We use the word "steal," as we use many words, in several distinct but related senses. Here is an illustration of the core meaning. Joe goes into a candy store, looks around furtively (from the Latin fūr, "thief") and pockets some M&M's and walks out
Silence debate by intimidating people
- The most popular meme floating about in polite society today is the contention that any hint of the 2020 presidential election being ******* is a “Big Lie”
- This is important because there are many different ways in which this rhetorical epithet needs to be expressed if it is to achieve its goal
- To achieve this, a number of different rhetorical registers must be sounded
- Some are blunt and angry
- Others employ careful-or at least careful-sounding-analysis
- Still others eschew personal abuse almost entirely
The 2020 election was not stolen outright. It was misappropriated by the forces Hemingway identifies:
- The media, which hated Trump, Big Tech (Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter, etc.), and the Democrats, who in several states used the COVID emergency as an excuse to circumvent the Constitution and change election procedures by executive fiat rather than (as mandated by the Constitution) through the state legislatures.
- Did that constitutionally dubious procedure mean that the election was stolen? Maybe not. But surely it casts a shadow.
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