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Insider trading? Family members selling access to the President? I am shocked, shocked to find that corruption is going on in here...
Well, not that shocked. Isn't this just business as usual? The sums are pretty small compared to the size of the Federal budget, and it's not like corruption in Washington is a new phenomenon.
And revealed preferences are showing that people don't actually care about this stuff much at all, that they only pretend to care to use it as a cudgel against the other side. To someone who genuinely thinks corruption is bad and should be stamped out as much as possible, that's horrifying.
Nah man, you don't get to say that, not after people screamed until they were blue in the face trying to point out the corruption of the democrats in the past few administrations only to be gaslit by the fucking government and media and have their lives ruined. You don't get to punish anyone who mentions corruption and then when you have silenced them claim their silence is proof they don't care.
What corruption were the past few Democratic administrations engaged in that exceeded the level of magnitude and blatantness that Trump is now engaged in? Even if you can list examples, why is your response to imply that makes Republicans immune from criticism now, rather than asserting that both parties deserve criticism when they're doing bad things?
Oh you want data? Read all of the motte - it's all in there.
I point blank do not believe you care about corruption. At all. If you cared about corruption by anyone as much as you claim, you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy, and therefore you would have investigated it and you would now have bulletproof arguments that it wasn't corruption. Since you claim that you don't even know what corruption the previous administration has been accused of, I can safely conclude you don't care about corruption, you care about Trump.
And I did not imply that republicans are immune from criticism. My implication is that nobody gives a shit about corruption on their side anymore. I have been beating this drum for years, but I have been explicit about it since Trump's election - this is democrat's own fault. There is a point past which spite becomes an acceptable justification and they pushed the right there. They had plenty of warnings this was coming, plenty of people were willing to point out that the right would only tolerate two tier anarcho-tyranny for so long, but they were ignored. So now they reap the whirlwind.
Again, I must insist you list out a few examples of the corruption you're talking about. Because I did investigate some of the more major allegations. The claim Biden "stole" the 2020 election was 99.9% pure hallucination/confabulation. The Hunter Biden stuff was true in regards to Hunter being a dirtbag but critically lacked the link connecting to Joe, which was always the point in the first place.
So what exactly are you talking about?
'Again I must insist' 'Because I did investigate' 'so what exactly are you talking about' - why are you talking like this? Are you trying to convince me this conversation has gone on a lot longer than it has? I can't see your investigations if you don't mention them and stick to exclusively handwaving away all claims of democrat corruption with Hanania links, can I?
But you tell on yourself anyway when you did investigate 'some of the more major allegations'. If all corruption concerns you as much as you claim you should be concerned by all of it, surely? You should be able to rattle off a list off the top of your head of bipartisan corruption.
Here's my list of 'some of the more major ones'. I don't really want to do this since it is beside the point that someone who cares about all corruption can not possibly be partisan in the US and yet you are.
There's yes election fraud, Hunter Biden's bullshit and the cover up 'to protect the election', covid policies, insider trading, the weaponisation of the doj, the deliberate sabotage of our borders, the politicisation of social media, basically everything the DNC has ever done and, of course, the puppet president bullshit.
So the Hunter Biden cover up is definitive, as is the weaponization of the doj and the puppet president shenanigans, as were covid control measures, insider trading and the politicisation of social media - those ones are bipartisan, yay. But you didn't know about any of them? This must be a massive blow.
First off you should know I have a fairly low threshold for abruptly ending conversations when the other person is disrespectful, uses ad hominems, or makes personal attacks. Nothing you've said so far passes that threshold yet (the comments I quoted are borderline), but I've been on this site long enough to know where it could be headed. When people resort to that I've found that it's best to just not respond to them much from then on. This is unfortunate since I come here explicitly to have my ideas tested, which I'd like to continue as long as both sides are generally respectful towards each other.
It seems as if I've annoyed you. If that's the case I apologize, as that's not my intention. The reason I'm "talking like this" is because I asked for specific examples, but in your reply you didn't give any and instead claimed it was obvious and that I should "read all of the motte" (?) but giving explicit examples really would was helpful so thank you for giving them. My issue with a lot of your examples is that they're not actually corruption -- many of them are bad on their own merits (e.g. border policies) -- but they're not corruption, they're just policies that you (and I) disagree with.
The "puppet president" stuff also isn't what I'd call a central example of corruption. It was also bad, and the Democrats deserve a lot of blame for it, and in some ways it rhymes with corruption since it erodes trust and involves implicit (and occasional explicit) lying, but it's different from, say, selling off pardons.
For the ones like Hunter Biden and the "stolen" election, the main claims of those are pretty much just blatantly false as I've already said. I'd say the Hunter Biden thing certainly would have been a central example of corruption, if the main claim was true.
Lol setting your son up on the board of an energy company in the most corrupt country on earth, then getting the prosecutor who looks into it fired all so you can earn kickbacks isn't corruption? Getting the FBI to cover up your son's laptop being discovered and having intelligence officials claim its Russian disinformation when those in charge know for a fact it is real, and also ensuring your son gets favourable treatment by the court, that isn't corruption either?
All of those are verified facts. You can dispute why Hunter Biden got the job at Burisma, but you can't dispute that he did, or that his dad got the prosecutor hired to investigate Burisma fired just as he began investigating Burisma. You can dispute why the FBI pretended it wasn't authentic for a year when they knew it was, while they were also slow walking any investigations into members of the Biden family, but they did it. You can dispute why 51 intelligence officials signed a statement calling the laptop disinformation or how many of them were just patsies, but they did it. And once you dispute all of that I stop listening to you, because you live in a make believe fantasy land where coincidences just keep lining up in favour of the guy who is directly in charge of the people responsible. And if you don't dispute that that is corruption but somehow think an international conspiracy with fingers in the FBI and doj and intelligence agencies is an isolated incident...
This is why it's just dumb to niggle over examples like this. You thinking everything Hunter Biden related is a lie just makes me think less of you and me thinking it's true just makes you think less of me. And we're just arguing about angels on the head of a pin anyway.
And let's talk about 'I care about all corruption - wait, no, not that corruption'. Every single one of those incidents I mentioned directly resulted in government officials lining their pockets. That's corruption, and I felt each of them reached the level of at least one of the claims against Trump. It's by no means an exhaustive list though - by no means at all, I focused on the last administration and democrats because of your partisan frame, but the rot runs deep. So we can happily throw Biden's pardons in there if you like.
Let me guess, backdating to cover fauci for the gain of function research he wasn't involved in (with Milley and the Jan 6 committee to provide cover) isn't a central example of corruption like pardoning some scumbags whose daughter campaigned for you is? And even though it's inarguably worse to lie about an existential threat because you are in the pocket of big pharma and then get pardoned by a puppet with an unprecedented backdating to juuust before you started the existential threat you lied about because you are in the pocket of big pharma, you are only interested in central examples of corruption so it doesn't concern you? I am shocked. Shocked I say.
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