Can we stop saying “baseless” and just say “false” or “lying”? By the epistemic standards we apply to any normal fact, this garbage about millions of votes being stolen isn’t (merely) “unfounded”. It’s false. It’s a lie.
Like, sure, it’s logically possible that every Republican state election authority and all the cybersecurity agencies, have totally missed the electoral equivalent of a whale in the bathtub. It’s logically possible we’re all brains in vats & all reality is an illusion.
But we’re not in freshman philosophy & newspapers don’t normally apply the Cartesian method of doubt before deploying terms like “true” and “false.” By any normal standard, these claims are false.
If this nonsense were just circulating on fringe message boards, no news outlets would have the slightest qualms about calling it “false.” If you become skittish about using the word when the president quotes the message board, you’re just getting played. Dangerously.
It’s not even accurate to say these claims are offered “without evidence”. There is “evidence” offered, and it’s uniformly terrible and overwhelmingly contradicted by better evidence. There’s no reason to make it sound like we just don’t have any information either way.
It is not more “objective”—in fact it is in practice misinforming your readers—to adopt a pose of postmodern nihilism about, like, whether anyone can ever really KNOW anything, maaaaan. At least when the president said it.
“I am a Bengal tiger and can shoot lasers from my eyes,” said Sanchez, without providing evidence. Some critics object that Sanchez appears to be bipedal and lacks characteristic physiognomic features of panthera tigris. Scientists described ocular lasers as infeasible.
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