The Biased Media: Anything They Disagree With Are “Baseless Conspiracy Theories” Even When The Evidence Is OverWhelming
Posted by freedomforall 3 years, 3 months ago to Politics
"The news that the FBI is investigating Hunter Biden on suspicion of money laundering and foreign influence peddling should come as no surprise, given that the New York Post broke the story over two months ago. Of course, when that publication released the incriminating evidence that was saved to a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the story was immediately censored on social media. Of the few major media outlets that were willing to acknowledge the existence of the story, virtually all of them did so only to emphasize that the reporting was “baseless” nonsense.
“The story could not have been more obviously fake if it had been wearing dollar-store spectacles and attached plastic mustache.”
When pressed on the matter by President Trump in a debate, Joe Biden boasted that five former heads of the CIA said that the story was “a bunch of garbage.” A couple of days earlier, dozens of former intelligence officials had signed a statement that asserted the news had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation: “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” the statement read, “just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
Bush administration speechwriter and Atlantic editor David Frum claimed on Twitter that “The story could not have been more obviously fake if it had been wearing dollar-store spectacles and attached plastic mustache.” Weeks after the FBI investigation of Hunter Biden was confirmed, Wikipedia still labels their entry on the matter as a “conspiracy theory.” Thus, in spite of emails, photographs, and video-recorded evidence to the contrary, any claim that the Bidens did anything improper (let alone “wrong” or “illegal”) was deemed “baseless.”
And yet here we are, with outlets like Politico and the New York Times reacting to the “newly” confirmed evidence of an investigation as though they had just caught wind of the story. Given their craven, politically-motivated annihilation of the story back in October, one wonders: what other “baseless” claims that pose a threat to the left’s agenda might the media be lying about? The only thing that met with more journalistic skepticism than the Hunter Biden story were the claims that significant ballot fraud marred the presidential election.
Since November, the most obnoxious interlocutors I have encountered are the ones who claim to be devotees of “evidence-based reasoning” and rational thought—even while they sanctimoniously insist that you concede that “there is no evidence of fraud in this election.” As with Biden’s corruption, no rational person could claim that there is no evidence. First, there has never been a modern American election where there was no fraud, so the question isn’t really whether or not there was fraud, but how much fraud occurred. Secondly, in the case of this election, we have already documented more fraud than has been exposed in any other American presidential election.
Each individual piece of evidence cannot be understood independently from the larger body of evidence: indicators that might be insignificant on their own might nevertheless contribute to a compelling portrait of evidence in aggregate. The irrational rush to entirely dismiss the possibility of any election fraud is enabled by an adamantine unwillingness to see the forest among so many trees. No recent American presidential election has come anywhere close to the number of process and tallying anomalies that have been reported in 2020. This discrepancy itself serves as an anecdotal indicator that justifies suspicion toward the results. With that in mind, it is worth reconsidering the claims of fraud in this election.
We have seen security footage of poll watchers being asked to leave in Georgia, after which the remaining officials pull containers of ballots out from under a table and begin counting after others were told counting would stop for the night. Another video shows a surreptitious hand-off of what looks to be a flash drive among poll workers. No one can claim that this is not an unusual circumstance to occur in a battleground state late in the night of a presidential election. In most criminal cases, video recordings are generally considered a highly compelling form of evidence.
If the video isn’t proof of procedural violations or fraud, then, what evidence would be required to prove that claim? It seems those who claim the allegations are “baseless” would require video footage that not only catches these poll workers in the act, but that would also show them verbally describing their actions and their malicious intent.
Typically, people don’t record themselves talking about committing a felony as they commit the crime. As for identifying which were the ballots in question, the progressive erosion of any safeguards or record-keeping on the chain of custody in the process of manual vote-counting ensures that any viable reconstruction of how the final tally was reached is impossible. Without required secrecy envelopes for ballots, with signatures not required or ignored, with mailed ballots allowed to be counted when arriving after the day of the election, with observers removed from the process, and with no other way to determine the chain of custody for mail-in ballots, the very means of producing “compelling evidence” of fraud have been systematically annihilated by the procedural changes for elections across the country.
Given that the “compelling evidence” that would convince those who insist these fraud allegations are “baseless” is basically impossible to produce, we are left with circumstantial indicators of the crime. Beyond Georgia, there is a mountain of other forms of evidence from multiple battleground states—anomalous statistical evidence, comparative historical evidence, evidence in sworn testimony from witnesses to the fraud, and anecdotal evidence. Many of these pieces of evidence are compelling on their own, and yet, even taken cumulatively, we are told the claims that there was any malfeasance in the election is a “baseless conspiracy theory.”
Traditionally, journalism has been motivated by a burning curiosity among the reporters who pursue the news. Today, they demonize the curiosity of those with whom they disagree in order to avoid the difficult task of explaining how the accusations are “baseless” in spite of so many indicators of fraud. Thus, unverified opposition research in the form of the Steele dossier can circulate on the news as if it is unquestionably true and serve as sufficient evidence to open an FBI investigation, but physical evidence of Biden family corruption is immediately (without any further investigation) dismissed as so plainly fraudulent that news related to the topic will not even be allowed to circulate.
