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SUNDOWN, Texas (Reuters) - Brett Fryar is a middle-class Republican. A 50-year-old chiropractor in this west Texas town, he owns a small business. He has two undergraduate degrees and a master’s degree, in organic chemistry. He attends Southcrest Baptist Church in nearby Lubbock.Fryar didn’t much like Donald Trump at first, during the U.S. president’s 2016 campaign. He voted for Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the Republican primaries.Now, Fryar says he would go to war for Trump. He has joined the newly formed South Plains Patriots, a group of a few hundred members that includes a “reactionary” force of about three dozen - including Fryar and his son, Caleb - who conduct firearms training.ADVERTISEMENTNothing will convince Fryar and many others here in Sundown - including the town’s mayor, another Patriots member - that Democrat Joe Biden won the Nov. 3 presidential election fairly. They believe Trump’s stream of election-fraud allegations and say they’re preparing for the possibility of a “civil war” with the American political left."If President Trump comes out and says: 'Guys, I have irrefutable proof of fraud, the courts won't listen, and I'm now calling on Americans to take up arms,' we would go," said Fryar, wearing a button-down shirt, pressed slacks and a paisley tie during a recent interview at his office.The unshakable trust in Trump in this town of about 1,400 residents reflects a national phenomenon among many Republicans, despite the absence of evidence in a barrage of post-election lawsuits by the president and his allies. About half of Republicans polled by Reuters/Ipsos said Trump “rightfully won” the election but had it stolen from him in systemic fraud favoring Biden, according to a survey conducted between Nov. 13 and 17. Just 29% of Republicans said Biden rightfully won. Other polls since the election have reported that an even higher proportion - up to 80% - of Republicans trust Trump’s baseless fraud narrative.Trump’s legal onslaught has so far flopped, with judges quickly dismissing many cases and his lawyers dropping or withdrawing from others. None of the cases contain allegations - much less evidence - that are likely to invalidate enough votes to overturn the election, election experts say.And yet the election-theft claims are proving politically potent. All but a handful of Republican lawmakers have backed Trump’s fraud claims or stayed silent, effectively freezing the transition of power as the president refuses to concede. Trump has succeeded in sowing further public distrust in the media, which typically calls elections, and undermined citizens’ faith in the state and local election officials who underpin American http://democracy.In Reuters interviews with 50 Trump voters, all said they believed the election was rigged or in some way illegitimate. Of those, 20 said they would consider accepting Biden as their president, but only in light of proof that the election was conducted fairly. Most repeated debunked conspiracy theories espoused by Trump, Republican officials and conservative media claiming that millions of votes were dishonestly switched to Biden in key states by biased poll workers and hacked voting machines.ADVERTISEMENTMany voters interviewed by Reuters said they formed their opinions by watching emergent right-wing media outlets such as Newsmax and One American News Network that have amplified Trump’s fraud claims. Some have boycotted Fox News out of anger that the network called Biden the election winner and that some of its news anchors - in contrast to its opinion show stars - have been skeptical of Trump’s fraud allegations.“I just sent Fox News an email,” Fryar said, telling the network: “You’re the only news I’ve watched for the last six years, but I will not watch you anymore.”The widespread rejection of the election result among Republicans reflects a new and dangerous dynamic in American politics: the normalization of false and increasingly extreme conspiracy theories among tens of millions of mainstream voters, according to government scholars, analysts and some lawmakers on both sides of the political divide. The trend has deeply troubling long-term implications for American political and civic institutions, said Paul Light, a veteran political scientist at New York University (NYU)."This is dystopian," Light said. "America could fracture.”Adam Kinzinger, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, is among the few party members to publicly recognize Biden’s victory. He called his Republican colleagues’ reluctance to reject Trump’s conspiracies a failure of political courage that threatens to undermine American democracy for years. If citizens lose faith in election integrity, that could lead to “really bad things,” including violence and social unrest, he said in an interview.David Gergen - an adviser to four previous U.S. presidents, two Democrats and two Republicans - said Trump is trying to “kneecap” the Biden administration before it takes power, noting this is the first time a sitting American president has tried to overthrow an election result.ADVERTISEMENTIt may not be the last time. Many Republicans see attacks on election integrity as a winning issue for future campaigns - including the next presidential race, according to one Republican operative close to the Trump campaign. The party, the person said, is setting up a push for “far more stringent oversight on voting procedures in 2024,” when the party’s nominee will likely be Trump or his anointed successor.Other Republicans urged patience and faith in the government. Charlie Black, a veteran Republican strategist, does not believe Republican lawmakers will continue backing Trump’s fraud claims after Biden is inaugurated. They will need White House cooperation on basic government functions, such as appropriations and defense bills, he said."People will come to see we still have a functioning government,” Black said, and Republicans will become “resigned to Biden, and see it’s not the end of the world.”The Biden campaign declined to comment for this story. Boris Epshteyn, a strategic advisor to the Trump campaign, said: “The President and his campaign are confident that when every legal vote is counted, and every illegal vote is not, it will be determined that President Trump has won re-election to a second term.”‘THERE’S JUST NO WAY’Media outlets declared Biden the election winner on Nov. 7. As calls were finalized in battleground states, Biden’s lead in the Electoral College that decides the presidency widened to 306 to 232. (For a graphic explaining the electoral college, see: tmsnrt.rs/38VTUvK )ADVERTISEMENTMany Republican voters scoff at those results, convinced Trump was cheated. Raymond Fontaine, a hardware store owner in Oakville, Connecticut, said Biden’s vote total - the highest of any presidential candidate in history - makes no sense because the 78-year-old Democrat made relatively few campaign appearances and seemed to be in mental decline."You are going to tell me 77 million Americans voted for him? There is just no way," said Fontaine, 50.The latest popular vote total for Biden has grown to about 79 million, compared to some 73 million for Trump.Like many Trump supporters interviewed by Reuters, Fontaine was deeply suspicious of computerized voting machines. Trump and his allies have alleged, without producing evidence, a grand conspiracy to manipulate votes through the software used in many battleground states.In Grant County, West Virginia - a mountainous region where more than 88% of voters backed the president - trust in Trump runs deep. Janet Hedrick, co-owner of the Smoke Hole Caverns log cabin resort in the small town of Cabins, said she would never accept Biden as a legitimate president."There's millions and millions of Trump votes that were just thrown out,” said Hedrick, 70, a retired teacher and librarian. “That computer was throwing them out.”ADVERTISEMENTAt the Sunset Restaurant in Moorefield, West Virginia - a diner featuring omelettes, hotcakes and waitresses who remember your order - a mention of the election sparked a spirited discussion at one table. Gene See, a retired highway construction inspector, and Bob Hyson, a semi-retired insurance sales manager, said Trump had been cheated, that Biden had dementia and that Democrats planned all along to quickly replace Biden with his more liberal running mate for vice president, Kamala Harris."I think if they ever get to the bottom of it, they will find massive fraud," said another of the diners, Larry Kessel, a 67-year-old farmer.Kessel’s wife, Jane, patted him on the arm, trying to calm him, as he grew agitated while railing against anti-Trump media bias.Trump’s rage against the media has lately included rants against Fox News. He has pushed his supporters towards more right-wing outlets such as Newsmax and One America News Network, which have championed the president’s fraud claims.Rory Wells, 51, a New Jersey lawyer who attended a pro-Trump “stop the steal” election protest in Trenton last week, said he now watches Newsmax because Fox isn’t sufficiently conservative.