Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

Your "fourth point" has validity. It is important for the system to portray itself as honest.

My experience in Canadian politics is that overzealous party workers find ways to cheat a little for their side--both in the general election and for the internal party elections. When shenanigans' are alleged, the results are seldom overturned. But there are people in the back rooms analyzing the situation(s) and writing new rules to prevent the same thing from happening in the next election. Our electoral rules were built from the excesses of overzealous party workers. I suspect the same for the USA.

I observed that CNN et al were always careful to say "sufficient fraud to overturn the result." There always a little cheating, and all parties have a hand in it.

https://medium.com/politically-speaking/all-elections-have-fraud-905c233941dd

A lot of the political left suffers from the same kind of inflexibility as a lot of the political right. They are part of the problem. In another dimension, they might be the ones leading to the USA into becoming a one-party state today.

There was a Medium contributor named Chris Carter. He was a leftist. But he spent a lot of time pointing out the errant thinking of other left-leaning writers. I don't they thanked him for his efforts. Chris was of the mind that the left is its own worst enemy.

Because it is so hard to prove which facts are correct these days, I have resorted to logic in my discussions with others. I find conservatives seldom respond when I go this direction. Because if this, I am coming to the conclusion that conservatism is losing the philosophical ground it used to have. For those whose life-view has been built on conservatism, this has to be a little scary to be told that they are wrong.

And as you have alluded to, we really need to get rid of this left/right, liberal/conservative, capitalist/socialist labels. My political philosophy is:

1. There are situations where we need to leave individuals to make their own decisions and live with the consequences.

2. There are situations where we need to act collectively to better most of society.

3. The resolution between 1 & 2 shall be through democratic process.

4. All decisions must be monitored and, if needed, changed.