I'm not sure how to approach this question. I didn't use the word "force".
If you're just generally wondering what I mean with my comment, it's that this article is talking about something that happened "historically" ("Nixon's White House") even though similar things are considered today (or I guess 2 years ago)[0].
It is an interesting story, admittedly it may not actually be a distraction piece, but this comment is not a good rebuttal to mine. Certainly the idea of diverting attention from one thing to another is not so nonsensical.
But certain information from an administration naturally becomes available after an amount of time after the administration ends. There will be new information about a past administration that becomes available during a different administration. Your comment "I'm just left wondering what recent event I'm supposed to ignore in favor of this piece" makes it sound to readers as if you're not capable of doing both, hence the "forced" word used by me.
While media can be used as misdirection, it is not always so. Just because some historical information comes out does not mean it was done for the sole purpose of distraction from a current situation. Your comment definitely implies that was the intent. Assuming that is the only reason it is being released comes across as being closed minded to fit an agenda you have.
Every anecdote about Nixon has this same problem because it turns out his administration was full of garbage people with horrific moral compasses. Maybe we shouldn't be so skeptical of those claims though, since the verifiable stuff from the tapes are also pretty terrible
Indeed. "Ends justify the means" is one of the biggest mis-rationalizations used by people in power. "We have to be devious to protect our people, culture, religion, system, etc." Often with a dose of "the other side probably cheats also".
We covered the prince in high school civics. It took me too decades to come up with an answer to the Ends Justify the Means. The objection is that The means are an end. How you do things is important in and of itself. And more important than just one particular thing at the moment.
I honestly don't expect people to have a consistent moral code. We never really know all of the ends, so we're just guessing anyway. I'm just as suspicious of "I'm going to do this obviously horrendous thing because my moral code says I have to."
The ends do, sometimes, justify the means -- as best we can understand the ends and the means. And Richard Nixon was just a violent asshole, using the thinnest pretext of "the greater good" for his own short-term and selfish purposes.
All I can hope for, morally, is for people do at least try not to be deliberately cruel to each other. Even that seems too much to ask a lot of the time.
> In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.
"In September 2021, Yahoo! News reported that in 2017 in the wake of the Vault 7 leaks, the CIA discussed plans to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange. They also planned to spy on associates of WikiLeaks, sow discord among its members, and steal their electronic devices. "[T]op intelligence officials lobbied the White House" to designate Wikileaks as an "information broker" to allow for more investigative tools against it, "potentially paving the way" for its prosecution. Laura Poitras described attempts to classify herself and Assange as "information brokers" rather than journalists as "bone-chilling and a threat to journalists worldwide".[380] Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo stated that the US officials who had spoken to Yahoo should be prosecuted for exposing CIA activities."
Why are Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo saying that officials who had spoken to Yahoo should be prosecuted for exposing CIA activities, if it all is just a conspiracy theory based on a anonymous blog poster?
Thats a different instance — the drone strike reference was to an anonymous blog post lying about how Hillary Clinton had wanted to drone strike Assange. It’s frequently trotted out to “both sides” actual conspiracies like Nixons war crimes or Trump and Pompeo plotting things like what you've linked there.
The first instance (that I still got on archive) of someone claiming that Hillary Clinton wanted to kill Assange occurred in Dec 18, 2010 by The Juice Media, a left-wing Australian company that produces comedic contemporary political and social satire videos. (https://youtu.be/hl4NlA97GeQ?t=237)
Then we have the case of Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson. In 2011 the FBI tried to recruit Sigurdur, who volunteered at wikileaks. "spy on associates of WikiLeaks, sow discord among its members, and steal their electronic devices" is a pretty fair description on what then occurred.
After Assange was granted asylum in 2012, the security company UC Global who was in charge of the building was also working with CIA.
The US embassy was also active in discussion with the Swedish prosecutors during this time about Assange and Wikileaks, which the Swedish government said "did not influence the case". The prosecutor did however break Swedish law in other ways, a fact found by the Swedish high court.
Also around this time there was a leaked document that I can't locate at this point, which showed plans for an extradition. Those where at the time dismissed as rumors, even if we know now that such plans were drafted and put into action in 2019.
All this time Hillary Clinton where United States Secretary of State, representing the United States to foreign countries. It is unclear how much responsibility she had over FBI and CIA, and with the extradition, but when it came to the cable gates a lot people assumed she was partially in charge of the US reaction in terms of foreign affiars. It is one of the main theories why Jualian Assange seemed to have a personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton 4 years later in 2016.