“I like that I get to hear from Rudy Giuliani and others who are not immediately discounted as being crazy,” he said of Trump’s lead election lawyer.ADVERTISEMENTNewsmax CEO Chris Ruddy said the network’s viewership has exploded since the election, with nearly 3 million viewers nightly via cable television and streaming video devices.Ruddy said Newsmax isn’t saying that Biden stole the election - but they’re also not calling him the winner given that Trump has valid legal claims. “The same media who said Biden would win in a landslide now want to not have recounts,” he said in a phone interview.Charles Herring, president of One America News Network, said in a statement that his network has seen three weeks of record ratings, as “frustrated Fox News viewers” have tuned in.‘NO WAY IN HELL’Some Trump supporters said they would accept Biden as the winner if that is the final, official result. Janel Henritz, 36, echoed some others in saying that she believed the election included fraud, but perhaps not enough to change the outcome. Henritz, who works alongside her mother Janet Hedrick at their log cabin resort in West Virginia, said she would accept the outcome if Biden remains the winner after recounts and court challenges."Then he won fair and square," she said.ADVERTISEMENTIn Sundown, Texas, Mayor Jonathan Strickland said there’s "no way in hell" Biden won fairly. The only way he’ll believe it, he said, is if Trump himself says so.“Trump is the only one we’ve been able to trust for the last four years,” said Strickland, an oilfield production engineer. “As far as the civil war goes, I don’t think it’s off the table.”If it comes to a fight, Caleb Fryar is ready. But the 26-year-old son of Brett Fryar, the chiropractor, said he hoped Trump’s fraud allegations would instead spark a massive mobilization of Republican voters in future elections.Asked whether Trump might be duping his followers, he said it’s hard to fathom.“If I’m being manipulated by Trump ... then he is the greatest con man that ever lived in America,” Caleb Fryar said. “I think he’s the greatest patriot that ever lived.”(This story corrects to delete reference in first paragraph to Brett Fryar teaching Sunday school and bible studies at Southcrest Baptist Church. He taught those classes at another church.)ADVERTISEMENT(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Texas, Nathan Layne in West Virginia and Tim Reid in California; editing by Brian Thevenot)Incoming GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other supporters of President Trump protest the election results outside the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Nov. 7. (Kevin D. Liles/for The Washington Post)Elena Parent, a Democratic state lawmaker from the Atlanta area, listened incredulously in a small hearing room in early December as a stream of witnesses spun fantastical tales of alleged election fraud before the Georgia Senate’s Judiciary Committee.A retired Army colonel claimed the state’s voting machines were controlled by Communists from Venezuela. A volunteer lawyer with President Trump’s campaign shared surveillance video that she said showed election workers in Atlanta counting “suitcases” of phony ballots that swung Georgia’s election to former vice president Joe Biden. The president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, told the panel: “Every single vote should be taken away from Biden.”“Since this has been debunked repeatedly, what evidence can you give to us that counters what our elections officials presented us with only an hour ago?” Parent asked one of the witnesses, her voice rising in exasperation. When she tried to ask a follow-up question, the Republican committee chairman cut her off.AdHer questions — and the fact that the claims were misleading, unsubstantiated or just plain false — did little to keep the rumors in check. It didn’t matter that state and local election officials had explained what was in the video and conducted a hand recount to show that the machines were not rigged. It didn’t matter that multiple news outlets detailed, over and over, that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. It didn’t matter that, amid a global pandemic and massive demand for mail ballots, a system under historic strain in fact held up decisively.To preserve his hold on power, Trump has spent the weeks since Election Day promoting falsehoodsabout voting problems in Georgia and five other states, successfully persuading tens of millions of his supporters to believe a lie — that the election was stolen from him, and from them.He has done so by harnessing the power of his position, using his pulpit at the White House and his Twitter feed to let loose a fusillade of conspiracy theories. His assault on the integrity of the election has gotten a hefty assist from pro-Trump media outfits and an assortment of state lawmakers and lawyers who gave oxygen to the debunked allegations — and a majority of congressional Republicans, who called on the Supreme Court to overturn the results in four states.Control of the Senate rests in the hands of Georgia voters in the Jan. 5 runoff election that will determine two seats. (The Washington Post)Trump is continuing to press his case, even now that the electoral college has formally elected Biden. In a meeting with allies on Friday, the president discussed deploying the military to rerun the election and appointing attorney Sidney Powell, whose conspiracy theories about election fraud have been widely discredited, as a special counsel to investigate the outcome.Along the way, Trump has willfully damaged two bedrocks of American democracy that he has been going after for years: confidence in the media as a source of trusted information and faith in systems of government. It might be one of his lasting legacies.A Fox News poll released on Dec. 11shows that more than a third of registered voters believe the election was stolen from Trump — a number that rises to 77 percent among those who voted for Trump. Conversely, 56 percent of voters believe Trump weakened American democracy by contesting election results in various states, with the number rising to 85 percent among those who voted for Biden, according to the poll.Trump’s campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, declined to answer specific questions about the damage the president has done or the untruths he embraced.“President Trump owes it to the 75 million Americans who voted for him — and to those who voted for Joe Biden — to ensure that the election was free, fair and secure,” he said.Even now that the electoral college has voted, and the GOP’s top leaders have publicly accepted Biden’s victory, both parties and the country overall must reckon with the mark Trump has left on American democracy. Biden will start his presidency with nearly half the country believing he is not the legitimate occupant of the White House. Many Americans who voted against Trump and have watched with horror as he has tried to subvert the results are equally disillusioned about the strength of the system, which they fear could have toppled but for the courage of a cadre of election officials, state Republicansand judges who held the line.Few anticipate that the mistrust and divisions will fade with the 45th president’s departure from the White House. One reason: The most ardent purveyors of unfounded accusations say they have no plans to back down.“The fact is that President Trump was reelected by what will be known soon to be a landslide victory unparalleled in this country,” said L. Lin Wood, a Georgia lawyer and Trump ally who has filed unsuccessful lawsuits on the president’s behalf.Wood said he spoke to the president in a phone call earlier this month, encouraging him not to concede in what he described as “a battle between good and evil.”Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, said that kind of rhetoric has emboldened some in the country to doubt the results merely because their preferred candidate lost.