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1. Embed this notice
   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 02:38:11 JST Paul Cantrell

   • myrmepropagandist

   I’m with @futurebird here:

   https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/110934294830188426

   …and two specific memories come to mind:

   The first: NPR reporter Mara Liasson did a private Q&A with MPR employees (where I worked at the time) just after Bush v Gore was decided. I asked her a question to the effect of “Why has the press suddenly pivoted from neutral skepticism to acceptance of the results? Why now? Why not earlier, or later? Why leave earlier parts of the process open to critical scrutiny, but not the SCOTUS decision?”

   1/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 02:41:59 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     Her answer was extremely confusing to me at the time, but illuminating in hindsight. It was essentially “Because that’s where the process stops!” There was an invisible line in her mind beyond which the press needed to stop being skeptical. A fence around journalistic inquiry.

     2/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 02:43:53 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     In hindsight, it was a harbinger both

     (1) of the quasi-religious institutionalism that allowed Trump’s abuse of power to go unchecked for so long, and

     (2) of the quasi-religious faith in the integrity of the SCOUTS that puts us in our current situation of 2? 3? 4? justices enjoying what we’d call bribery in most any other context.

     3/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 02:46:26 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     (Something that’s a digression and painfully obvious, but still bears mentioning here: the Bush v Gore decision itself was a harbinger of the current SCOTUS’s attitude of “we can just make shit up and nobody can stop us” jurisprudence. It’s as if the right wing realized their own power in 2000, stepped back in shock for ~15 years, then went all in.)

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 02:50:07 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     The second memory: there was an independent effort to go ahead and count the Florida ballots under the sort of careful, time-consuming process that Bush v Gore short-circuited.

     It found that “if the disputes over the validity of all the ballots in question had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the electoral result would have been reversed and Gore would have won by 60 to 171 votes.”

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#NORC-sponsored_Florida_Ballot_Project_recount

     Remember that? Probably not, because…

     5/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 02:52:55 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     …those findings came out in November 2001, and news editors deliberately downplayed them because they were afraid of seeming divisive in the wake of the Sep 11 attacks.

     The NYT — which was a far more credible paper at the time — ran its story on those findings under the headline “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote.” https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/us/examining-vote-overview-study-disputed-florida-ballots-finds-justices-did-not.html

     Compare that headline to the summary in the previous post.

     Another harbinger.

     6/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 02:57:06 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Woodchaz

     @Woodchaz Right, and it ended when the SCOTUS decided. What I’m talking about went public a whole year later, at which point Bush was already president.

   • Embed this notice
     Woodchaz (woodchaz@social.vivaldi.net)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 02:57:07 JST Woodchaz

     in reply to

     @inthehands
     I remember it. I was on the other side then, but I remember going weeks not knowing who the president was. I just wanted it to get resolved, even if Gore won.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 03:10:10 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist

     In short, we had warning bells about:

     • SCOTUS discarding jurisprudence to exercise political power

     • Misplaced faith in institutions allowing abuse of power

     • The press burying inquiry and truth if they’re “divisive”

     …every one of which came back to bite us with Trump.

     Bush v Gore was a judicial coup. Our society failed to learn from it.

     I’ll echo @futurebird’s question to those who said back in 2000 that acceptance was necessary: Do •you• see that moment in a new light now?

     /end

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 05:56:08 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • peachfront
     • myrmepropagandist

     @peachfront @futurebird
     I don’t blame Gore. I don’t think he had viable options: after losing at SCOTUS, he had no legal avenues left; his only remaining arena to continue the fight was popular opinion, and the press was not going to give him the oxygen to do that. As an individual, he probably made the savvy decision. As a country, we fucked up bad.

     And yes, maybe we wouldn’t have prevented 9/11, but pretty sure he wouldn’t have launched a full-on invasion of either Afghanistan or Iraq. So.

   • Embed this notice
     peachfront (peachfront@toot.community)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 05:56:10 JST peachfront

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist

     @inthehands @futurebird

     Honestly, i was beginning to feel like i was the only person in America who remembered that

     I never respected Gore again for his cowardice in not fighting back aga. the 2000 coup, esp. when it came out he HAD won the election-- did he believe in democracy was worth fighting for or nah? Apparently nah

     + since all knew by early Aug '01 that bin Laden was planning another attack, unlike W, Gore would've presumably acted on that knowledge, potentially saving 3K lives

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 06:15:08 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     @TruthSandwich
     Missed the point, I think:
     https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/110935261468133563

   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 06:15:09 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist

     @inthehands @futurebird

     Again, what precisely would you have had Gore do? The SCOTUS ruled.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 07:57:04 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Sven A. Schmidt

     @finestructure
     In a way 2004 was worse. It was like, “Wait, people know now, and they still •want• this?!”

   • Embed this notice
     Sven A. Schmidt (finestructure@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 07:57:05 JST Sven A. Schmidt

     in reply to

     @inthehands Man, that election was heartbreaking - and I didn’t even live in the US anymore, let alone take part in the vote. I was in a school exchange in the US in 87/88 and have been following US news and politics ever since. Was glued to CNN all night in Germany, following the news from Tallahassee. What awful, frustrating memories. The profanities I shouted at the TV…

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 09:02:05 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Sven A. Schmidt
     • Steve Canon

     @steve @finestructure I’d been canvassing for Kerry, so…yeah.

     OTOH, I had the fortune of being at the big MN state party for the Obama campaign when the networks all called the election, and I have never experienced before or since a wave of euphoria passing through a crowd like that.

   • Embed this notice
     Steve Canon (steve@discuss.systems)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Aug-2023 09:02:06 JST Steve Canon

     in reply to

     • Sven A. Schmidt

     @inthehands @finestructure 2004 was awful. I was flying from NYC back to Berkeley on election night and the mood was … ugh.