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What's Going on at the FBI?

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Re: What's Going on at the FBI?

#101

Post by soco »

gerash wrote: post #58
arunabha wrote: post #8

It's wild to think I'd ever say this, but the next four years will be the stress test of the strength of US institutions against an authoritarian president. If they survive the next four years, they will likely survive pretty much anything.

US institutions aka. bureaucracy isn't without its own issues. I believe that's why people voted in a rather unusual person like Trump whose main feature is being outside the establishment. It is the US institutions who have happily engaged in endless foreign wars over past several decades. They have also enacted low corporate taxation resulting in high stock prices but even larger wealth gap where few winners take a…

Can you please explain how is Trump outside the establishment? Or rather, of which establishment is he outside?

Re: What's Going on at the FBI?

#103

Post by kragen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #100
kragen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misinterpreted something in my note. Continuing to enforce yesterday's laws after Congress repeals them would not seem to me to be the opposite of "openly picking and choosing which laws are valid"; rather, it would be an even more extreme form of it, because you're no longer even just picking from the laws currently on the books!

It would seem so, and I apologize. I think that this bit: > The democracy the FBI is sworn to protect has turned on it. What is left for it to protect? The laws handed down from an older, wiser time? Perhaps the time of Senator McCarthy? Or Jim Crow? specifically mentions of McCarthy and Jim Crow, made me misunderstand this bit: > What if today's president pardons common criminals and today's Congress legalizes their…

I'm mostly saying the same thing, but from a somewhat less prescriptive point of view. I'm less concerned with what the FBI should do than with what it will do and, by the nature of the organization, what it can do. I think these are much more interesting questions, because I really doubt any FBI agents are reading this thread in order to base their plans on my opinions or yours.

So, from my perspective, the normative questions you're bringing up are sort of a distraction. I don't want to waste my emotional energy on praising or condemning FBI agents, which seems like the only possible outcome of the normative debate.

(My examples may not have been well chosen to avoid that debate, but I discarded many even worse ones.)

Of course each individual person in the organization can do anything they choose, within their physical and mental capabilities, and what they think they should do will probably influence what they will do; but what the organization as a whole can do is constrained by those individuals' ability to coordinate. (And what you think or I think they should do doesn't enter into it at all.)

And, from that coordination point of view, at least from an outside perspective, it's not obvious that it's capable of meaningful resistance beyond simple self-preservation.

Re: What's Going on at the FBI?

#104

Post by trealira »

guelo wrote: post #68
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #61

Live by the witch hunt, die by the witch hunt.

Do you believe the j6 rioters breaking into the capitol were not acting illegally so that there prosecution was a witch hunt? Help me understand.

You literally cannot reason with such people. They will pretend to be mad about lies as their people lie more. They'll pretend to be mad about laws procedure as they break laws and procedure. They'll pretend to be mad about inflation as they cause inflation. Their disingenuous comments are not aimed at you, but at propagandizing to an audience to discredit you. Conservatives silently, collectively agreed long ago that they'd do this, understanding that politics to them is just how to seize power.

Re: What's Going on at the FBI?

#105

Post by kragen »

cinquemb wrote: post #56
rob74 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the supreme representatives of the judicial branch have just last year given the executive (=Trump) a blank check to largely do anything it pleases ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024) ). So yes, the US is in big trouble...

Don't forget the repeal of the chevron deference too by the supreme court. Agencies have a lot less power now (at least from a judicial perspective). Big trouble indeed, but its clear that for certain actors, they are experiencing pain they haven't felt before under any administration...

As I understand it, this means that many regulations (CFR) are much easier to repeal now than to re-enact; it will take an act of Congress to restore executive power that is thus relinquished. But I don't have a very clear idea of why I think this, so maybe I'm misremembering...

Re: What's Going on at the FBI?

#106

Post by Tarq0n »

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #79
thih9 wrote: post #20

I’m not from the US and news like this change my perception of that country - it seems unstable; just like I’m not considering a Wordpress blog, I’d think twice before any long term plans that involve the US. The comparison to the Wordpress drama works surprisingly well for me, complete with vendettas and an overzealous leader, just on an even larger scale and affecting more people.

maybe the people from US will learn that presidentialism is not a good idea?

Honestly the legislative branch is welcome to act anytime they choose to, they just love hiding their own dysfunction behind the lightning rod of the presidency.

