one way or another.
Regardless of the outcome, we need to see that these court cases are heard. Even if Trump is quickly left with no path to victory, it is imperative that all pending cases remain on track as ensuring the integrity of our electoral system is a necessary end unto itself. Without it, not just this election, but all future elections, become meaningless.
If we do not protect our system and prosecute those who seek to subvert it, we no longer have a government of or by the people; and it will not be long after that government ceases to be for the people, as well.