MyPillow, Overstock fail to relent!

FRIDAY, JULY 26, 2024

True Belief marches on: The news report appeared online on July 20, in the New York Times. 

It provides the germ of an anthropology lesson, but also a lesson in logic. For starters, the news report ran beneath this dual headline:

The Voting Machine Conspiracy Theorists Are Still at It
Patrick Byrne, Mike Lindell and other Trump supporters who made baseless assertions that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 election are using court cases to keep spreading lies about the company.

Those are the headlines atop the report. Here are the first four paragraphs:

Nearly four years later, zealous supporters of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged its machines to rob him of the 2020 election are still at it.

Even though Dominion has aggressively defended itself in court, a network of pro-Trump activists has continued to push false claims against the company, often by seeking to use information gleaned from the very defamation lawsuits the firm has filed against them.

The network includes wealthy business executives like Patrick Byrne, who once ran Overstock.com, and Mike Lindell, the founder of the bedding company MyPillow. Both have sought without credible evidence to put Dominion at the heart of a vast conspiracy to deny Mr. Trump a victory.

It also includes a pro-Trump sheriff from southwest Michigan, a former election official from Colorado and Mr. Byrne’s own lawyer, who is facing charges of tampering with Dominion machines and who once worked alongside Mr. Trump’s legal team in claiming that the company was part of a plot to subvert the last election.

Remarkably, Lindell and Byrne "are still at it." Joined by a pro-Trump sheriff and a former official, they continue to pound away at the machinations of Dominion Voting Systems.

We'll recommend two approaches to the material we've posted. Thew first approach involves a collection of somewhat related terms. In order of appearance, the terms in question are these:

Baseless assertions
Lies
False claims
[The absence of] credible evidence

You can even add "conspiracy theory." Our notes would go like this:

Presumably, a "baseless assertion" will generally resemble an assertion which is made in the absence of "credible evidence." One question would go like this:

How does a "baseless assertion" differ from a "false claim?"

Moving right along:

Presumably, every "lie" will involve a "false claim." On what basis can we assert that a "false claim" is a "lie?"

Also and even this:

Can a "baseless assertion" turn out to be true? How about a "conspiracy theory?" In the face of such complexifications, we always think of Gene Brabender, the 20th century's greatest anthropologist. As recorded by Jim Bouton, his most famous remark went like this:

Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.

Those questions stem from the old puzzler, "What's in a word?" Now we turn to a different set of ruminations:

Is it possible? Is it possible that Lindell and Byrne still believe that the last election was somehow stolen by something done by Dominion? 

Is it possible that they actually believe some such thing? That they therefore aren't actually "lying?"

We don't know how to answer that question. We'd love to see journalists speak to medical / psychological specialists about such matters. That said, if history has taught us anything, it teaches that they're likely to speak to the Easter Bunny first.

Full disclosure! We've all been exposed to a major anthropological lesson over the past dozen years. The apparent lesson is this:

Especially in highly fraught circumstances, you can get a whole lot of people to believe almost any damn fool thing. 

With that, one last question comes to mind:

Is it possible that a nutcase like Donald J. Trump is actually one of those people? Is it possible that he actually believes the baseless assertions he makes?

Full disclosure: As we noted this morning, we studied under Professor N. That's probably why we're so sharp.