You’ve probably heard that Sidney Powell is making some very serious accusations about voter fraud. So far she hasn’t presented much evidence, but that’s apparently the way lawyers play it. They save the evidence for the court room. So at this point all we have to go on is that a high-powered and well-respected attorney is making this case. What can we learn just from that<\/i>? <\/p>\n
Dave Rubin made an argument on his show yesterday about Powell’s statement, and Rubin’s position echoes the “Lord, Liar, Lunatic” argument about Jesus. That argument (I’m sure you know) claims that someone who makes the outrageous claim of being God can be wrong for one of two reasons: he can be a wicked liar or he can be a complete lunatic. On the other hand, he can be right. There are, of course, lots of ways to criticize that argument (e.g., are there really only three possibilities?), but that’s not the point here. I simply found the parallel interesting and worth mentioning. <\/p>\n
Rubin makes a similar claim about Powell in this respect. She has a whole lot to lose by making outrageous accusations that turn out to be false, and you can frame the argument along similar lines. Following the LLL structure, consider the possibilities. <\/p>\n
1. She’s wrong and she knows she’s wrong.<\/b> She’s making emotional, heart-felt, wrap-me-in-the-flag appeals to virtue and patriotic duty when she knows she’s got nothing. <\/p>\n
I agree with Rubin: that does not seem likely. She has a whole lot to lose from taking that sort of position. It would compromise her ability to get big cases in the future, because people would just say, “Sure, and you’re the one who gave us that teary-eyed pile of nonsense about voter fraud.” <\/p>\n
2. She’s wrong and she’s deceived.<\/b> Someone has been feeding her false information, and she’s been duped. <\/p>\n
That doesn’t seem likely either. A competent, experienced lawyer like Powell has been around the block a time or two, and she should know better than to fall for crazy theories and bad evidence. You don’t get to be someone like Sidney Powell by falling for stupid, unsupported claims. <\/p>\n
3. She’s right.<\/b> There really was widespread corruption. <\/p>\n
This seems unlikely, but for a very different reason. Conspiracies of this level require a level of coordination and excellence in execution that few people can pull off. At least it seems that way to me. And the penalties for being caught pulling off such a crime are pretty severe. <\/p>\n
Of course people do stupid things that put themselves in jeopardy every day, and the alleged players in this case may have acted on the reasonable expectation that the media and their political friends would cover for them. So this one can cut both ways. <\/p>\n
Overall, I’m not nearly ready to say that I believe Powell. I’m content to wait and see. But Rubin is right to point out that there is an argument to be made in her favor simply on the basis of this sort of analysis. She would be very stupid to be making these claims if she couldn’t prove them. And she’s not stupid. <\/p>\n
At the very least we should admit that there might be something here, and that it should be investigated. And if Powell has led the country on a snipe hunt, it should end her career. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You’ve probably heard that Sidney Powell is making some very serious accusations about voter fraud. So far she hasn’t presented much evidence, but that’s apparently the way lawyers play it. They save the evidence for the court room. So at this point all we have to go on is that a high-powered and well-respected attorney … Continue reading “Dave Rubin, Sidney Powell and the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":795,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions\/795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}