Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm getting tired of these comments that normalize being in the middle of the slippery slope as if it is merely the same as being at the top of the slippery slope was. They may not have been "good" times, but they were certainly better times when government agencies at least aimed to carry out their roles in good faith rather than minmaxing the rules to cause the most damage to enemies of the Party. Applying judgemen…
No. Full stop. Laws are supposed to be crafted to be as applied by anyone, anywhere and at any time. This is why lawyers and politicians are supposed to have foresight and be prudent. You look at prior events and see them as justified due to the people involved and situations. If the US government can, for example investigate Richard Spencer or some other extremist figure based on a web post, then they can do the sam…
You have said very little that addresses anything I said, except to appeal to some vague sense of "both sidesism" which is so far away from our current predicament that the only applications I see are (1) to say "I told you so", which isn't productive and widely misses the mark with me (2) normalize the current situation and/or absolve blame by shifting it onto the other side.
Investigative agencies are going to be able to investigate people. So supposing that the "US government can ... investigate Richard Spencer ... based on a web post" isn't a compelling argument unless your goal is to completely reject the concept of government. This can certainly be a consistent position (I've held it in the past), but it's not a common one.
At which point it comes down to accountability for how delegated powers are used - both in individual cases, and to stop patterns of abuse. For example I've long argued we need to neuter the concept of sovereign immunity, and start routinely compensating people who are harmed by the government but never convicted of breaking the law - one should indeed be able to "beat the ride". So I'm not waking up to this in 2025 clutching my pearls gasping "I can't believe the government can just do this". I've been following how the government operates unaccountably for quite some time, and I'm pointing out that the current regime is still a marked escalation.
This isn't to say I am pushing lame answers like "just vote Democrat" (I don't consider myself a Democrat). And I do agree that meaningful reform needs to be in general terms (eg aforementioned sovereign immunity example). But I also think that dismissing our current situation as some mere extension of what has been happening for a while is a terrible way of framing things.