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[Eeyore]

These are dangerous times for our democracy. I am concerned that too many Americans are not educated and active enough in regards to their civic responsibilities.

For this thread the question is.

In regards to the events of January 6th, 2021, how are you exercising your civic responsibilities? Please post examples or explanations.

January 10, 2021
Dear Senator Blackburn,

As a resident of Tennessee and longtime resident in your previous Congressional district, I am writing to express my extreme disappointment in your actions in regards to the presidential election of 2020.

A central unifying concept in this country is that the consent of the governed transmits the popular sovereignty of we the people to the local, state, and federal governments. Your statement in regards to your reasoning for challenging the legitimacy of the election results of 2020 is filled with hasty generalizations and equivocations. Simply put you were undermining faith in American democracy by asserting you were defending it. And the result was that you were clearly part of the chain of events that led to the violence at your place of business on January 6th, 2021. Finally your actions were an overreach of Congressional power trespassing on duties that were delegated to and carried out by state governments and state and federal courtrooms.

Your statement used equivocation to baselessly assert that the federal election results were tainted and that they were not free, fair, or transparent. Yet this was an election that took place in the public eye, with open access to observation. There was a period of a month between the election and the placing of votes in states by electors in which concerns could be and were aired in courtrooms across America. The substance of these cases was available for public consumption. Again and again the standard of courtroom evidence was not met to support the claims in any of the states you sought to challenge. In addition to assaulting the democratic foundation of the United States, your actions needlessly over-reached the power of Congress.

Neither your brief statement nor any other public statement I have read by you during the period between the election and the day in which the electoral votes were to be counted in a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021 contained credible evidence in support of your claim of a tainted electoral results.It should be a very lofty standard of evidence for you to assert from Tennessee or Washington D.C., that officials carrying out their sworn duty in other multiple states and courtrooms had subverted democracy. Instead you picked up the banner of a flood of misinformation and deception and asserted you were on the side of truth and justice.

The individuals and agencies in charge of the election, protecting it from fraud, and investigating allegations of fraud after the election have confirmed that it was legitimate. Key among them is the person in charge of the efforts of the Trump administration to secure the 2020 election from electronic fraud. This person is Christopher Krebs, now the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency known as CISA. He was fired not long after asserting “The 2020 election was, as I’ve called it, the most secure election certainly in modern history. I have no question about the security of the systems, the process, of the vote, of the count, {or} of the certification.” The United State Attorney General William Barr of the United States reviewed the existing allegations about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and concluded on December 1, 2002 that, “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” (the AP used the word effected instead of affected in their article on this story) Attorney General Barr resigned his post shortly thereafter. Finally a joint statement of election officials affirmed the legitimacy of the 2020 elections. This has been a widely assessed election and the results are in. They were confirmed as free, fair, and legitimate elections, yet you were asserting from afar and without merit the opposite.

I very much agree with your assertion that “protecting the integrity of the electoral process is paramount to preserving trust and legitimacy of the final outcome.” However I disagree that the integrity of the election process has been shown in nearly any way to have lacked complete integrity. Yet your actions have done great damage in using baseless assertions to undermine trust and the belief of legitimacy of a completed, challenged, upheld, and certified election. Your words heightened the distrust of a legitimate process, baselessly encouraged individuals to believe that the electoral results were unfair and secretive, and violated your oath to uphold the constitution and the democratic principles that lay at its foundation.

Instead you wrongly claimed that the Constitution reserves the right to challenge the Electoral College results.

This is what the Constitution says on the matter of voting:
“The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted.”

There is also an 1887 federal law that creates a process for making objections. The law is detailed in this document, but it has no precedent in challenging the results of multiple states. It also is not part of the Constitution.


I write this letter to express that your actions done in the name of representing me were reprehensible. They aimed to undermine the democracy at the core of our national values. They emboldened individuals to use force to disrupt the business of Congress in carrying out a formality in counting the previously certified electoral votes. Instead you joined a chorus of voices repeating the unsubstantiated claim that the election was so tainted that the rightful victor was Donald Trump not Joseph Biden. No more serious charge could be made by an official of the federal government. The only circumstances under which you should have taken this drastic action, would have been if you were in possession of clear and compelling evidence that the election results returned the wrong result, and that this evidence was denied a fair review in a court of law.

Sincerely,

Raymond Blair
Resident of Nashville, Tennessee

Below is the joint statement released by the Senators from Tennessee in regards to their intentions to object to the certification of the votes of unspecified states during the January 6, 2021 joint session of Congress.