But the concerns about the legitimacy of this election are anything but baseless. Evidence abounds. They are counting that our cowardice and shame will be sufficient to make us deny those facts. If we will not testify to that evidence openly, then it might as well not exist. We cannot be cowards and we can’t be ashamed. Speak—and speak in the knowledge that the only baseless claim is the one that says it is “baseless” to assert the truth that this election can never be construed as free and fair.
“The story could not have been more obviously fake if it had been wearing dollar-store spectacles and attached plastic mustache.”
When pressed on the matter by President Trump in a debate, Joe Biden boasted that five former heads of the CIA said that the story was “a bunch of garbage.” A couple of days earlier, dozens of former intelligence officials had signed a statement that asserted the news had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation: “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” the statement read, “just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
Bush administration speechwriter and Atlantic editor David Frum claimed on Twitter that “The story could not have been more obviously fake if it had been wearing dollar-store spectacles and attached plastic mustache.” Weeks after the FBI investigation of Hunter Biden was confirmed, Wikipedia still labels their entry on the matter as a “conspiracy theory.” Thus, in spite of emails, photographs, and video-recorded evidence to the contrary, any claim that the Bidens did anything improper (let alone “wrong” or “illegal”) was deemed “baseless.”
And yet here we are, with outlets like Politico and the New York Times reacting to the “newly” confirmed evidence of an investigation as though they had just caught wind of the story. Given their craven, politically-motivated annihilation of the story back in October, one wonders: what other “baseless” claims that pose a threat to the left’s agenda might the media be lying about? The only thing that met with more journalistic skepticism than the Hunter Biden story were the claims that significant ballot fraud marred the presidential election.
Since November, the most obnoxious interlocutors I have encountered are the ones who claim to be devotees of “evidence-based reasoning” and rational thought—even while they sanctimoniously insist that you concede that “there is no evidence of fraud in this election.” As with Biden’s corruption, no rational person could claim that there is no evidence. First, there has never been a modern American election where there was no fraud, so the question isn’t really whether or not there was fraud, but how much fraud occurred. Secondly, in the case of this election, we have already documented more fraud than has been exposed in any other American presidential election.
Each individual piece of evidence cannot be understood independently from the larger body of evidence: indicators that might be insignificant on their own might nevertheless contribute to a compelling portrait of evidence in aggregate. The irrational rush to entirely dismiss the possibility of any election fraud is enabled by an adamantine unwillingness to see the forest among so many trees. No recent American presidential election has come anywhere close to the number of process and tallying anomalies that have been reported in 2020. This discrepancy itself serves as an anecdotal indicator that justifies suspicion toward the results. With that in mind, it is worth reconsidering the claims of fraud in this election.
We have seen security footage of poll watchers being asked to leave in Georgia, after which the remaining officials pull containers of ballots out from under a table and begin counting after others were told counting would stop for the night. Another video shows a surreptitious hand-off of what looks to be a flash drive among poll workers. No one can claim that this is not an unusual circumstance to occur in a battleground state late in the night of a presidential election. In most criminal cases, video recordings are generally considered a highly compelling form of evidence.
If the video isn’t proof of procedural violations or fraud, then, what evidence would be required to prove that claim? It seems those who claim the allegations are “baseless” would require video footage that not only catches these poll workers in the act, but that would also show them verbally describing their actions and their malicious intent.
Typically, people don’t record themselves talking about committing a felony as they commit the crime. As for identifying which were the ballots in question, the progressive erosion of any safeguards or record-keeping on the chain of custody in the process of manual vote-counting ensures that any viable reconstruction of how the final tally was reached is impossible. Without required secrecy envelopes for ballots, with signatures not required or ignored, with mailed ballots allowed to be counted when arriving after the day of the election, with observers removed from the process, and with no other way to determine the chain of custody for mail-in ballots, the very means of producing “compelling evidence” of fraud have been systematically annihilated by the procedural changes for elections across the country.
Given that the “compelling evidence” that would convince those who insist these fraud allegations are “baseless” is basically impossible to produce, we are left with circumstantial indicators of the crime. Beyond Georgia, there is a mountain of other forms of evidence from multiple battleground states—anomalous statistical evidence, comparative historical evidence, evidence in sworn testimony from witnesses to the fraud, and anecdotal evidence. Many of these pieces of evidence are compelling on their own, and yet, even taken cumulatively, we are told the claims that there was any malfeasance in the election is a “baseless conspiracy theory.”
Traditionally, journalism has been motivated by a burning curiosity among the reporters who pursue the news. Today, they demonize the curiosity of those with whom they disagree in order to avoid the difficult task of explaining how the accusations are “baseless” in spite of so many indicators of fraud. Thus, unverified opposition research in the form of the Steele dossier can circulate on the news as if it is unquestionably true and serve as sufficient evidence to open an FBI investigation, but physical evidence of Biden family corruption is immediately (without any further investigation) dismissed as so plainly fraudulent that news related to the topic will not even be allowed to circulate.
But the concerns about the legitimacy of this election are anything but baseless. Evidence abounds. They are counting that our cowardice and shame will be sufficient to make us deny those facts. If we will not testify to that evidence openly, then it might as well not exist. We cannot be cowards and we can’t be ashamed. Speak—and speak in the knowledge that the only baseless claim is the one that says it is “baseless” to assert the truth that this election can never be construed as free and fair.
Recommended reading.