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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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Since it’s election denialism day. Let’s talk strategy on the Hunter laptop. I believe this is an accepted fact now: The FBI had possession of the laptop a year prior to the election and had verified it while being aware Guiliani and others had a copy. Hunter and Joe also knew he had a copy.

Guiliani’s behavior makes sense to me. You have a bombshell on the opposition so you release it last minute for maximum effect.

But what about the lefts/fbi play? The play they ended up choosing was do nothing until it’s released then claim it’s a Russian plant. Now the fbi ran with something going to happen from Russia that is misinformation to their media and social media partners. Those who did that I guess have plausible deniability they just meant a “general threat” and weren’t aware it was “Hunters verified laptop”. I have my doubts those people hadn’t been read in on the laptop.

My question is why wasn’t this leaked earlier? Prevent the October surprise by getting it out earlier? Ideally even perhaps the primaries so you just didn’t have to deal with Joe. All it would have taken is telling Warren or Sanders about it and then they go get a copy from Isaacs.

Instead the path chosen seems to have been let’s run a psy-op to protect Biden. It just seems like frequently when given choices people seem to be choosing let’s just lie to them.

I guess the conclusion I can come up with is the people with access to the laptop were not fans of a lot of the Democratic Party and weren’t fans of Trump.

I know the Sanders people have long thought the official DNC was against them. And I’m no Sanders fan. But the fact no one tipped them off to the laptop when it could have been used seems interesting. Along with what felt like a successful media-op which I guess was organized by the FBI.

Alternative strategy Guiliani actually have played it wrong and should have released it earlier to let it get digested instead of late to swing a few voters. And Isaac perhaps was more partisan since he didn’t get a copy to the left.

My question is why wasn’t this leaked earlier?

A bit of a tangent, but I'd like to point out this is an excellent example of a real conspiracy that wasn't leaked. So many people on here act like conspiracies are impossible because someone will leak it - clearly not!

I'm not sure I'd consider this a "conspiracy" outside of the most trivial sense of the word as the FBI, and law enforcement in general, tend to be loathe to reveal details on active investigations or even if there is an investigation going on.

So people not revealing they are investigating Hunter Biden and they have his laptop is just standard operating procedure, the same behavior they'd do for essentially any other crime they suspect went or is going on.

I'm not sure I'd consider this a "conspiracy" outside of the most trivial sense of the word as the FBI, and law enforcement in general, tend to be loathe to reveal details on active investigations or even if there is an investigation going on.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=hXjLqhtnIRI

If you're the person that Biden is bragging about ordering the firing of, is this a conspiracy? It sure seems so to me.

I mean that explains why they didn’t release hunters laptop early, but it doesn’t explain why they decided to lie about it when it came to light.

Did the FBI itself actually lie, or was it people associated with the FBI?

Fair, but the FBI itself was clearly willing to be associated with the lie.

I’m not sure the FBI could announce the laptop was verified on the eve of the election.

Presupposing the whole Russian disinformation thing was done in good faith.

The FBI announcing the laptop was real would be truthful but meddling in an election.

The FBI declining to comment, or just saying ‘no results yet’ would be politically neutral mistruths. But they decided to lie in a partisan manner instead.

The FBI told social media of a general threat of misinformation. I do believe your belief. But you can’t prove the ones issue the warning knew about the laptop being verified and were referring to it. Which means they may have acted in good faith or they were super partisan and made sure to maintain plausible deniability.

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I would say that there's a time component involved. Can something be kept under wraps for some period of time? Probably. Given the involvement of enough people, what is the chance that it eventually leaks out? Probably pretty high. P is a function of both the number of people required and the time since the event; to maximize the chance that you can have a successful conspiracy, keep the former absurdly low (lower than you think); to understand historical events that would have required large groups, just let the latter keep ticking for a while.