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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   39434 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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You are presuming that she's more effective because she got away with it, and then retroactively identifying things she did as the critical maneuvers. But in fact, it does not seem to me that such maneuvers would have been effective if the FBI had wanted to actually make a case, and if it didn't want to make a case then failing to perform these maneuvers would not have changed the outcome either.

The basic situation here is that we can see what she did, and we can see what the FBI did, and what the FBI did was going to prevent an investigation no matter which action she took.

You are telling me that Hillary acted more competently than Trump. I believe you. Why do you believe that their relative competence is the determining factor in these two situations?

I am prepared to believe everything you say is true. The fact remains that the FBI trashed evidence against Clinton, and broke the law to try to frame Trump. I do not see why anything you are saying should matter more to me than that fact. I do not care about the minutia of the rules, because I don't believe the rules actually matter in a meaningful way. I see no reason to believe that a more competent Trump would do significantly better, because there is no possible way I can see for competence in the details of the rules to overcome an opponent who simply ignores the rules when it suits them. If the rules are not being followed, they cannot help you.

And sure, it's never as clear-cut as that. There's perception and plausible deniability and a thousand other tweaks and nudges. But what we actually know with reasonable certainty outweighs any plausible net effect of those thousand tweaks and nudges that I can see, and I refuse to be drawn into a reframing around what I perceive to be irrelevancies. I do not concede that the law is consistantly followed or applied, and so I reject that its application here is appropriate.

Obviously, I don't actually get a vote, and the courts will do as they will, likewise the bureaucracy and its various organs. What will be, will be. What I can do is stand firm in what seems to me to be the truth: the existing system is illegitimate, unlawful, and tyrannical, and aiding its destruction is the responsibility of all persons of good will. They will probably get Trump, but my hopes do not rest in Trump. My hope is that their efforts to destroy him will be another incremental contribution to their own tomb, another heap of resentments and grudges that will, one day, be given a vent they cannot survive.

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