Sen. Blackburn & Sen.-elect Hagerty released the following statement:
“On behalf of Tennesseans, we are taking a united stand against the tainted electoral results from the recent Presidential election. American democracy relies on the consent of the governed. Allegations of voter fraud, irregularities, and unconstitutional actions diminish public confidence in what should be a free, fair, and transparent process. Protecting the integrity of the electoral process is paramount to preserving trust and legitimacy in the final outcome.
For critical moments like these, the Constitution reserves the right to challenge the Electoral College results to members of Congress. On January 6, we will vote to oppose certification of the 2020 election results.”
SEN. BLACKBURN & SEN.-ELECT HAGERTY

This post has been edited by Eeyore: Jan 11 2021, 02:25 AM

[nighttimer]

This board is still here?

Color me SO surprised. Do the original owners of this zombie still have anything to do with it?

[net2007]

This board is still here?

Color me SO surprised. Do the original owners of this zombie still have anything to do with it?

Enough to pay the bills for the domain but it's still been rather slow. Election season and Covid-19 have sparked a lot of interesting debate here though.

As a side note, this is just a thought but I'll take a look at https://thecollinegate.boards.net/ if you're cool enough to check out a couple of things here. There are some interesting trade-offs in some of the newer threads and I'm going to have a detailed review on the topic of election fraud/impropriety coming up here in a week or two. I'll be posting that in Eeyore's "2020 Election Audit" thread. It'll contain details that you won't read or hear about on CNN or FOX News. No conspiratorial or extreme right-wing sources, it'll mostly come with some well-established facts, presented in a different light and of course my take on things from a right of center standpoint.

I'm going to be a dad here in a couple of months so this will be one of the last deep dives I can do, at least within any reasonable time frames.

Edited to Add: If I'm wrong on the collinegate web address or you've moved to a different platform, give me the heads up.

___________________

Eeyore, I may have a reply for you in this thread as well. Some of what I'm going to be mentioning in your election audit thread will be relevant here so we'll see.



This post has been edited by net2007: Jan 14 2021, 08:01 AM

[nighttimer]

This board is still here?

Color me SO surprised. Do the original owners of this zombie still have anything to do with it?

Enough to pay the bills for the domain but it's still been rather slow. Election season and Covid-19 have sparked a lot of interesting debate here though.

As a side note, this is just a thought but I'll take a look at https://thecollinegate.boards.net/ if you're cool enough to check out a couple of things here. There are some interesting trade-offs in some of the newer threads and I'm going to have a detailed review on the topic of election fraud/impropriety coming up here in a week or two. I'll be posting that in Eeyore's "2020 Election Audit" thread. It'll contain details that you won't read or hear about on CNN or FOX News. No conspiratorial or extreme right-wing sources, it'll mostly come with some well-established facts, presented in a different light and of course my take on things from a right of center standpoint.

I'm going to be a dad here in a couple of months so this will be one of the last deep dives I can do, at least within any reasonable time frames.

Edited to Add: If I'm wrong on the collinegate web address or you've moved to a different platform, give me the heads up.

___________________

Oh, I'm quite familiar with The Colline Gate. It's run by a *** NOTICE: THIS WORD IS AGAINST THE RULES. FAILURE TO REMOVE IT WILL RESULT IN A STRIKE. *** whom I have no respect or regard for as a debater or even as a human being, and that was before he banned me from his board. It's only slightly less dead than this place is, and they are pretty much down to a half-dozen or so dudes on the moderate side of the political spectrum.

If you have already joined don't say nighttimer sends his regards. It won't score you any points and you'll make a couple of them break out in hives.

Congrats on the New Dad situation. You are about to lose smell, smell bad and have your peace of mind wrecked. It's great. Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

This post has been edited by nighttimer: Jan 17 2021, 04:48 AM

[net2007]

This board is still here?

Color me SO surprised. Do the original owners of this zombie still have anything to do with it?

Enough to pay the bills for the domain but it's still been rather slow. Election season and Covid-19 have sparked a lot of interesting debate here though.

As a side note, this is just a thought but I'll take a look at https://thecollinegate.boards.net/ if you're cool enough to check out a couple of things here. There are some interesting trade-offs in some of the newer threads and I'm going to have a detailed review on the topic of election fraud/impropriety coming up here in a week or two. I'll be posting that in Eeyore's "2020 Election Audit" thread. It'll contain details that you won't read or hear about on CNN or FOX News. No conspiratorial or extreme right-wing sources, it'll mostly come with some well-established facts, presented in a different light and of course my take on things from a right of center standpoint.

I'm going to be a dad here in a couple of months so this will be one of the last deep dives I can do, at least within any reasonable time frames.

