Love to see the FBI openly pandering to racists

[lady_*nix]

https://twitter.com/QueenMab87/status/1 ... 8680421377



Those of you here who aren't Jewish, I ask you to please read a bit of the thread under the FBI tweet. You'll notice that the vast majority of comments are lauding the FBI for "telling the truth".

Do you understand now why I've been scared out of my mind for the last 5 years?

[code monkey]

yet another reason why I avoid twitter.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Why in hell is the FBI pushing an Imperial Russia propaganda rag? Here's their excuse:

[lady_*nix]

Yeah I saw that. TBH I'm skeptical that that's all there is to it, considering the racist + antisemitic infiltration of the DHS over the last few years. But even if it's pure stupid accident, the public response fucking terrifies me.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Look at it this way. The USPS mess. In normal times, all those Mail Box removals and Mail Sorting machines things would have raised eyebrows but nothing else. In these days, between Trump's BS and the Pandemic, nobody believes the USPS. We can say the same thing about the FBI. After all, Trump openly courts conspiracy theorists and racists.

[SciFiFisher]

Look at it this way. The USPS mess. In normal times, all those Mail Box removals and Mail Sorting machines things would have raised eyebrows but nothing else. In these days, between Trump's BS and the Pandemic, nobody believes the USPS. We can say the same thing about the FBI. After all, Trump openly courts conspiracy theorists and racists.

Unfortunately, once the public trust in institutions is past the tipping then you start getting real problems. Tax fraud for example. Believe it or not the U.S. has (or perhaps it is had) one of the highest voluntary compliance rates when it came to voluntarily paying the taxes that were owed. When Greece got into so much trouble economically one of the factors that was considered to be a major contributor was the low voluntary rate at which people paid their taxes.

And it gets worse when you start factoring in real corruption rates. i.e. police and other people on the take. Those tend to go up when people don't trust the government. And then it becomes a real vicious circle.

If the D team wins the Senate, keeps the House, and wins the White House in November they need to send a lot of people to jail. And if people are smart they will throw the R team out on the state level and have state investigations.

[lady_*nix]

@Fisher

If the D team wins the Senate, keeps the House, and wins the White House in November they need to send a lot of people to jail. And if people are smart they will throw the R team out on the state level and have state investigations.

Even if they win all three - and that's a huge "if" - I'm pretty sure they won't send anyone to jail, or do any investigations on the state level, or anything other than make as nice as possible and maintain centrist policies for a while. Because that's just who most of them are. I swear the party leadership have less spine between them than a half-eaten jellyfish.

I'm feeling almost completely hopeless right now, TBH.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Look at it this way. The USPS mess. In normal times, all those Mail Box removals and Mail Sorting machines things would have raised eyebrows but nothing else. In these days, between Trump's BS and the Pandemic, nobody believes the USPS. We can say the same thing about the FBI. After all, Trump openly courts conspiracy theorists and racists.

Unfortunately, once the public trust in institutions is past the tipping then you start getting real problems. Tax fraud for example. Believe it or not the U.S. has (or perhaps it is had) one of the highest voluntary compliance rates when it came to voluntarily paying the taxes that were owed. When Greece got into so much trouble economically one of the factors that was considered to be a major contributor was the low voluntary rate at which people paid their taxes.

And it gets worse when you start factoring in real corruption rates. i.e. police and other people on the take. Those tend to go up when people don't trust the government. And then it becomes a real vicious circle.

If the D team wins the Senate, keeps the House, and wins the White House in November they need to send a lot of people to jail. And if people are smart they will throw the R team out on the state level and have state investigations.

I know. As for Tax avoidance, both the Greeks and the Italians are amateurs compared to us.

[code monkey]

@Fisher

If the D team wins the Senate, keeps the House, and wins the White House in November they need to send a lot of people to jail. And if people are smart they will throw the R team out on the state level and have state investigations.

Even if they win all three - and that's a huge "if" - I'm pretty sure they won't send anyone to jail, or do any investigations on the state level, or anything other than make as nice as possible and maintain centrist policies for a while. Because that's just who most of them are. I swear the party leadership have less spine between them than a half-eaten jellyfish.

I'm feeling almost completely hopeless right now, TBH.

yes, fisher, you make an excellent point - never forget the down-ticket races.

lady_*nix* (I wish you'd chosen a name easier to type) do not let yourself fall into despair. that way lies not voting. do not take too seriously the way biden would not commit to investigations of ocp and his minions. he had to do that. for now.

[lady_*nix]

@cm

Don't worry, I'm voting no matter what. Voted early in the MA primary today in fact. And aye, sorry about the name. Feel free to just omit the asterisk.

[SciFiFisher]

One of the points that a commentator made in the last couple days RE: Biden stating he would unequivocally prosecute Trump. He actually said he would not pardon Trump the way Ford did Nixon so the country could heal. He did not state that he would make sure Trump was prosecuted. He made a comment that essentially allows him to choose a really good AG and allow for investigations to occur. And he essentially committed to allowing those investigations to lead to the prosecution if that is where the evidence led the investigators.

His choice of words was: In a recent interview with NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Biden said: "I will not interfere with the Justice Department's judgment of whether or not they think they should pursue a prosecution."

He did add that it would be very unusual. One of the things that neither side wants to start is a war where each time a new president is seated from the opposition the first thing he does is start prosecuting the outgoing president. But... I think it can be clearly established that this is not a typical president and that this would, please dear god, be a one time occurrence due to special circumstances.

IMO a lot of the pressure is going to come from people who supported this regime and as soon as it loses power they are going to fall into four camps.

Camp #1 is going to try really hard to pretend that they never even knew Trump. They will act as if they were never involved. They will deny voting for him. They will deny supporting him. They will push really hard for everyone to just pretend like it never happened. They will have the worse case of selective amnesia you have ever seen.

Camp #2 is going to push really hard for everyone to let sleeping dogs lie. Let's just fill in these cracks with spackle and throw on a quick coat of paint. We should just pretend no one burned the house down because it will just make things worse. Look, we are all friends now and we should just get along.

Camp#3 is going to suddenly grow a conscience and tell everyone very loudly how they tried to stop all the bad things but no one would listen. They will tell you all the times they stopped something even worse from happening. And they will howl the loudest for Trump's head.

Camp#4 will swear until the day they die that Trump was railroaded. They will swear it was a rigged election. They will get drunk and even stupider. As hard as it is to believe it they will get stupider. They will fly their Seig Heil flags and rant about "those people" stealing the election. They will sit on the front porch flying a Confederate battle flag and pontificate on the good old days when "those people" knew their place in the world and how the U.S. of Amerika has lost the culture wars and it's true greatness. They will be the bitter nasty a-hole who screams at every kid who rides a bike in front of their house. White National and Supremacist groups will recruit their kids to be the next generation of racist a-holes who have to pretend they aren't racist a-holes because their great leader was betrayed. And the "lost cause" adherents will have another chapter to add to their myth of the downtrodden but proud cospatriots who were tricked and defeated by those evil socialist commie pinko liberal meanies.

[Rommie]

Sounds about right. It's basically what they did after GWB.

[code monkey]

fisher, I am waiting for the books written by his inner circle that will explain how they actually were heros who, out of deep reverence for the constitution and democratic norms stayed close to ocp and prevented him from performing actions which were even more awful than those he did.