“We’re entering a very dangerous phase where a sizable share of the population has no faith in the basic mechanics of the democracy,” Persily said. Millions of voters, he added, now see the fight over who should lead the country as a function of “the willingness to exert power as opposed to playing by fair rules of the game.”A base willing to believeTrump has demonstrated a unique capacity to rally supporters to his war cries, even when they are false or unproven. He gained notoriety nearly a decade ago as the leader of the so-called birther movement, asserting falsely that then-President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.This year, Trump’s obsession with election fraud has tested his followers anew, and their willingness to go along with him has shown how powerful his hold is on the GOP.Thousands of President Trump’s supporters converged on Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14 to falsely claim he won the election. (The Washington Post)The president’s false claims about voting ramped up in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when election officials were gearing up for a historic surge in mail balloting. He got help from a chorus of Republican allies, who echoed and amplified his untruths on the campaign trail, on conservative television and in state capitols in key battlegrounds.In the days following the election, his rhetoric defied logic as he cited more and more outlandish accusations and echoed unverified Twitter accounts. “They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan,” Trump tweeted on Nov. 4, suggesting falsely that ballots still being counted a day after the election were fraudulent. “So bad for our Country!”On Nov. 30, the president retweeted an account named @Catturd2 that claimed in Arizona, “Truck Loads of Ballots Kept Coming in For 10 Days After Elections Officials Thought They Were Done Counting.”Many of his increasingly outrageous accusations — blasted out to his 89 million followers on Twitter — came straight from one of his new favorite news sources, One America News.“Pennsylvania Poll Watcher: USB Drives uploaded to machines, gave Biden thousands of votes,” the president tweeted on Nov. 27.Dec. 16: “Study: Dominion Machines shifted 2-3% of Trump Votes to Biden. Far more votes than needed to sway election.”Cobb County election workers recount votes by hand in Marietta, Ga. (Kevin D. Liles/for The Washington Post)Trump and his allies also claimed to have scores of “affidavits” alleging fraud on a massive scale. But the sworn statements his campaign and his allies submitted in lawsuits contained meaningless observations, such as one complaint in Michigan that a “man of intimidating size” had followed a poll watcher too closely, and another who said that a public address system was too loud and therefore “distracting to those of us trying to concentrate.”Trump and his allies have lost overwhelmingly when they tried to overturn Biden’s victory through the courts, with at least 88 judges across the country ruling against them either on procedural grounds or on the merits in more than 50 cases. The president’s campaign on Sunday said it was filing a new petition with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the result in Pennsylvania, challenging state voting procedures similar to those that the court has so far declined to act on.Even as his accusations havecollapsed under scrutiny, they have gained traction among his most ardent supporters.They have been spurred on by Trump-supporting cable and online news outlets such as OAN and Newsmax, which touted unfounded theories about the Dominion machines, dead people voting and poll workers in Michigan allegedly covering up windows with cardboard to prevent observers from watching the process.At a rally in Valdosta, Ga., earlier this month for two Republican senators facing a runoff election on Jan. 5, Trump paused his speech and turned to giant screens that played misleading news reports on fraud. Thousands in the crowd watched the videos, rapt.Trump supporters chant at a rally in Valdosta, Ga. in early December. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)Trump’s arguments made sense, his supporters said. They couldn’t believe that Biden fared better than Obama had in his races, and they were suspicious that Trump was ahead in some states on Election Day but fell behind as mail ballots were counted — either unaware or untrusting of news reports explaining why that was expected.“Do you truly believe that Joe Biden got more votes than Barack Obama?” asked Wendy Mick, 53, who traveled from New Jersey to a “Stop the Steal” rally in the District on Dec. 12, and said that Newsmax and OAN are her new preferred sources for political news. “He never campaigned. There’s no way that Biden got so many votes.”How the lie took holdThe relative silence of Republicans lawmakers in the initial days after the election, both in states and on Capitol Hill, quickly gave way to a flood of support for Trump’s posture.A stock line emerged among Republican leaders who refused to acknowledge Biden’s win: The president has the right to pursue all legal avenues available to him.But Trump has done more than pursue all legal avenues. He has openly cajoled his supporters to join the fight. And they did.In Maricopa County, Ariz., home of Phoenix, his supporters lashed out at local election officials, accusing them without evidence of improperly verifying signatures, switching Trump votes to Biden votes on duplicate ballots and keeping observers too far away from ballot-counting to see anything.In Wisconsin, they claimed the use of drop boxes for mail ballots was illegal. With most municipal offices closed to the public because of the pandemic, many city clerks set up secure drop boxes not just for ballots, but for other city business such as utility bills.“I had customers dropping off absentee ballots and saying, ‘How are you going to differentiate my ballot from a utility bill?’ and I thought, ‘Wow, you must really think I’m dumb that I can’t differentiate a ballot envelope from a utility bill,’ ” said Lori Stottler, the city clerk in Beloit, Wis., on the Illinois border. “But then I thought, ‘Well, they don’t know what I do.’ And I took a step back and I tried to explain.”GOP Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan Cutler’s Facebook page was inundated with demands from constituents that he reverse Biden’s win in the state. Protesters also gathered outside his rural home in Lancaster County on Dec. 5 with bullhorns and signs.“Petition your governor for a special session!” an organizer shouted. “Why haven’t you petitioned him?”“Do your job!” the crowd chanted back. “Do your job! Do your job!”Trump supporters pray and sing outside the Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., on Dec. 14, as the state’s electors cast their ballots for Biden. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)At one point, Rep. Seth Grove, a Republican lawmaker from York County, Pa., said a conservative activist confronted him at the Capitol in Harrisburg, demanding that the legislature take action to seat Trump’s electors — even though state law does not allow such a move.Grove said he was stunned when the longtime tea party organizer proclaimed, “You know, the Constitution doesn’t limit government!”It was a reminder, Grove said, of just how much power Trump has amassed over the Republican electorate, to the point that some of his supporters are no longer guided by political principles they have claimed adherence to in the past.“I looked at him. I’m like, ‘What?’ ” Grove recalled. “It shocked me. Shocked me.”Lawmakers in Arizona and Pennsylvania rebuffed the president’s efforts to stage official hearings to examine potential fraud. But back benchers in both states assembled media spectacles in hotel ballrooms, labeling them hearings but presenting “witnesses” that were not under oath and offering no evidence for their claims.Republican lawmakers in Michigan and Georgia did hold official hearings, giving Giuliani an additional platform to unspool a series of false claims.“I know they are under a lot of pressure from their base, from the lies being spun by Trump and his enablers, right-wing media, etc., but it was really disappointing,” said Parent, the Georgia senator. “The hearing was obviously a sham that wasn’t designed to answer any questions about the election.”Republicans on the committee did not respond to requests for comment.One witness at the Michigan hearing, Mellissa Carone, gained notoriety for a stream of unfounded accusations, including one claim that she’d seen a van pull up to a Detroit vote-counting center that was meant to bring in meals for election workers but was actually filled with phony ballots. Carone had previously been deemed “simply not credible” by a state judge.Trump lashed out at those who refused to bend to his will. He called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, an “enemy of the people” for failing to embrace the president’s accusations of fraud. He accused the Michigan secretary of state, Democrat Jocelyn Benson, of “breaking the law” by rigging voting machines.Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks at a news conference in Atlanta. (Kevin D. Liles/for The Washington Post)And he threatened Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, also a Republican, with a primary challenge in 2022 for not helping him reverse the outcome — even though Kemp had explained in a contentious phone call that he did not have the power to do so.Trump’s rhetoric has spurred some of his supporters to do more than merely protest.Raffensperger and his wife began receiving death threats and accepted a state security detail at their home in suburban Atlanta. Protesters trespassed at Benson’s home in Detroit, some armed with bullhorns and some with guns, ignoring neighbors’ pleas to go home because they were scaring children, including Benson’s 4-year-old son.In Houston, a former police captain was arrested Tuesday after allegedly slamming into an air-conditioning repairman’s truck to thwart what he said was a vast election-fraud scheme. The man, Mark Anthony Aguirre, was paid $250,000 by a right-wing organization to pursue fraud conspiracy theories and believed that the truck contained 750,000 fake ballots, police said.The truck, it turned out, was full of nothing but air conditioning parts.'The fraud happened'Vanishingly few national Republicans have been willing to stand up to the false statements, despite privately acknowledging that the election is over. “The future will take care of itself,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters in early December, refusing to acknowledge that Biden had won.In Pennsylvania, Republican lawmakers who had initially resisted the president’s entreaties wound up signing onto an emergency petition to the Supreme Court that sought to overturn Biden’s win in the state, though they never cited fraud in their filing. They also sent a letter to Congress urging federal lawmakers to reject Pennsylvania’s electoral votes when they convene on Jan. 6.Grove, the GOP lawmaker from Pennsylvania, said he and other Republicans had assumed the letter would go nowhere. A challenge requires support from a member of both the House and Senate, but Grove and others incorrectly thought they had to be from the state in question, and they knew that Pennsylvania’s two senators, Republican Patrick J. Toomey and Democrat Robert P. Casey Jr., would not support it.“We didn’t know that anyone can do it from any state,” Grove said. “That was a surprise.”Congressional Republicans also began echoing Trump’s claims; 126 of them ultimately signed onto an emergency petition to the Supreme Court seeking to overturn results in four states Biden had won.“The fraud happened,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at a hearing last week in Washington to examine election irregularities.Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who called the hearing despite acknowledgingthat Biden had won a legitimate election following the electoral college vote, declared at the start of the proceeding: “There was fraud in this election. I don’t have any doubt about that.”That idea that something went wrong with the vote this year has now taken hold among many Americans.Anna Van Winkle, a retired aesthetician in Savannah, Ga., who voted for Trump, has accepted her candidate’s defeat, but believes lawmakers must fix the election process to make sure such broad doubt in the outcome can’t happen again.“My concern is that we don’t go down this road again,” she said. “We had a problem. We had a big problem. And now, going forward, the best way to deal with this is to fix this where somebody like me is not going to wonder, ‘Okay, was there fraud here?’”Van Winkle was perplexed when she received multiple absentee ballot request forms at her address, and worries that others willing to commit ballot fraud would have been able to do so by requesting more than one ballot. Although Georgia requires identification to request a ballot online — and signature matching on ballots themselves — Van Winkle doesn’t understand why states don’t require mail voters to get their ballots notarized.Clayton County election workers recount votes in Jonesboro, Ga. (Kevin D. Liles/for The Washington Post)Voting-right activists, meanwhile, are concerned that such sentiments will now be cited as an excuse to try to erect new barriers to casting ballots.Indeed, GOP lawmakers in Georgia have already floated a proposal to eliminate no-excuses absentee balloting, meaning only those with a qualifying reason such as illness or an overseas assignment could vote by mail. In Texas, lawmakers have filed bills to limit distribution of absentee ballot applications and make it a felony to help voters fill out ballots. Pennsylvania Republicans have discussed tighter identification requirements for mail ballots and signature matches.Defenders of this year’s elections also recognize the need to shore up public confidence. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who advocated unsuccessfully for billions in election aid for states this year, believes Congress must act to curtail misinformation on social media companies, which she said fell short in their civic obligation to restrict false claims on their platforms.Klobuchar said she was heartened by the Republicans who immediately acknowledged Biden’s win, by those who did so after the electoral college vote and by the dozens of judges across the country, many of them Republican appointees, who roundly rejected the fraud claims of Trump and his allies.“All of those things mean our democracy is working during a really hard time,” she said.But there remains the reality that Trump and millions of his supporters still refuse to accept Biden’s win, creating a disturbing precedent, Klobuchar said, in a political system that has prided itself on the peaceful transfer of power and acknowledgment of election results.“I’m concerned about our democracy in the long run if these civil mores change,” she said, “so people don’t even have to tell the truth about who won.”Emma Brown, Robert Barnes, Emily Guskin, Rosalind S. Helderman, Elise Viebeck and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.

This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.ISIS Enshrines a Theology of RapeRukmini Callimachi, The New York Times | Updated: Aug 13, 2015 22:03 IST​​File Photo: Members of the Islamic State militant group. (Associated Press)​Qadiya, Iraq: In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her - it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion."I kept telling him it hurts - please stop," said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. "He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God," she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity.The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group's official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group's core tenets.The trade in Yazidi women and girls has created a persistent infrastructure, with a network of warehouses where the victims are held, viewing rooms where they are inspected and marketed, and a dedicated fleet of buses used to transport them.A total of 5,270 Yazidis were abducted last year, and at least 3,144 are still being held, according to community leaders. To handle them, the Islamic State has developed a detailed bureaucracy of sex slavery, including sales contracts notarized by the Islamic State-run Islamic courts. And the practice has become an established recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies, where casual sex is taboo and dating is forbidden.A growing body of internal policy memos and theological discussions has established guidelines for slavery, including a lengthy how-to manual issued by the Islamic State Research and Fatwa Department just last month. Repeatedly, the Islamic State leadership has emphasized a narrow and selective reading of the Quran and other religious rulings to not only justify violence, but also to elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous."Every time that he came to rape me, he would pray," said F, a 15-year-old girl who was captured on the shoulder of Mount Sinjar one year ago and was sold to an Iraqi fighter in his 20s. Like some others interviewed by The New York Times, she wanted to be identified only by her first initial because of the shame associated with rape."He kept telling me this is ibadah," she said, using a term from Islamic scripture meaning worship."He said that raping me is his prayer to God. I said to him, 'What you're doing to me is wrong, and it will not bring you closer to God.' And he said, 'No, it's allowed. It's halal,'" said the teenager, who escaped in April with the help of smugglers after being enslaved for nearly nine months.Calculated ConquestThe Islamic State's formal introduction of systematic sexual slavery dates to Aug. 3, 2014, when its fighters invaded the villages on the southern flank of Mount Sinjar, a craggy massif of dun-colored rock in northern Iraq.Its valleys and ravines are home to the Yazidis, a tiny religious minority who represent less than 1.5 percent of Iraq's estimated population of 34 million.The offensive on the mountain came just two months after the fall of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. At first, it appeared that the subsequent advance on the mountain was just another