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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.

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.

The FBI knew what was on the laptop and they knew it was real the entire time. They sat on it and did nothing because they did not want to prosecute Hunter Biden, as that would make the election of Joe Biden less likely. This is why they put out a signed statement saying that the laptop was fake Russian disinformation - because they wanted to suppress reporting of it before the election and make sure that it didn't change anyone's minds. Their strategy worked, and there's been a decent amount of polling that suggests the election would have gone the other way if this didn't happen. And as for plausible deniability... https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000

It is for all these reasons that we write to say that the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation. We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -- just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.

(for some reason copying the letter caused formatting problems, please excuse any that I failed to correct).

They were talking about the laptop. There's no plausible deniability here at all - they explicitly went into public and put their names on a document which lied about the facts. They took care not to say "oh we don't know for sure" but that's not how the letter was interpreted or used in the resulting discussion and suppression of information.

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.

Sanders and Warren are not serious players or contenders for the top office. Why wouldn't they want to have to deal with Joe? He's a nakedly corrupt empty suit who has largely checked out cognitively already. He has to be given incredibly simple instructions in plain English in order to appear in public and frequently makes bizarre gaffes and mistakes. This makes him the perfect candidate for President, as he will allow the deep state/MIC free reign to govern as they please, while simultaneously being non-offensive to the majority of the population.

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.

They haven't "long thought" this, they've known it and had explicit evidence that this was the case for several years. Why was Donna Brazile fired? Why was Debbie Wasserman-Schulz forced to resign? This isn't a conspiracy theory or anything, you can just go and read the emails where the official DNC makes it extremely and undeniably clear that they are against the Sanders people. Nobody tipped them off because nobody with power actually wants them to win or gain any control over the DNC - right now the DNC is (amusingly) not actually that democratic, and the people in charge want to keep it that way. I think one of the problems with talking about "the left" in general is that it really isn't a homogenous or totally aligned group. The DSA and the DNC are extremely different and have very different goals - my perspective is that the DNC is ostensibly the manifestation of the political goals and desires of the base, but has since been co-opted and corrupted and no longer actually represents that base in any real way. The DNC does however have a lot of inertia, and a lot of low-information voters who support the party because it is their team - throw in the fact that the state is very firmly supporting the DNC and we have a situation where the goals and desires of the DNC and their base are extremely different. This is the case on the right as well, but more of the base is loyal to Trump the man as opposed to the party (not to mention that he's been motivating the base a lot more than any comparable figures on the left), which is why the deep state and machinery of government have been cracking down on him so hard.