Like the whole USAID debacle, this is the kind of task and budget that is set by the legislative branch, and the president can and should be held to account if he refuses to execute on that task.

Re: What's Going on at the FBI?

#107

Post by monkeyfun »

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #55
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imagine being energy dependent on a regime that bullies you from Washington, and being asked to increase security spending to 5% of GDP by purchasing US weapons systems. while being told by the same regime they might take over Greenland or the Panama canal. when putting US foreign policy into perspective over the past 30 (or more depending where you are) years, then aligning with China suddenly looks a lot less awful…

I think when you look holistically at the promises that China has made, and broken, it still doesn’t make sense to align with China. That could change in the future but the time isn’t now. An example; look at what they’ve been doing in the South China Sea, Hong Kong or Xinjiang. Some instability in the U.S. is definitely uncomfortable but the alternative is not better.

What are some of the broken promises?

I'm not well informed on the subject and now you've got me really curious.

Re: What's Going on at the FBI?

#108

Post by cinquemb »

mdhb wrote: post #96
emptysongglass wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other NATO partners being asked to increase defense spending to 5 percent is entirely reasonable. And that's with or without Trump asking for it. I live in Europe, I am European: we've outsourced our own defense for far too long. It is absurd that a country presenting an existential threat to us has been met with more supplied resistance from a country across the earth than Europe. It's long past time for Europe to w…

Agreed on this. It’s the other two parts that go with it that are the problem: 1. You have to allocate that budget towards buying from the US defence industry. You are not going to be allowed to spend that internally. Which arguments aside of if that actually makes sense is at least a conflict of interest. 2. We are also threatening to annex territory and rip up the only meaningful alliance that keeps you safe in pra…

The realpolitik of the situation: you can only really have an alliance among equals and its foolish to believe otherwise with a massive power imbalance (I doubt the cultural boundaries in Europe will aid this endeavor for some kind of unified security umbrella, when unification of the sovereign euro debt markets has remained illusive as represented by the spreads). It's clear that the post wwii era where the US willingly funds everything under the sun ex-stateside without clear equivalent concessions that can be sold politically to the stateside is over for now.

I'm hopeful that it will create a more robust governance systems on the local level in the long run, but not without more short term pain (after all, there were a lot of non-stateside mouths being fed who will have to figure out realistic alternatives and face once unpalatable choices that will need to be made out of necessity).

Re: What's Going on at the FBI?

#109

Post by jimkleiber »

rob74 wrote: post #44
jimkleiber wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way is for the people in the other branches of government—Congress (legislative) and Courts (judicial)—to stand up for their branches and fight against the executive. The challenge is that people are more loyal to their political parties than their political branches, and the Constitution is built to check and balance branches, not parties.

Well, the supreme representatives of the judicial branch have just last year given the executive (=Trump) a blank check to largely do anything it pleases ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024) ). So yes, the US is in big trouble...

Yes, it saddens me to see one of the three branches almost capitulate to another. If there's gonna be any in-fighting, let it be amongst the branches.

Re: What's Going on at the FBI?

#110

Post by mdhb »

cinquemb wrote: post #108
mdhb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on this. It’s the other two parts that go with it that are the problem: 1. You have to allocate that budget towards buying from the US defence industry. You are not going to be allowed to spend that internally. Which arguments aside of if that actually makes sense is at least a conflict of interest. 2. We are also threatening to annex territory and rip up the only meaningful alliance that keeps you safe in pra…

The realpolitik of the situation: you can only really have an alliance among equals and its foolish to believe otherwise with a massive power imbalance (I doubt the cultural boundaries in Europe will aid this endeavor for some kind of unified security umbrella, when unification of the sovereign euro debt markets has remained illusive as represented by the spreads). It's clear that the post wwii era where the US willi…

And realpolitik nobody will ever trust the US again they are going to in a much worse position for the rest of both our lives as a result of this.

I don’t think a lot of Americans have any concept of exactly how much the rest of the world hates them right now but I promise you that you’re living in a very different world moving forward as is everyone else.

You can’t spend generations telling everyone to depend on you precisely because you are selling stability and predictability and then change your mind overnight. That is going to have large multi generational consequences.

My advice is to get on top of your oligarchy problem sooner rather than later and you had best figure out a way that the fate of the world and your country doesn’t rely on what a bunch of people from Iowa think about “wokeness” every 4 years. That’s not sustainable

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