A Very Basic Threat to Democracy
From a county-level race in New Mexico.
I suspect more readers noted this story from about a week ago: New Mexico county certifies election results, bowing to court order.
Commissioners in New Mexico’s Otero County voted 2 to 1 Friday to comply with a state Supreme Court order and certify primary-election results, reversing an earlier rejection of vote totals over unfounded claims that voting machines were insecure.
The “no” vote was from commission Couy Griffin.
Griffin’s reasoning (so to speak)?
“My vote to remain a no isn’t based on any evidence, it’s not based on any facts, it’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that’s all I need,” Griffin said.
A huge problem we face, as the House Select Committee hearings have demonstrated, is that a lot of people are willing, for a host of motivations, to believe their “guts” and “intuitions” over facts and reason. Indeed, this is what we saw during the height of the pandemic and it led to more deaths than would otherwise have been the case.
Indeed, as the hearings also show, a main dividing line at the moment is between those who take facts, evidence, and their duties seriously and those who are willing to act on “theories,” not evidence.
Of course, it is worth noting the following:
Griffin, the founder of Cowboys for Trump, spoke by phone from Washington, where he had been sentenced earlier Friday to 14 days in jail on one count of entering a restricted area during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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No evidence or facts to support their gut feelings… they just want to burn the witches… or crucify Christ… it doesn’t seem to matter. God help the rest of us.
Trump’s shamelessness showed that it is quite easy to get away with this. And even that “shut up, that’s why” actually appeals to quite a few people. In a way, his success gave others permission to try the same.
I guess it is quite liberating in some sense: no more need for pretense, no more convincing and consent, just the exercise of power.
There appears to be quite a nihilistic streak in what passes for modern-day conservative thought.
@drj:
Trump has said numerous times that he “trusts his gut” over any rational, fact-based arguments. Nitwits like Griffin are just emulating their leader.
Its even more basic than that.
He didn’t like the outcome of the vote. So he used the power entrusted to him to thwart the voters.
These people aren’t misguided or stupid. They are hostile to the very idea of democracy.
I also just thought of Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts.”
Ugh.
@Chip Daniels: I haven’t seen it reported that he even disliked the outcome of the local election. It’s really that having said “Dominion machine bad.” Dominion machines must be bad now and forevermore, or until Republicans declare we are at war with Eastasia and Dominion machines good. In which case he will never have said otherwise, whatever videotape says.
IIRC Hanna Arendt mentioned several times that once Stalin had declared the Moscow subway a unique marvel, any good communist stumbling on the Paris Metro had a clear duty to destroy the Paris Metro.
@Chris:..No evidence or facts to support their gut feelings… they just want to burn the witches… or crucify Christ… it doesn’t seem to matter. God help the rest of us.
There is no evidence that the rest of us will receive any supernatural assistance.
@Steven L. Taylor:
A exquisite quote from a commenter on Bill Mayer’s recent show, in which he had Kellyanne as a guest:
“It’s a good thing to have opposing viewpoints, but Kellyanne acing the Turing Test yet again is hardly that.”
Republicans have been harping on voter fraud for decades, in order to place voting restrictions to disenfranchise voters unfavorable to them, mostly minorities.
Now they’re taking the next step, and using non-existent fraud to rig elections, while claiming they are defending elections from being rigged.
Doubleplusungood.