An implicit declaration of (civil) war

What is the essence of some­one pre­tend­ing not to notice the essen­tial aspect of the cen­tral alle­ga­tion with respect to an emi­nent­ly essen­tial mat­ter to which he is an inter­est­ed par­ty, aspect that he eas­i­ly and obvi­ous­ly pos­sess­es the intel­li­gence to notice, of some­one implic­it­ly say­ing A while explic­it­ly stat­ing B? A refusal to engage in ratio­nal dia­logue, which lat­ter is in turn the sin­gle way to avert vio­lence between hold­ers of oppos­ing view­points: an implic­it dec­la­ra­tion of (civ­il) war.

I am obvi­ous­ly talk­ing about the Georgia SecOfState and his assistant(s), in the above video between minute 8 and 10, claim­ing that in the night­ly vote count­ing at State Farm Arena every­thing had been done cor­rect­ly, while not address­ing with a sin­gle word as prob­lem­at­ic that the par­ti­san poll watch­ers had been sent away for the night so that the count­ing was with­out any doubt ille­gal. Sterling implic­it­ly nar­rates the fact as such, while at the end of those two min­utes claim­ing that all count­ing had been done cor­rect­ly “with observers”.

This is a bla­tant case of will­ful dis­tor­tion of log­ic in the pur­suit of one’s own advan­tage (the GA SecOfState and his assis­tants like Sterling know they are at fault and refuse at all cost to admit it, appar­ent­ly in order to pro­tect their rep­u­ta­tion which in this way they taint only that much fur­ther). It was in the occa­sion of such a case that in Dante’s Commedia an assis­tant dev­il uttered the phrase head­ing this web­site (“Perhaps you did not think I was a logi­cian!”) to the soul of Guido I. da Montefeltro, tak­ing it from the hands of St. Francis, and then down with him to hell. St. Francis in turn was pow­er­less as the dev­il had log­ic on his side.

So what Raffensberger & Co. com­mit­ted is what is known to Christians as “blas­phe­my against the Holy Spirit” to which Dante refers in the men­tioned pas­sage of the Commedia, which “blas­phe­my”, as we shall deduce on this site, is essen­tial­ly noth­ing but a con­scious nega­tion of log­ic, the only sin that can­not “be for­giv­en, either in this age or in the age to come.” And just as Guido I. da Montefeltro, to whom loico’s sig­na­ture phrase is being uttered in the Commedia, Raffensberger & Co. will roast in hell eter­nal­ly, log­i­cal­ly speak­ing. And unfor­tu­nate­ly for them, log­ic has the uncom­fort­able aspect of unavoid­ably real­iz­ing itself, lat­er or sooner.