> The problem is that the sides don't even agree on the same facts anymore.
That's certainly going to be the case at times, but that's also no reason to give up. Where substantial outcomes rely on facts, good institutions build ways of addressing contention about the facts themselves into to the order they impose on discourse. It can't guarantee a correct outcome -- as you say, sometimes you have to wiggle around the truth for a while first -- but it's better than the nihilism of failing to engage the problem altogether.
> some think there was election fraud, and some don't.
The institutions where questions of election fraud were mediated were accessible to both sides in equal measure -- arguably biased toward the side that lost, given how the privilege of selecting judicial appointments has shaken out over the last two decades and who held the resources/power available to federal and various state executive authorities last fall. And they seem to have determined that evidence of systemic outcome-changing fraud was thin indeed.
I suppose it's possible to imagine a different outcome from a similarly robust process over time, but if there are "other auditors that show very convincing evidence" of outcome-changing fraud, it would be interesting hear what that specifically is, and why that evidence didn't make its way into the venues that actually mattered in a moment when the outgoing administration had considerable advantages.
That's certainly going to be the case at times, but that's also no reason to give up. Where substantial outcomes rely on facts, good institutions build ways of addressing contention about the facts themselves into to the order they impose on discourse. It can't guarantee a correct outcome -- as you say, sometimes you have to wiggle around the truth for a while first -- but it's better than the nihilism of failing to engage the problem altogether.
> some think there was election fraud, and some don't.
The institutions where questions of election fraud were mediated were accessible to both sides in equal measure -- arguably biased toward the side that lost, given how the privilege of selecting judicial appointments has shaken out over the last two decades and who held the resources/power available to federal and various state executive authorities last fall. And they seem to have determined that evidence of systemic outcome-changing fraud was thin indeed.
I suppose it's possible to imagine a different outcome from a similarly robust process over time, but if there are "other auditors that show very convincing evidence" of outcome-changing fraud, it would be interesting hear what that specifically is, and why that evidence didn't make its way into the venues that actually mattered in a moment when the outgoing administration had considerable advantages.