attempt to extend the territory controlled by Islamic State fighters.Almost immediately, there were signs that their aim this time was different.Survivors say that men and women were separated within the first hour of their capture. Adolescent boys were told to lift up their shirts, and if they had armpit hair, they were directed to join their older brothers and fathers. In village after village, the men and older boys were driven or marched to nearby fields, where they were forced to lie down in the dirt and sprayed with automatic fire.The women, girls and children, however, were hauled off in open-bed trucks."The offensive on the mountain was as much a sexual conquest as it was for territorial gain," said Matthew Barber, a University of Chicago expert on the Yazidi minority. He was in Sinjar when the onslaught began last summer and helped create a foundation that provides psychological support for the escapees, who number more than 2,000, according to community activists.Fifteen-year-old F says her family of nine was trying to escape, speeding up mountain switchbacks, when their aging Opel overheated. She, her mother, and her sisters - 14, 7, and 4 years old - were helplessly standing by their stalled car when a convoy of heavily armed Islamic State fighters encircled them."Right away, the fighters separated the men from the women," she said. She, her mother and sisters were first taken in trucks to the nearest town on Mount Sinjar. "There, they separated me from my mom. The young, unmarried girls were forced to get into buses."The buses were white, with a painted stripe next to the word "Hajj," suggesting that the Islamic State had commandeered Iraqi government buses used to transport pilgrims for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. So many Yazidi women and girls were loaded inside F's bus that they were forced to sit on each other's laps, she said.Once the bus headed out, they noticed that the windows were blocked with curtains, an accouterment that appeared to have been added because the fighters planned to transport large numbers of women who were not covered in burqas or head scarves.F's account, including the physical description of the bus, the placement of the curtains and the manner in which the women were transported, is echoed by a dozen other female victims interviewed for this article. They described a similar set of circumstances even though they were kidnapped on different days and in locations miles apart.F says she was driven to the Iraqi city of Mosul about six hours away, where they herded them into the Galaxy Wedding Hall. Other groups of women and girls were taken to a palace from the Saddam Hussein era, the Badoosh prison compound and the Directory of Youth building in Mosul, recent escapees said. And in addition to Mosul, women were herded into elementary schools and municipal buildings in the Iraqi towns of Tal Afar, Solah, Ba'aj and Sinjar City.They would be held in confinement, some for days, some for months. Then, inevitably, they were loaded into the same fleet of buses again before being sent in smaller groups to Syria or to other locations inside Iraq, where they were bought and sold for sex."It was 100 percent preplanned," said Khider Domle, a Yazidi community activist who maintains a detailed database of the victims. "I spoke by telephone to the first family who arrived at the Directory of Youth in Mosul, and the hall was already prepared for them. They had mattresses, plates and utensils, food and water for hundreds of people."Detailed reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reach the same conclusion about the organized nature of the sex trade.In each location, survivors say Islamic State fighters first conducted a census of their female captives.Inside the voluminous Galaxy banquet hall, F sat on the marble floor, squeezed between other adolescent girls. In all, she estimates there were more than 1,300 Yazidi girls sitting, crouching, splayed out and leaning against the walls of the ballroom, a number that is confirmed by several other women held in the same location.They each described how three Islamic State fighters walked in, holding a register. They told the girls to stand. Each one was instructed to state her first, middle and last name, her age, her hometown, whether she was married, and if she had children.For two months, F was held inside the Galaxy hall. Then one day, they came and began removing young women. Those who refused were dragged out by their hair, she said.In the parking lot the same fleet of Hajj buses was waiting to take them to their next destination, said F. Along with 24 other girls and young women, the 15-year-old was driven to an army base in Iraq. It was there in the parking lot that she heard the word "sabaya" for the first time."They laughed and jeered at us, saying 'You are our sabaya.' I didn't know what that word meant," she said. Later on, the local Islamic State leader explained it meant slave."He told us that Taus Malik" - one of seven angels to whom the Yazidis pray - "is not God. He said that Taus Malik is the devil and that because you worship the devil, you belong to us. We can sell you and use you as we see fit."The Islamic State's sex trade appears to be based solely on enslaving women and girls from the Yazidi minority. As yet, there has been no widespread campaign aimed at enslaving women from other religious minorities, said Samer Muscati, the author of the recent Human Rights Watch report. That assertion was echoed by community leaders, government officials and other human rights workers.Barber, of the University of Chicago, said that the focus on Yazidis was likely because they are polytheists, with an oral tradition rather than a written scripture. In the Islamic State's eyes that puts them on the fringe of despised unbelievers, even more than Christians and Jews, who are considered to have some limited protections under the Quran as fellow "People of the Book."In Kojo, one of the southernmost villages on Mount Sinjar and among the farthest away from escape, residents decided to stay, believing they would be treated as the Christians of Mosul had months earlier. On Aug. 15, 2014, the Islamic State ordered the residents to report to a school in the center of town.When she got there, 40-year-old Aishan Ali Saleh found a community elder negotiating with the Islamic State, asking if they could be allowed to hand over their money and gold in return for safe passage.The fighters initially agreed and laid out a blanket, where Saleh placed her heart-shaped pendant and her gold rings, while the men left crumpled bills.Instead of letting them go, the fighters began shoving the men outside, bound for death.Sometime later, a fleet of cars arrived and the women, girls and children were driven away.The MarketMonths later, the Islamic State made clear in their online magazine that their campaign of enslaving Yazidi women and girls had been extensively preplanned."Prior to the taking of Sinjar, Shariah students in the Islamic State were tasked to research the Yazidis," said the English-language article, headlined "The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour," which appeared in the October issue of Dabiq.The article made clear that for the Yazidis, there was no chance to pay a tax known as jizya to be set free, "unlike the Jews and Christians.""After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Shariah among the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State's authority to be divided" as spoils, the article said.In much the same way as specific Bible passages were used centuries later to support the slave trade in the United States, the Islamic State cites specific verses or stories in the Quran or else in the Sunna, the traditions based on the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, to justify their human trafficking, experts say.Scholars of Islamic theology disagree, however, on the proper interpretation of these verses, and on the divisive question of whether Islam actually sanctions slavery.Many argue that slavery figures in Islamic scripture in much the same way that it figures in the Bible - as a reflection of the period in antiquity in which the religion was born."In the milieu in which the Quran arose, there was a widespread practice of men having sexual relationships with unfree women," said Kecia Ali, an associate professor of religion at Boston University and the author of a book on slavery in early Islam. "It wasn't a particular religious institution. It was just how people did things."Cole Bunzel, a scholar of Islamic theology at Princeton University, disagrees, pointing to the numerous references to the phrase "Those your right hand possesses" in the Quran, which for centuries has been interpreted to mean female slaves. He also points to the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence, which continues into the modern era and