Hillary Clinton did also get the question if she, as the Secretary of State, ever discussed the assassination of Assange. Her answer was that she do not remember, but if she did so it would have been a joke. That did not reassure people.
1) a Presidential candidate, which is to say a civilian who is not commander in chief, pondering a drone strike, which is not a war crime, is not equivalent to a sitting President acting as commander in chief ordering a war crime.
2) The guy Americans voted for instead - the "peacemaker" to Hillary Clinton's "warmonger" - wound up launching even more drone strikes than Obama anyway. Actual ones, not, you know, rhetorical ones.
If you find this interesting, read "The Devil's Chessboard" by David Talbot. Nixon was highly indebted to the Dulles brothers, and they carried out many operations like this at home and abroad (including against their own-- see Frank Olson). They also looked the other way (if not helped facilitate) such plots that were carried out by foreign governments they were working with (see Jesús Galíndez case). But let's not pretend this is only something that happened in the past, and would only happen in "Putin's Russia" today as this article's annoying preamble suggests.
They might wait until 2063 to tell us what happened to Michael Hastings, except they probably won't ever confirm their successes, only aborted plans and failures. It's a conspiracy theory to believe that the government has ever been successful at anything.
In 1976, in Washington DC, the Chilean secret service assassinated the wife of an American economist, as well as a former minister of the previous Chilean government (which had been overthrown in a Nixon backed military coup).
The US is plenty culpable. That assassination was one among a number of clandestine actions of Operation Condor, for which the US collaborated with South American nations to disrupt left-leaning movements across the continent.
Anyone even remotely familiar with Nixon or Kissinger won't be surprised.
"If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning"
1. The prohibition War on Drugs had nothing to do with public health, it was a cynical plot by the Nixon admin to attack its perceived enemies, African-Americans and leftist hippies, using the establishment and media. Ehrlichman admitted it in 1994 on tape.
2. The ideological cause of the Nixon admin was recreated by Roger Ailes in the vehicle of Fox News. It largely accomplished its goals of radicalizing millions of Americans towards their warped views and permitted the denigration and exploitation of women employees along the way. I would wager most nursing homes play Fox News constantly and their inhabitants, both worker and housed tend to lean that way. It's inexplicable how many poor whites believe/d Nixon and Trump were their saviors.
5. The first episode of the Nixon interviews drew a 45 share, the highest in history for a political documentary which still stands. The interviews has its own play and a movie, both named Frost/Nixon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_interviews
I think you maybe projecting an unfavorable interpretation. I don't think it's fun. It's probably depressing and shameful to be related to close family members who are potentially unreasonable, ignorant, violent, and more. My father brow-beat his dying parents to extract large sums of money away from my mother who was abandoned crippled and broke by her dirtbag 2nd ex. Painful cancer isn't good enough for him. I never want to talk to that sack of shit #1 or mom's sack of shit ex #2. Not worth another sentence when mom is a lovely human being who encountered a great deal of misfortune.
Perhaps instead of judging based on limited information, you should first look at your own circumstances and mind your own.
Edit: There is a teen-juvenile tendency of some people to annoy their parents. Those who grew up realize their parents were just people, not mythological, one-dimensional figures. At the age of majority, an inconvenient modern truth is familial relations become optional as opposed to required because survival assistance usually ends unless there's a failure to launch. Wise parents should aim to promote self-reliance, 360-degree honesty, considerateness, courage, BS-detecting critical thinking, and confidence as much as possible.
> It's probably depressing and shameful to be related to close family members who are potentially unreasonable, ignorant, violent, and more.
First, get help. Liking a political candidate does not make you unhinged and violent.
> Perhaps instead of judging based on limited information, you should first look at your own circumstances and mind your own.
It's a public forum, sorry I ruffled feathers identifying a problem child that somehow made it to adulthood. I mean, their parents must've done something right. Except for the part where they raised an ingrate that judges them entirely on their affinity to a particularly, extremely popular nationally, candidate.
> Wise parents should aim to promote self-reliance, 360-degree honesty, considerateness, courage, BS-detecting critical thinking, and confidence as much as possible.
