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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.

Giuliani was naively trusting an honest and traditional democratic system. He didn’t expect that the institutions and public forums would conspire together to thwart the democratic process from unfolding. This was the largest escalation of the culture war in history: information indicating that the Vice President’s own son took bribes from foreign adversaries to influence his father’s politics was hidden from the voter’s access through a cabal of anti-democratic figures behind the scenes at major tech companies and news websites.

This is why I don’t care at all if “Republicans lied about the election!” My response is, “brother, the Republicans should be out there telling the Public the most persuasive possible lies they can conceive”. That’s the natural response to the anti-Democratic manipulation we saw in 2020. It is morally permissible, in fact obligatory, to match your enemy’s escalation when that very escalation thwarted the democratic process and destroyed the fabric of American democracy. When you destroy the rules of conduct, we go back to millennia-old idea of just proportional response — this is the nature of “just [culture] war” theory. The Republicans ought to be treating Democrats like we treat Russia: you have violated the borders and agreements, we will do whatever we can to push you back and reestablish a rules-based national order.

There was no indication in any of the laptop data that Joe Biden took bribes from anyone. There was evidence that he was once briefly in the same room as one of the Burisma guys (and witnesses to that exchange confirmed that the conversation was limited to pleasantries), and there's some China stuff that took place when Biden was out of office. Any suggestion that Joe Biden was influenced by any of his son's business dealings is nothing more than conjecture at this point.

There was no indication in any of the laptop data that Joe Biden took bribes from anyone.

Hunter held equity on behalf of the "big guy". I don't know how much more clear it could get; Joe Biden directly took bribes from these people, at least according to such emails.

Joe Biden had been out of office for months at the time that email was sent. You can't bribe a private citizen.

I really have trouble treating this as a serious claim. Do you actually, really, seriously mean that someone should be free to accept as much money for as many quid pro quos as they can arrange while in between their Vice Presidency and Presidency, so long as money doesn't change hands while they're in office? If, right now, Vladimir Putin just openly offered Donald Trump a billion dollars in cash, that wouldn't be a problem if he wins office in 2024?

You speak as though Biden's presidency (and candidacy, for that matter), was a fair accompli. In May of 2017, there wasn't even much media speculation about who the Dem nominee would be. If Trump gave Putin a million dollars right now, it would certainly be a problem, but it would be more a political problem than a legal one unless there were actual evidence that Putin expected something in return. Even then, the insinuation would be different; it's a political problem because Trump has a record of appearing soft on Russia and this opens him to accusations that he's not exactly disinterested when it comes to certain foreign affairs questions. I have yet to hear anyone on the right make the argument that these alleged deals have had any impact at all on how Biden deals with China. It's a lead balloon as a political question so they're trying to dress it up as a crime when it isn't.

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You speak as if it is obvious it wasn't a reward for past behavior.

And yes. Biden's public actions in China and Ukraine seem fairly corrupt.

If Trump gave Putin a million dollars right now, it would certainly be a problem, but it would be more a political problem than a legal one unless there were actual evidence that Putin expected something in return

There is a million dollars of actual evidence. I assume you meant Putin giving Trump money. No political figure just arbitrarily gifts another large amounts of money out of the goodness of their heart. We don't need to know the specifics to know something is wrong, and certainly we don't need to know the specifics before evaluating whether to inform the public of what is known.