which he says includes detailed rules for the treatment of slaves."There is a great deal of scripture that sanctions slavery," said Bunzel, the author of a research paper published by the Brookings Institution on the ideology of the Islamic State. "You can argue that it is no longer relevant and has fallen into abeyance. ISIS would argue that these institutions need to be revived, because that is what the Prophet and his companions did."The youngest, prettiest women and girls were bought in the first weeks after their capture. Others - especially older, married women - described how they were transported from location to location, spending months in the equivalent of human holding pens, until a prospective buyer bid on them.Their captors appeared to have a system in place, replete with its own methodology of inventorying the women, as well as their own lexicon. Women and girls were referred to as "Sabaya," followed by their name. Some were bought by wholesalers, who photographed and gave them numbers, to advertise them to potential buyers.Osman Hassan Ali, a Yazidi businessman who has successfully smuggled out numerous Yazidi women, said he posed as a buyer in order to be sent the photographs. He shared a dozen images, each one showing a Yazidi woman sitting in a bare room on a couch, facing the camera with a blank, unsmiling expression. On the edge of the photograph is written in Arabic, "Sabaya No. 1," "Sabaya No. 2," and so on.Buildings where the women were collected and held sometimes included a viewing room."When they put us in the building, they said we had arrived at the 'Sabaya Market,'" said one 19-year-old victim, whose first initial is I. "I understood we were now in a slave market."She estimated there were at least 500 other unmarried women and girls in the multistory building, with the youngest among them being 11. When the buyers arrived, the girls were taken one by one into a separate room."The emirs sat against the wall and called us by name. We had to sit in a chair facing them. You had to look at them, and before you went in, they took away our scarves and anything we could have used to cover ourselves," she said."When it was my turn, they made me stand four times. They made me turn around."The captives were also forced to answer intimate questions, including reporting the exact date of their last menstrual cycle. They realized that the fighters were trying to determine whether they were pregnant, in keeping with a Shariah rule stating that a man cannot have intercourse with his slave if she is pregnant.Property of ISISThe use of sex slavery by the Islamic State initially surprised even the group's most ardent supporters, many of whom sparred with journalists online after the first reports of systematic rape.The Islamic State's leadership has repeatedly sought to justify the practice to its internal audience.After the initial article in Dabiq in October, the issue came up in the publication again this year, in an editorial in May that expressed the writer's hurt and dismay at the fact that some of the group's own sympathizers had questioned the institution of slavery."What really alarmed me was that some of the Islamic State's supporters started denying the matter as if the soldiers of the Khilafah had committed a mistake or evil," the author wrote. "I write this while the letters drip of pride,'' he said. "We have indeed raided and captured the kafirahwomen and drove them like sheep by the edge of the sword." Kafirah refers to infidels.In a pamphlet published online in December, the Research and Fatwa Department of the Islamic State detailed best practices, including explaining that slaves belong to the estate of the fighter who bought them and therefore can be willed to another man and disposed of just like any other property after his death.Recent escapees describe an intricate bureaucracy surrounding their captivity, with their status as a slave registered in a contract. When their owner would sell them to another buyer, a new contract would be drafted, like transferring a property deed. At the same time, slaves can also be set free, and fighters are promised a heavenly reward for doing so.Though rare, this has created one avenue of escape for victims.A 25-year-old victim who escaped last month, identified by her first initial, A, described how one day her Libyan master handed her a laminated piece of paper. He explained that he had finished his training as a suicide bomber and was planning to blow himself up, and was therefore setting her free.Labeled a "Certificate of Emancipation," the document was signed by the judge of the western province of the Islamic State. The Yazidi woman presented it at security checkpoints as she left Syria to return to Iraq, where she rejoined her family in July.The Islamic State recently made it clear that sex with Christian and Jewish women captured in battle is also permissible, according to a new 34-page manual issued this summer by the terror group's Research and Fatwa Department.Just about the only prohibition is having sex with a pregnant slave, and the manual describes how an owner must wait for a female captive to have her menstruating cycle, in order to "make sure there is nothing in her womb," before having intercourse with her. Of the 21 women and girls interviewed for this article, among the only ones who had not been raped were the women who were already pregnant at the moment of their capture, as well as those who were past menopause.Beyond that, there appears to be no bounds to what is sexually permissible. Child rape is explicitly condoned: "It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn't reached puberty, if she is fit for intercourse," according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute of a pamphlet published on Twitter in December.One 34-year-old Yazidi woman, who was bought and repeatedly raped by a Saudi fighter in the Syrian city of Shadadi, described how she fared better than the second slave in the household - a 12-year-old girl who was raped for days on end despite heavy bleeding."He destroyed her body. She was badly infected. The fighter kept coming and asking me, 'Why does she smell so bad?' And I said, she has an infection on the inside, you need to take care of her," the woman said.Unmoved, he ignored the girl's agony, continuing the ritual of praying before and after raping the child."I said to him, 'She's just a little girl,'" the older woman recalled. "And he answered: 'No. She's not a little girl. She's a slave. And she knows exactly how to have sex.'''"And having sex with her pleases God," he said.© 2015, The New York Times News ServiceStory first published: Aug 13, 2015 22:03 ISTSource: http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape-1207049

PHILOSOPHY:Object-Oriented Ontology: ‘OOO’ (1999 -)Scott Soames (Understanding Truth 1999)RV (influenced Coppedge since about 1999)Philosophy is for immortals (by 1999)Renee Harlow (2000)Summary Logic (Adam Bitker or J. Mangus (?) 2000 possibly in collaboration with Y. Yang who seems to have been 4th dimensional in some way, or Coppedge Feb 2018)If the world survives I can survive (2000)Dinko Mehenovik (2000)Perpetual motion is possible (2000)Antiquated Omnology (Harold Bloom 2001)Yan Y (2001)Everything is created in each moment (2001)Psychosophy (begun August 2001 - Sept 2018)Dimensionism (early thoughts by Coppedge at Bard in August 2001)Aesthetic Chess (2001)Metaphysical variables (2001)Practical time-travel is possible (2001)Niko Banac (2002)Irrationalism (Coppedge sees mental strife as a rhetorically-grounded movement in itself, e.g. the inability to resist the impossible 2002)Revelatory Obscurantism (Coppedge 2002)Objective knowledge is possible, 2002Abstractions don’t have to make a bad impression (2002)While I die I will die no more (2002)Gu Su (2003)Katy Ruben (2003)Material poetry is like spells (2003)Hyper-Cubism (2003)Medicine may need metaphysics (2003)Peter Sloterdijk (2004)Rienzi (2004)It’s possible to invent a master angle (2004)Colin McGinn (Consciousness and its Objects 2004)Matter karma (2004)Slavoj Žižek (Reality of the Virtual, 2004)Non-Philosophy (Laruelle 2004)Simultaneous multi-d perception (2005)Poetry unlocks a sacred garden (2005)Brains are not inherently either living or dead, rather the properties can depend on specific details (2005)Exceptional exceptions (2005)Reality is fake fakism (2005)Ersatzism is the going theory (2005)Double positivism (2005)As-if semantics (2005)Truth pragmatism (2005)Jen F (2005)Helga Griffiths (Space Souvenirs, 2006)Peter-Paul Verbeek (Materializing Morality, devilish idea of technology 2006)Dishonesty is an illusion (2006)E.J. Lowe (Thaetetus sits, 2006)Quentin Meillassoux (Radical contingency, 2006)A useful bird (2007)Boltzmann Brains (NY Times article 2008)While they were floundering I was pondering (2008)Moral Machines (Wallach & Allen, 2008)Idealese (2009)Headache