Edited to Add: If I'm wrong on the collinegate web address or you've moved to a different platform, give me the heads up.

___________________

Oh, I'm quite familiar with The Colline Gate. It's run by a *** NOTICE: THIS WORD IS AGAINST THE RULES. FAILURE TO REMOVE IT WILL RESULT IN A STRIKE. *** whom I have no respect or regard for as a debater or even as a human being, and that was before he banned me from his board. It's only slightly less dead than this place is, and they are pretty much down to a half-dozen or so dudes on the moderate side of the political spectrum.

If you have already joined don't say nighttimer sends his regards. It won't score you any points and you'll make a couple of them break out in hives.

Congrats on the New Dad situation. You are about to lose smell, smell bad and have your peace of mind wrecked. It's great. Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Wow, that sucks. I'm not sure what happened in your case but I can understand being frustrated over censorship. A ban effectively ends the conversation and personally, I think that should only happen in the most extreme of circumstances. That might sound like a conservative take on censorship but it really isn't if these definitions of the word liberal are considered...

"1. Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas.
2. Relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise."

Anyway, I don't think there's a member on this board who would say that you're not welcome here. I still wish AD was more active but I come back now and then to check things out, especially when debates are getting stirred up. Other than that, I've done a lot of writing on Quora.com but may still look for a dedicated debate site for when AD isn't active. If you're on Quora, check out my profile sometime if you want... https://www.quora.com/profile/Michael-Matthews-60

There's also a lot of liberal members asking and answering questions there so you wouldn't have to worry about my content boring you to death. Quora isn't strictly a political platform but has a lot of activity on that topic. It's okay for what it is.

Congrats on the New Dad situation. You are about to lose smell, smell bad and have your peace of mind wrecked. It's great. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. laugh.gif

I appreciate that and I imagine so! I have a little experience taking care of my ex's kid and my nephew, but nothing like what's about to hit Lizzy and I at the end of March.


_________________________

Eeyore

It's going to take me a bit longer than I thought to finish the election audit reply that I'm working on, it's probably still at least a week or two away from being completed and will be more of a retrospective at this point. With that said, I'll give you a reply here to fill in the gap.

"In regards to the events of January 6th, 2021, how are you exercising your civic responsibilities? Please post examples or explanations."

I do what I can. I'm not under the impression that I'm going to change the world so my family is my first priority but I enjoy communicating with others and learning about the world so that helps motivate me to get involved from time to time. I'm not bothered as much by conflict as some people are so I use that to my advantage as well. I do believe that there's nothing wrong with keeping a distance from politics though, there are other ways to make a difference. Lizzy doesn't care for conflict or being heavily involved in the political and social issues of the day. She does her part by being the calming voice in a room. In her personal life, she's respectful to others, she tries not to repeat the mistakes that are complicating our country, and when conflict finds her, she's good at not exacerbating the situation.

With politics, science, and social issues being naturally appealing to me, it's not such a task to get involved. I don't know what you'd consider a civic responsibility in this case but whether it's in regards to politics or not, I try to do right by others and speak up when something is wrong unless I feel it's not my place to do so. However, just like with anyone else, I don't always succeed and there are times where I've gotten things wrong or have made a bad decision.

I really don't like mob mentalities or following trends or fads. Don't get me wrong, if I think a social or political group is generally doing things right or they have a foundation that I can relate to, I'll work with them. I also vote, I just don't want to be confined into a box or feel like I have to defend those who screw up. I think one of the worst fallouts from January 6th was the mob mentality that developed on the topic of censorship because that can have a huge impact on how people exercise what they consider civic responsibilities. Events are planned online, political campaigns communicate and organize on social media, people sell books online, etc. etc.

In this case, the censorship has reached levels that I've never seen before. There were Trump supporters who clearly screwed up on the 6th and anyone who got violent or broke into the Capitol Building will have to face the consequences of breaking the law. However, I think this situation is being treated very differently by those who are in positions of power and influence. Aggressive censorship that targets specific groups has been an ongoing problem, but this is different.

