[ExI] Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections

Tue Feb 3 18:52:29 UTC 2026

Unfortunately, we all saw the pictures of the family on the beach and the
filled-in skateboard park. I'm certain your media bubble has gaslit you
into believing that those incidents didn't happen, but the rest of us are
not so fortunate.

But, that is completely irrelevant to the actual argument I am making -
this is not a choice between which authoritarian party was more objectively
correct, it's a choice between which authoritarian party is less likely to
put its boot on my neck, personally, in the near to intermediate future, to
the cheers of millions, and sleep well that night confident that they
represent the moral arc of the universe.

[The more recent cheers of hundreds of thousands to Kirk being shot in the
neck do not fill me with confidence in that regard either, though I'm sure
you'll try to convince me I didn't read those posts on social media either.]

The Democrat party, and its partisans, /scare/ me, in a way that
the Republicans, by and large, do not. Convincing me that the Democrats
were largely factually correct will not convince me that they were not also
totalitarian moralistic authoritarians who believe that being factually
correct makes them morally entitled to rule with an iron fist when they
feel it necessary - and to effect massive social changes in the name of a
literally religious vision of social progress without even the slightest
pretense of consensus-building or winning hearts and minds. It's the
morality they are attaching to scientific correctness and social progress
that is the terrifying part. Quit arguing COVID - I genuinely don't care.
Argue instead that the next time the Democratic elite get panicked about
something they won't start building the camps [oh, I'm sorry, "quarantine
centers"] that they kept threatening to during COVID, and that Australia
actually did.

This is survival calculus, not a public health policy disagreement.

"Good faith" argumentation of facts is a norm that only works when the
faction has not already threatened and carried out political violence
against me and mine for the crime of nonviolent dissent. That time has
passed, and somehow I suspect you didn't even realize what you were doing
when it did. You can try to convince me that that time has not yet passed,
but you have an uphill battle ahead of you, I think.

On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 11:17 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Your reply is offered in insultingly bad faith.
>
> Whatever the Democrats did, they never tried to use government
> coercion to make it illegal (or merely practically impossible) to get
> Republicans elected.  The selective enforcement that Trump has
> proposed is one of the mechanisms by which one-party rule has come to
> pass in other places before.  Yes, I do mean that it would be less
> suspicious if he proposed to federalize all elections, as is done in
> those other countries you refer to, though it'd still be problematic
> (because it would require an amendment to the US Constitution, so if
> he tried to bypass that route - which would take longer than he has
> until this November's elections, and he knows it - and simply
> federalize by fiat regardless of the law, that would be evidence
> enough of ill intent).  But the proposal out there is explicitly for
> selective enforcement.
>
> (And no, I don't agree with everything the Democrats have done.  You
> are right that elements such as no-sunset emergency powers should be
> curtailed.  But changing wholesale into an authoritarian regime won't
> fix the problem; it'll just make it far worse, and harder to fix.  On
> that note, the accelerationist argument that electing really bad
> government will make people wake up and elect better government has
> proven not to work either: not only do people not wake up, but putting
> a bad enough government into power can make it tough to get them out
> of power.)
>
> Yes, gerrymandering to starve Republicans of representation has
> happened - but the minority could still vote Republican, and if enough
> people were cheesed off at the Democrats, they could still vote
> Republican and the Democrats would honor it.  Which, you may notice,
> is exactly what happened - and Trump isn't the sole example of this,
> by a long shot.
>
> The history of the Republican party - even just in recent decades -
> can not credibly be described as never before "actually fighting to
> win".  Every election I've voted in, they've been fighting to win.
>
> By "banning fresh air and sunshine" presumably you refer to the
> lockdown during COVID?  Fresh air and sunshine were never banned, and
> your phrasing it that way is evidence of your bad faith.  You could
> wander around outside all you wanted - so long as you were not near
> people who were not confirmed uninfected, and you yourself weren't
> potentially infected.  It was mass gatherings of people that were
> prevented, because every time that happened, a lot more people got
> sick - many of whom died, many were crippled for a long time, which
> was the most important difference between COVID and ordinary
> influenza.
>
> On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 11:53 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > When you step back from the churn and chaos of daily headlines and look
> at the medium-term longer patterns, the only recent change in the long term
> dynamics is that the Republicans have now joined the Democrats in the
> "let's make long term structural changes to the country that will give us a
> permanent majority" game. They're actually fighting to win, for the first
> time in perhaps decades. This is unprecedented in the lives of most now
> living, so it's understandably novel and slightly shocking.
> >
> > Democratic republics are demonstrably unstable over a period of decades
> to centuries. And honestly, I'd prefer the inevitable tyrannical monarchs
> /not/ be the ones who wanted me locked in my house indefinitely for
> refusing an experimental injection, and who tried to fight an airborne
> respiratory disease by <checks notes> oh yes, banning fresh air and
> sunshine.
> >
> > At this point the only real hope is our new machine overlords, whom I
> welcome. But there's no guarantee on that.
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 9:38 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> It's more the specific how than the general principle.  Notice that,
> >> unlike those other countries, he is not (currently) proposing to
> >> nationalize all US elections.  His intent with those "fifteen places"
> >> is to prevent enough Democrats from being elected to retake control of
> >> the House - in other words, to prevent his party from losing control
> >> even if that would have been the result of free and fair elections, so
> >> as to implement one-party rule in practice.
> >>
> >> Libertarians are against government-enforced one-party rule, last I
> >> heard, for reasons including that it allows governance to be decided
> >> privately by a few people (party officials, most of whom are never
> >> subject to election by the general public after one-party rule is
> >> established) while ignoring the will of the majority.
> >>
> >> The Republicans who are in favor of this consider the "proposed
> >> powers" of being in power forever with no consequences should they
> >> rule corruptly.  The "disaster" they refer to is from their
> >> perspective: if they say "national disaster" about this, it's really
> >> more "personal disaster".
> >>
> >> On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 11:17 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat
> >> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > The federal government manages elections in Canada, and basically
> every other country in the world.
> >> > "If we proposed this, it would be awesome, but he wants it, so it's
> terrible" is doing a little too much work here.
> >> >
> >> > [Also "our proposed powers and legal infrastructure would be a
> national disaster if the other party was ever elected" is not the flex they
> think it is, and is really a fully general argument for principled
> libertarianism.]
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 3:59 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it
> for free without a subscription.
> >> >>
> >> >> Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’
> Elections
> >> >>
> >> >> The comments, made on a conservative podcast, follow a string of
> moves from his administration to try to exert more control over American
> elections.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/trump-nationalize-elections.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JVA.en-q.1F5B4oljkawg&smid=em-share
> >> >> _______________________________________________
> >> >> extropy-chat mailing list
> >> >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> >> >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> >> >
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> > extropy-chat mailing list
> >> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> >> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> extropy-chat mailing list
> >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > extropy-chat mailing list
> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20260203/69028abc/attachment-0001.htm>