Formalism (2009 or earlier)Metametaphysics (2009)Variety with miscellany (2009)Evangelos Katsioulis (arbitrary date 2009)Meta-Theory (2009)The Qualific Science (2009)The Philosophy Pill (2010)Bootstrapping (2010)Nessim Nicholas Taleb (Black Swan, 2010)Sam Harris (The Moral Landscape, 2010)MetaModernism (2010 -, terminology from earlier)Strategy of metaphor (2011)Standards classical (2011)Alan Hájek (Philosophical Heuristics 2011, 2016)Doomsday Theorists (2012 was the year that brought the most media attention to this subject in history and it was on many people’s minds for the whole year)David Chalmers (-2012-)Nathan Coppedge (mostly 2013 - )Coherentism (2013 - 2017 and ongoing)Categorical deduction (2013)Non-Randian Objectivism (Objective coherentism espousing absolutes: 2013 -)Alain de Botton (2014)Xorism (2014)Matter is meaning (2014)General solution to problems (2014)Escher machine (2014)Intermediating physics / metem-physics (2014)General Systems Theory (J.T. Velikovsky, 2015)Asceticureanism (November 21, 2015)Brain Bits (February 2016)Neural Anethema (originally likely March 2016)Pan-Significance (April 2016)Pan-Coherence (April 2016)False Paradigmatics (May 2016)Exceptionism (Dimensional Exceptionist's Toolkit 2016)Analytic Philosophy LinksProgrammable Heuristics (Early 2017)Vapid Reasoning (circa June 2017)Volatilism (July 2017)The Dialectics of Disciplines (August 2017)Quadruple Semantics (August 2017)Omniscient Statements (August 2017)Core Knowledge (September 2017)Explodism (Logics, October 2017)Steambomb Idyllectualism (November 2017-)Survival Formalism (by November 2017)Post-Analytic PhilosophyMeta-Coherence (December 2017)Philosophy in 2018:The Movement Movement (January 2018)Perfect Science (January 2018)Meta-History (February 2018)Hyperproblems (April 2018)How To Think Like Computers (by May 18, 2018)An Account of Everything (by June 2018)Knowledge that is Good for Your Skin (July 24, 2018)Advanced Consciousness (July 26, 2018)Ennobled A.I. Theory (by August 12, 2018)Human Determinism (August 2018)Proof of Infinite Souls and Magic Power (September 29, 2018)Arcanism (October 4, 2018)Dimensional Systems Theory (October 14, 2018)Magical Brains (October 16, 2018)Wizard Psychology (October 18, 2018)Giant Platforms (November 1, 2018)The Platforms (November 1, 2018)Impossible Magic is Magic After All (November 18, 2018)Intermediate Omniscience (November 20, 2018)Superhumanism (December 12, 2018)Mindset Theories (December 12, 2018)Technology of the Imagination (January 23, 2019)Interesting and Fascinating Things (January 25, 2019)Systems Agenda (January 25, 2019)The Grand Tract (January 26, 2019)Soul of Energy (January 27, 2019)Coherent Fiction (January 27, 2019)Coherent Exceptions (January 27, 2019)Excellent Variation on the Identity of Indiscernibles (January 28, 2019)Coherent Evil (January 28, 2019)Characteristica Universalis (January 30, 2019)Coherent English (by January 31, 2019)Deconstructing the Word Billionaires (February 2, 2019)The Sine Qua Non (February 2, 2019)Universal Languages (by February 4, 2019)Coherent Science (founded possibility February 4, 2019)Paradigmatic Proficiency (February 5, 2019)Navy-Colored Seals (February 7, 2019)Physics of the Will (February 7, 2019)Valuable Property Selection (February 9, 2019)Crafting the Ankh (February 15, 2019)Familial Strength (February 16, 2019)Difficultism and Unimaginablism (February 16, 2019)Mind Bubble 2019–02–17 (February 17, 2019)Delusion and High Technology (February 17, 2019)How to Be More Advanced Than I Think (by February 18, 2019)Highly Creative Points (February 22, 2019)Channeled Durovolitionalism (February 25, 2019)The Form of Brilliance (February 25, 2019)Constructing the Feather of Truth (February 25, 2019)Predicting Other Nathan Coppedges (February 25, 2019)Seeing in Code (February 26, 2019)(First Signs of Alien Technology February 27, 2019)The Deranged Botanist (February 28, 2019)Magic Medicine (March 1, 2019)The Higher Platform (Part of earlier ‘The Platforms’ / March 2, 2019)Meaning of the Soul (March 3, 2019)Calculus of Survival (March 3, 2019)Efficient Studies (March 23, 2019)Ideal Psychological Viruses (March 23, 2019)Grand Mereology (March 27, 2019)Meaningless Economics (March 27, 2019)Social Psychology of the Year 4000 (April 1, 2019)Psychology of Physics (April 7, 2019)Omegaphysics (April 7, 2019)Difference Theories (April 9, 2019)Immaterial Studies (April 10, 2019)Reality Semantics (April 11, 2019)The Universal System: Tool-Sets (April 14, 2019)Mathematical Enchantment (April 16, 2019)Theorem of Infinite Potential (April 17, 2019)Convalescent Morality (April 25, 2019)Extractive Meaning (April 25, 2019)Dialectic of Razors (April 26, 2019)Sublime Logic (April 29, 2019)Auspicious Knowledge (May 1, 2019)Enchantogenesis (May 3, 2019)Prime Methodology (May 7, 2019)Incoherent Deduction (May 7, 2019)Real-Life Fantasy (May 8, 2019)Pragmatic Enlightenment (May 8, 2019)In Opposed to Senseless Laws (May 8, 2019)Wonderful Philosophy (May 11, 2019)The Golden Book (May 11, 2019)Impossible Problems (May 13, 2019)Perpetual Motion Flying Machines (May 15, 2019)Intermediate Category Problem Solutions (May 16, 2019)Coincidental Logic (May 16, 2019)Too Logical Logic (May 16, 2019)Flabbergasting Wisdom (May 16, 2019)Bridges (May 17, 2019)3D Meta-Numeracy (May 17, 2019)Overlaps between Perpetual Motion and Category Theory (May 17, 2019)The Coherence and Set Impossibility Equation (May 17, 2019)Logic of Millenniums (May 17, 2019)N-ary Secrets (May 17, 2019)Coincidental Studies (May 17, 2019)Logic of 3000 AD (May 18, 2019)Chemical Philosophy (May 18, 2019)Shorter Edition Programmable Heuristics (May 19, 2019)Psychic Notes (May 19, 2019)Typology of Imagination (May 21, 2019)PH Applets (May 21, 2019)Quolm System (May 22, 2019)Organic Logic (by May 22, 2019)Theories of the Soul (May 22, 2019)The Few (May 23, 2019)Formula for Ghosts (May 23, 2019)Zero Point Logic (May 24, 2019)Genius Emotional Problems (May 25, 2019)Higher Characteristic (May 25, 2019)Klein Bottle Logic (May 31, 2019)Wheel Problems (June 1, 2019)Dimensional Logic (June 1, 2019)Proper Concern (June 3, 2019)Justice of the Heart (June 3, 2019)Edited History of Ethical Knowledge (June 4, 2019)Powers of God (June 4, 2019)God Project (June 4, 2019)Real knowledge might not be philosophy A LETTER (June 5, 2019)Immortality Equations (June 6, 2019)Stanford and Princeton have figured out how to edit video as easily as text and its as scary as it sounds (June 6, 2019)…←…Recent Chronology………PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINES:SEPTEMBER 2000: Nathan Coppedge builds the Natural Torque Device before college, under the belief that only a child could build a perpetual motion machine and it is the last hope to do so. However he is spurned by his brother the prodigy who believes it is impossible, and the invention is not recovered for another eighteen years: The Story of the Original Invention of the Natural Torque Device2003: Thane Heins seeks patent for his Perepiteia device, relying on an unlikely feedback loop.MARCH 2005: Originally conceived as the beginning of N. Coppedge's Red Letter Days A visit to Mystic Aquarium by Coppedge results in an encounter with a vortex coin swallower machine, ultimately inspiring Nathan with the idea of leverage with supporting slope, and encouraging Nathan with the idea that perpetual motion can be invented (having already forgotten the Natural Torque Device under the influence of his family).2006 - 2009 and even later: Steorn Company claims free energy and fails to provide sufficient evidence for experts to examine.OCTOBER 29TH, 2006: N. Coppedge invented the Tilt Motor, and time-travels back to the morning of the same day. The Tilt Motor is the ingenious concept of a horizontal wheel, operated by levers.FEBRUARY 4TH, 2007: Day N. Coppedge seems to have proven an unbalanced wheel, the "Principled Asymmetry". The device seems to rotate more easily in one direction than another.APRIL 2ND, 2007: Day Coppedge found evidence that the Tilt Motor could work. Confirmed once but denied twice. Confirmation was with a level.APRIL 4TH, 2007: Coppedge notarizes the Repeat Lever 2.APRIL 16TH: Day in which Coppedge invented Five Devices more than once, first in 2007.PROB MARCH 2009 Name for ‘Rationaire’ perpetual motion land vehicle, named after rationalism, aims to fulfill the dream of mechanical universe. Supports objective coherentist philosophy and broadens the domain of history.APRIL 26TH, 2009: Day N. Coppedge Invented 50 Devices, but few if any seemed prospective.MAY 5, 2011: Raymond’s Lab (YouTube Channel) tests a principle similar to over-unity relying on external power: Raymonds Lab Early Over-Unity Experiment May 2011NOV 9 - 10, 2013: Coppedge conducts SUCCESSFUL OVER-UNITY EXPERIMENT 1, (perhaps the first successful significant partial experiment) which was disputed until at least May 2018.2014: Visual Education Project has recorded