Youtube started removing videos that claimed that widespread voter fraud changed the outcome of the election...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...lection-claims/

8,000 channels were removed from their platform and they didn't limit their censorship to videos that called for rebellion, or ones that used foul language. I follow Tim Pool on Youtube, and they even removed one of his videos. He's not conservative, he voted for Obama but he turned against the far left and regularly calls them out. More or less, he's a moderate liberal who's willing to side with conservatives when he feels they're in the right. If I remember correctly, they removed one of the Tim Pool videos where he was covering election fraud. I've never heard him say election fraud changed the outcome of the election though. He's entertained that as a possibility but he's also been critical of those who believe there's election fraud when they go too far. For example, he had a video criticizing Trump lawyer Lin Wood for pushing conspiracy theories. That guy went as far as to claim that Jeffery Epstein is still alive and that Justice John Roberts had something to do with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The censorship doesn't stop with Youtube. Facebook started removing posts that use the phrase "stop the steal"...

https://nypost.com/2021/01/11/facebook-to-r...he-steal-posts/

Again in this case, this is far from limited to post that call for violence or post that call for people to show up and protest. Theoretically, you could have denounced violence and even said that protesting wasn't the answer but if you were saying we should "stop the steal" by taking further legal action, you could have had your post removed. It's a lot worse than that as well, some of these social media platforms are removing or censoring mainstream conservative content that has nothing to do with this election. Politicians who campaign on social media have had to deal with this, not to mention a number of conservative leaning accounts and Youtube channels.

I tested this out with PragerU videos because they were claiming that simple educational and opinion videos were being censored. PragerU is a right-leaning Youtube channel that does 5 minute videos that talk about political issues from a conservative standpoint. Many mainstream conservatives and even liberals have contributed to this channel, it's no more controversial than your average liberal Youtube channel but you can judge for yourself and also take a look at how PragerU videos are being censored if you wish. All you have to do to test this out for yourself is simply go to the channel PragerU and toggle "Restricted Mode" on and off. When you have "Restricted Mode" turned on you should notice that several of their videos don't show up.

For example, the video below is simply titled "Did Bush Lie About Iraq?"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgQw8EhPJWw...Oi&index=22

It has no swearing, no graphic images, certainly no calls for violence, and to top it off the woman in the video is Judith Miller who's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who is saying that we went to Iraq based on faulty intelligence. The broader point she's making is that she doesn't think Bush Jr. lied about Iraq, but should that matter? I struggle to find anything in this video that would justify putting it on a restricted list when the main purpose of that censorship is to keep children from hearing foul language or seeing nudity. From what I can tell, the most controversial part of this video is when she says Bush Jr. was "clueless" but I've seen videos with far more explosive commentary than that which didn't get censored at all.

So if anyone wants evidence of censorship going too far this is an easy way to find it. If restricted mode is turned on you'll get a short message and the thumbnail for the video above will read "This video may be inappropriate." So I assume that this video wouldn't play if you're not logged into Youtube either but if you ask me, if a 5-year-old did somehow manage to watch this video, they'd be far more likely to fall asleep from boredom rather than get disturbed by it.

Lastly on this, the competitors to some of these Big Tech giants are now being targeted. Part of that is likely driven by a financial incentive to kill their competition because two things are currently happening. Several social media platforms are currently purging and censoring users from their platforms and some of the users themselves are just leaving because they've had enough. As of a few days ago, Twitter alone had already lost billions of dollars and saw a stock market drop of 12.6%.

This runs the risk of dividing social media across ideological lines. I think this is relevant to this topic because the internet and social media has helped a lot of people to organize public events and do campaigning, it's a way to exercise civic responsibilities. If several means of communication are severed and it ends up leading to two different types of social media platforms, ones that either create a welcoming environment for liberals or create a welcoming environment for conservatives, it'll probably further divide us.

I Had a little more on this topic but decided to cut it short because this is in a casual thread. I'll just end with this, I understand that one of the primary reasons being given for the increased censorship is that there's a fear that certain topics will cause uprisings or violence. My problem with taking the news media and social media platforms seriously on that is the fact that we've seen violence for months already. Actually, for years we've seen violence erupt in protest. In Capitol Hill Seattle, the occupation known as CHAZ or CHOP dragged on for 24 days, In Portland Oregan protesters barricaded federal officers inside a courthouse and tried to set it on fire, and these were far from the only times where we saw either an occupation, destruction of public or federal property, assaults, murders, and even the occasional building getting burned to the ground. My question is, why is one type of event being treated differently than others? Why are some demonstrations where violence breaks out characterized as "mostly peaceful" while others aren't?

I believe that is very important because these types of double standards come with real-world consequences, not the least of which has been the targeting of specific types of accounts and social media platforms. I don't believe it's anyone's civic responsibility to fix this. I believe we can all contribute to our society in different ways, I just wish that so much information didn't slip by millions of Americans in the heat of the moment. In retrospect, we didn't respond very well to the events of 9/11 and it's because the public was emotional and caught up in the moment. So in my opinion, slowing down and thinking things through probably wouldn't hurt.

This post has been edited by net2007: Jan 21 2021, 05:48 AM