Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

Turley isn't a journalist. He's a law professor. It's an opinion piece.

And I never said I agreed with him in the past. Just commenting on how he changed over time.

That seems more retributive than defensive. It’s only construed as defensive when the attacker is forced to justify themselves, to themselves and others, to avoid shame and guilt. Consider the cliche of “defending one’s honor”. This phrase assumes the rightfulness of the aggressor’s actions. It begs the question.

Being a former government official doesn't mean you lose your first amendment rights.

I could write an entire article about Tucker Carlson saying something and title it "Multi-millionaire frozen food heir says "

> Sovereignty of a nation is built on the sovereign individuals.

This is just wrong. Sovereignty is a term for having ultimate authority. This can be had by any kind of government as long as it is the ultimate authority over what it claims to govern. This can include a dictatorship even if it might not recognize the authority of the individual over their own body.

Whether or not other countries recognize another country’s sovereignty is another matter. As in the case at hand, Russia clearly does not recognize Ukraine’s and so it violates it. This qualifies as rape according to one of many definitions for the term. And that’s an accurate and appropriate labeling.

But, and this is my point, it doesn’t make your particular analogy accurate or fair. You are equating the rape of a nation with that of an individual. In particular, you are using the typical cliched scenario of the attacker being drawn in by the victim’s dress, which is usually used to suggest the perpetrator could not control themselves due to the supposed unspoken solicitation and temptation of the victim’s dress. This is not at all like Russia and Ukraine. This is not defensive, or even attempting to claim so. It’s just claiming powerlessness, a lack of agency. And Russia is doing nothing of that sort. It’s doing quite the opposite.

You even end your comment with:

> I hope no women in your family are raped by men with logic similar to your own, because you'll be blaming them.

You are suggesting that the two situations are so similar that the target of your comment wouldn’t be able to differentiate between them either.

Strange. A rape victim has a traumatic personal experience that the abstract entity we call a nation could never have, being that it doesn’t have a personal experience at all. The difference would undoubtably be quite apparent to loved ones.

And while the citizens of the nation would likely be wildly upset, unless their own individual sovereignty was also violated they would surely not have the same experience as that of a rape victim. This would be self evident just by asking any person whether they’d rather their own nation or their own sovereignty be violated. But we don’t need to ask, because we already know what the answer would be.

I’m going to bow out of the rest of this discussion though since I don’t even like talking about it. Fortunately I have never gone through either experience. And because of that, it doesn’t feel right for me to discuss the differences like I truly know the differences. Hopefully the same is true for you as well.

Edit, to preempt any misreading: I am not in anyway defending Russia. Their actions are despicable and Ukraine does not deserve any of it. Russia _is_ raping Ukraine, but that reality is very different from an individual’s despite the use of the same term.

That article is a most impressive whitewash that changes nothing.

The laptop was authentic yet the intelligence community and mass media closed ranks and called it Russian disinformation without any proof. Just a suspicion (as your link claims) that “something was up”.

That is a pitiful excuse for journalism. Sure, call the content “alleged”, publish rebuttals from the Biden team, whatever.

But they didn’t do that. They said “its likely Russian disinformation so not worth discussing at all”. That not journalism that’s actively shaping the story.