a series of fake models on YouTube.JUNE 10, 2014: “AB the Hammer” experiments with cheating principles: perpetual motion wheel projectJULY 3, 2014: Day Coppedge discovers that objects can roll upwards resulting in the invention of the "Escher Machine".SEPTEMBER 7, 2014: MotionMagnetics (YouTube channel) posts magnet lever attempt: Using leverage to break through Magnetic gates.SEPTEMBER 21, 2014: AndysMachines (YouTube channel) posts welded bicycle wheels run by motor that convinces some: Spinning bicycle wheel thing (NOT perpetual motion)DECEMBER 16, 2015: OVER-UNITY LEVER 2 shows lowest point of a device can be lifted naturally with minimal lossDECEMBER 24, 2015: Dual-Seesaw Concept.JANUARY 1ST, 2016: Day Coppedge designs beginning of the NIBW (Not-If-But-When) machine series suggesting high levels of confidence.JANUARY 10, 2016: OFFSET LEVER / OVER-UNITY PENDULUM #1 shows greater than 360-degree turn can result from 180-degree twist. NIBW3 also designed on this day.FEBRUARY 14, 2016: Day Nathan Coppedge was granted membership to PESWiki.MARCH 18, 2016: First experiments with Not-If-But-When Machine 4: 'TRILLION-DOLLAR' DISCOVERY!APRIL 5TH, 2016: Day N. Coppedge built the Pendulum Type 1 (Scarpa's Pendulum), which resembled perpetual motion but was later thought to rely on energy in the hand (not 100% conclusive refutation). YouTube link HERE.JULY 12TH, 2016: Day N. Coppedge designed and posted the 1st Fully-Provable Perpetual Motion diagrams. [REVISED VERSION BELOW:]SEPTEMBER 24, 2016: First crude experiments with the promising primary SPIRAL CONE PERPETUAL MOTIONDECEMBER 16, 2016: Experiment with perpetual motion sponge machine looks intriguing: PERPETUAL MOTION SPONGE MACHINE2017: Time crystals are discovered, giving scientists a wrinkle of feelings about perpetual motion.MAY 12, 2017: Escher Lever principle looks promising: Device is able to prove one-directional natural momentum with minimal resistance on returnOCTOBER 2017 The first possible support from scientists: Ian Switzer writes in the abstract: “Say, you talk about pulling something up an inclined plane with an equal weight. You're right. This is possible. And not at all a violation of conservation of energy.”FEBRUARY 12, 2018: Trinity design of the 1st Fully Provable finally built, showing likelihood of easy transitions: FEB 2018 MOST COMPLETE EXPERIMENT YETMARCH 21ST, 2018: Abdullahi Umar Bessey becomes the first to express real interest in building Nathan Coppedge’s designs. He writes, in a private Quora message, that “it's just that I'm tied up with my project otherwise I'd have tried one of yours.”MARCH 30TH, 2018: NOT IF BUT WHEN 4--NEAR COMPLETE PROOFAPRIL 28, 2018 Craig Kirby becomes what looks to be the first scientific apologist, saying: “Quora has a ‘be nice’ policy. With this in mind I will now say something nice rather than saying what I would like to say. I would like it it if you left me alone now, as you are clearly my intelectual superior, and I feel threatened by your superior mind. Your invention… thing… is awesome. You are awesome and everything you have said is true, and everything I have said is lies. Please just let me be now as I have now apologised. Please leave me alone now. You are right and I am wrong about everything.” —Craig KirbyMAY 4, 2018: Swivel Device idea using angle of pivot for advantage (similar but less promising designs also by Coppedge in 2009 or so).MAY 10, 2018: The YouTube Upvote Balance Has Tipped 2018-05-10May 12, 2018: Natural Torque Device built for the second time.MAY 21, 2018: Chinese man talks half-seriously of stealing American industrial secret when N Coppedge demonstrates Natural Torque Device at Blue State Coffee on York Street in New Haven.MAY 31, 2018: Idea that Natural Torque Device can sometimes maintain altitude in spite of torque mostly proven: NATURAL TORQUE W/ NO ALT LOSSJUNE 8, 2018: Simple Difference Engine volitional energy concept finally documentedJUNE 9, 2018: First encouraging evidence of transfer to a second module with natural motion: PROVABLE PMM YET MORE PROVENJUNE 14, 2018: Counterweight difference principle related to 1/2 m * d proven if not before: Perpetual AdvantageJUNE 22ND 2018: Single-Module First Fully Provable looks promising: 2-PART EVIDENCE OF PERPETUAL MOTIONJUNE 30TH 2018: Jer Ram is first to express actual interest in building one of Coppedge’s perpetual motion designs, in this case the Single-Module 1st Fully Provable.JULY 6TH, 2018: Some evidence of NIBW-6: ANOTHER NEAR-COMPLETE PROOFJULY 8TH, 2018: Variation on the vertical lever mostly proven here: BETTER REDO OF THE VERTICAL LEVERJULY 12, 2018: Preliminary work on modeling Nathan Coppedge’s perpetual motion by Jer Ram.JULY 24, 2018: Jer Ram confirms Nathan’s Successful Over-Unity Experiment 1.JULY 24, 2018: Crescent Lever principle mostly proven but perhaps already known: CRESCENT LEVER NOTABLE MODIFICATIONJULY 25, 2018: Signs of progress on 3-d printing the raised track for the Vertical Lever: Track in progress still mostly incompleteAUGUST 1, 2018: Difficulties with Jer Ram’s 3-d printer are reported.AUGUST 1, 2018: Spiral Plunge Lever theorized to work based on design from much earlier.AUGUST 15, 2018: Slanted Lever and Promising Videos liked by a BP Gas consultant: Slanted Lever (Facebook) and Select Select Machines Videos (Facebook to Quora)SEPTEMBER 11, 2018: Escher Delta shows Escher-like properties: ESCHER DELTAOCTOBER 11, 2018: EXCITING EVIDENCE OF NEARLY REPEATING AUTOMATIC CYCLICAL MOTION IN THE SWIVEL LEVER, CLEARER BY OCT 15, 2018 Swivel Perpetual Motion Efficient VersionOCTOBER 18, 2018: Still encountering skeptics. Not much media exposure.NOVEMBER 4TH, 2018: Escher Perpetual Motion “No Legs” Experiment shows ball will roll with no kinetic influences, possibly at level or with a barely detectable upwards grade: ESCHER MACHINE NO LEGSNOVEMBER 13, 2018: God Intervenes, Reverses Escher Machine Or, perhaps the exact ratios are simply maddeningly difficult, but a reversal effect was observed.DECEMBER 17, 2018: First serious work on Perpetual Motion VehiclesFEBRUARY 5 - 20, 2019: Escher Machine appears to be working again in some obscenely precise ratios: GODS MIGHT NOT REVERSE ESCHER MACHFEBRUARY 20, 2019: Extremely long natural purportedly upwards motion observed with the Reverse Escher Machine, however not fully confirmed, level was used flat horizontally and not all directions of the level were tested: LONGER RANGE REVERSE ESCHER MACHINEFEBRUARY 26, 2019: Evidence of automatic motion with no altitude loss in the NIBW4: PMM EQUAL ALTITUDE LOSS?MARCH 8, 2019: Perpetual Motion SecretsMARCH 21- 22, 2019: Tandem Experiments with the Escher Lever (M.C. ESCHER OVER-UNITY MACHINE ) and Vertical Lever (REAL-WORKING PERPETUAL MOTION EXPERIMENT) indicate full cycles are possible with twisted cardboard in some very precise configurations (building on the Successful Over-Unity Experiment 4) and Vertical Lever is capable of something close to a full automatic cycle.MARCH 26, 2019: FIRST EVIDENCE OF SUFFICIENT HEIGHT!APRIL 4, 2019: Further more careful suggestion that either the REVERSE ESCHER or the Original ESCHER MACHINE work with level.MAY 9 - 10, 2019: FIVE ADDITIONAL EQUATION VARIATIONS FOUND: Spiral Cone: Here the Spindle weight has the added weight, which is usual for the long end. If we assume the Spindle is 1X mass, this device follows the same rules as the first class of devices in spite of the use of a pendulum-like element. Double Seesaw Motive Mass Machine: The inertial resistance from the first seesaw must be << 1/2 of the second mass. Also, the motion of the second mass must be fairly close to horizontal, but never exactly horizontal. Tilt Motor: Table resistance = < 1/2 mass of rolling cone. Natural Torque Device: Assuming added mass of +1 on lever end, the weight of the wheel and the lever should average to the counterweight mass range which begins above the average +1 and ends at double that value - 1. Original Escher Machine: Momentum * Wedge factor = > 1/2 effective mass. During the longer motion the ball must move with net upwards motion. Downwards motion of course is easy. Note: All these five devices gave maxed out values of == <150% conventional over-unity.May 15, 2019: Fairly authentic Perpetual Motion Flying Machines invented. Philosophy of Engineering officially begins.MAY 18, 2019: Information made available on “TOP 10” devices with maximum ratings of almost 150%.conventional over-unity: Nathan Coppedge’s TOP 10 PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINESMAY 26, 2019: Research begins on Exponential Combined Energy (ECER): Exponential Combined Energy ResearchMAY 28, 2019: Applied Perpetual Motion research (Applied PerMoR) becomes official: Applied Perpetual Motion ResearchMAY 28, 2019: Scientists Appear to Confirm Escher Machine (Master / Magic Angle Principle): Magic Angle in Graphene Verified by ScientistsThe History of Perpetual Motion Machines