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The so-called "Anti weaponization fund" has been defeated due to public and internal backlash.
It was so unpopular that even Republican senators were furious and yelling at Blanche over it. According to Ted Cruz
But why did it die?
Republicans are willing to bow their heads to Trump on most things, but the same way defund the police was unpopular (because people like the police), senators really like the capitol police and don't approve of rewarding the cop beaters with money. Trump got away with the pardons, but actively awarding attacking the cops who protect them is a step too far from many.
It was also just really unpopular among voters. Just like the senators, voters don't approve of giving money to cop beaters. Not even many republican ones are supportive of that just because they did it in Trump's name. Of course it's also quite likely that many interpreted the question as a fund for victims of Trump's weaponization, such as James Comey whose lead prosecutor just stepped down or Jerome Powell but not all probably did.
As my own senator put it
Senators also felt that the deal was too blatantly corrupt and hard for them to defend with a straight face.
Either way, they've dropped it now and the fund is dead in the water. Interesting showcase of how many republican congressman haven't completely neutered themselves for the executive yet, they just mostly argue behind closed doors.
As an aside, I do appreciate that you bring a different viewpoint into TheMotte. Anyway, this slush fund is corruption, just because the other side does it doesn't mean it's ok that your side does it too. I do recognize that for a lot of people here it's a feeling of "look what you made me do" or "you made me do this", or maybe a bit of accelerationist, who knows, but the whole point is the ability to curb the extremes and either appeal or force each other to be better without violence and resentment. Anyway, I still feel the slush fund is small, I am more outraged about all the stock trading Trump does.
Yeah, it's always just an excuse for their own hypocrisy. One way you can tell that's the case is that "both sides!" use the same logic. It's like Scott's piece cautioning bias arguments https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/17/caution-on-bias-arguments/
It doesn't make sense that the pro Israel and pro Palestine side both felt the documentary was biased against them, so it's explained better by their own personality and victim complexes.
In the same way, it doesn't make sense that pro right and pro left sides both give the excuse that "the other one started it and we're just being equal", so it is explained better by their own personality and victim complex.
Hell just look at some of the conversations I've had here already. The standard of evidence for many motte users that cops unfairly assaulted a protestor on Jan 6th is apparently "this guy on X said so". Meanwhile cases, like a guy who shot a black man and was charged with manslaughter that have gone to trial, been convicted at trial and had the conviction upheld as illegal isn't enough if it's something they don't like. They're either shifting goalposts or have a standard of evidence that is completely alien to me.
This also of course goes into the classic partisan issue of thinking everyone is as partisan as them. The average American taxpayer, the victim of corruption from either party, is not some diehard progressive or die hard conservative. It's stealing candy from a baby and saying "but John stole candy too" as an excuse.
You are lying.
Let's go through the "many motte users" who made claims of unfair J6 assault while referencing X:
... I was planning to go through the other users one by one, but I actually can't find any others. Could it be that you took a single Motte user who linked to a photo on X, lied about what they said, and then used this as a basis for "many motte users"?
It's entirely possible I've missed a bunch of other comments. If you can link me to them, I'll be happy to review them to check if you're honestly representing them, or just lying about them too.
There is an incredibly easy way to see it, TheMotte like similar sites has a mechanism built in! His comment has 6 upvotes at this time meaning at least 5 others are in general agreement. Probably more considering some users might have down voted so it might be +10vs-5 or whatever I wouldn't know.
Does (at least) 6 people count as "many" for you? I can change it to "several" if you disagree what constitutes many.
If you hover your cursor over the score, you can see the upvote and downvote counts. (Allegedly, Reddit used to have this feature many years ago, but removed it.)
Oh thank you very much.
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