Article archive / December 2020
Originally published: . Volume 11, No. 12. Source pages: 2.
Last week the Trump election defense team brought out their witnesses before committees of the Pennsylvania and Arizona legislatures. Witnesses told their stories, describing various misbehaviors such as obstructing poll watchers, adding signatures, and rerunning stacks of ballots. There were accounts of very strange things, such as the truck driver who testified that he drove a shipment of ballots from New York to Pennsylvania. For me, the cyber security experts and statisticians were the most interesting. These technocrats have been conducting all sorts of cool research on the voter datasets. My very most favorite “fact" from the plethora of statistics that the geeks showered on us was the analyses demonstrating that at certain times, more votes were recorded than was mechanically possible for the machines.
My second most favorite was the pattern analyses. The third most interesting theme to me are the claims that the Dominion voting machines were rigged and linked to bad actors in foreign countries, made even more entertaining by Dominion officials refusing to show up and answer questions at these hearings.
All very interesting news. What is most interesting to a system theorist is that none of this is being covered by the major media outlets. More than 70,000,000 people in the United States might be at least slightly interested in what is going on here. A Shakespearean three act drama, with mystery, villains, and heroes. And it is unfolding at a breakneck speed, with a cast of characters all under the clock. It is completely newsworthy. CNN didn't air the Giuliani–Powell press conference because, they say, it was "bananas." Setting aside the problem in logic of how do you know if something is bananas before you even see it, Scott Adams pointed out that most of the American public would probably want to see something that's "bananas." At least it can't be as boring as more Covid news. Ignoring this story may not be hurting the big blue channels but it seems to be impacting Fox News rather dramatically. The small news outlets are doing whirlwind business, catching the disgruntled viewers. Newsmax is booming. You can even find bits and pieces of reporting from Sky News (Australia) and something called NDT. Apparently anybody with a video recorder can report on news these days. I really love this free market experience. So why the media blackout in coverage? Several possibilities come to my mind. First, it might be a case of simple "Information avoidance." Journalism no longer exists as a real job, reporting these days is more of a personal-opinion type of activity. So, people may be taking this very personally and just not wanting to hear any contradictory information or bad news. Who likes to feel bad? Secondly, they could believe, wrongly, that giving a voice to an opponent creates more conflict. So their intuition says to suppress discussion of the matter. I see this often in people who are high in the conflict avoidance, often tender-minded people. However, suppressing discussion just doesn't work long-term. The third reason is more dark. The news outlets are engaging in 1984 Ministry of Truth type censorship for some nefarious purpose. They want to manipulate people's thinking to achieve some goal of self interest. We're not supposed to think for ourselves. Regardless of anything else, whether the play is Hamlet, Macbeth, or A Midsummer Night's Dream, there's one thing that all psychologists can agree on––censorship is bad and freedom of information is good. When Trump was elected in 2016, the progressives had so much trouble believing that he had been actually chosen fairly that they created a narrative that he must have somehow colluded with Russia. That went on for 3-1/2 years. So, the conservatives are due their time in the land of disbelief. If there is fraud, then conservatives will be doing us all a great service by uncovering it.
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