Indeed, the person's parent's failed in one aspect. They raised a person who is so high huffing their own, admittedly leftist, farts they cannot even drop the veil for a minute to enjoy the likely little time they have left with the people they've known their whole life. It's pathetic. I say that because there is no word in the English language with more power that I know. It's beyond pathetic. The "dangerous, violent" person is the poster. I am sure you could say the wrong thing to them at a bar (perhaps "trump did some good") and get yourself into a knife fight. I've ran into these people before. They're better off siloed in a room with padding on the walls than out on the street. Perhaps with a hit reel from 2008-2012 Obama speeches playing repeat. If unhinged leftists were capable of anything California wouldn't be having a mass exodus and the streets wouldn't smell like excrement. And yes, they do. I travel there weekly.
First: I am a Christian. I can be a leftist and a Christian, (look up Dorothy Day) and my comment made no mention of faith. You brought that up and it says more about your worry or notions than anything else.
Second - “fun” because it is. They are both close in age with me, and we have great rapport with this stuff. Heck, the three Chomsky books my dad bought me last month say plenty.
Third: Reagan was a fucking terrible president and if I didn’t focus most of my history on how evil Kissinger was, I’d have more to write about ole Ronnie.
I see that politics is your entire personality. Sorry for offending something so deeply meaningful to you. I used it as an example and your moronic pseudo-intellectual deep-read into the psychology of my post lead to your conclusion.
It's not difficult to see (no pun intended) that it's manufacturing consent (and sentiment, purchasing preferences, and life decisions) by the authority of the boob tube.
'78 myself, social democratic Marxist now having been lied-to early by the billionaire con artists of the libertarians, disappointed by elitist suits of the neoliberal (Clintons), and utopian anarcho-syndicalists. My father was always a Murican Trumpists waiting for his day to open carry and strut the flag behind a Ford pickup. It's sad to say my mother has/had vacillating views, is a terrible judge of character, and was/is easily influenced by anyone around.
Here's my rant no one cares about for the year:
The answer isn't burn everything down, blame migrants, or irrational exuberance over Obama; it's look in the mirror and compare how the rest of the world does things better. American exceptionalism and triumphalism is a resting-on-laurels prescription for a has-been recounting their high school glory days to another junky in the alley with a needle in their arm.
"Defund the police", "stop and frisk", "trickledown economics", and "Big gubberment bad" are all stupid ideas. That there are QAnon-adherents, big coal DINOs, LGBT-washed DINO corporate phonies, CV liars, and worse representing The People, taking a salary from them, acting as tools of billionaires, and sitting in the same building as Greg Casar or Ro Khanna is shameful and disrespectful. It's clear to anyone not a moron that neither US political party can deliver anything substantial except more handouts to billionaires. Bernie Sanders was Henry A. Wallace'd because he was too weak, too nice, and let Clinton steal WV even though she completely lost every county. The only way is for millions of people to (nonviolently, obviously) take over Washington and convince those who support this corrupt corrupt regime to press the reset button. SCOTUS is completely in the tank for the Republicans and will deliver them cake on a silver platter for years. Again, Obama was weak and went over to the side of the corporatist neoliberals. Campaign finance reform is a pipe dream because too many politicians enjoy the benefits of lobbyists' and billionaires' cash and do their bidding. The US isn't a democracy (or a representative republic), it's a kleptocratic plutocracy. The middle-lower classes should be extremely motivated and organized to change the situation as tens of trillions of wealth were transferred (stolen) from them over the past 50 years, but no, Jan 9th was the Tea Party's "winning lottery ticket", an orgasm of disorganized, misdirected violence like that drunk, conspiracy theory-spouting uncle in most families. Voting in such a system legitimizes it when effort is better spent figuring out how to wrest control of it: 1. crowdfund billions to buy leverage to clean it up. 2. ten million people marching in DC. 3. (Maybe your idea here.)
If you don't want power to go to the rich, TV celebrities, or elect a populist fascist, then limited time sortition "jury duty" by competent civil administrator candidates as the Athenians did is possibly the only way to divvy out most roles. Until then, enjoy manufactured popularity contests.
> "Defund the police", "stop and frisk", "trickledown economics", and "Big gubberment bad" are all stupid ideas.
"Defund the police" is an incredibly stupid name given to a collection of ideas, some of which are genuinely great ideas.
One example is that police are being asked to insert themselves into situations where they are not trained or prepared, all because we simply don't have any other agency to contact.
We could instead create community services where mental healthcare professionals and social workers can be dispatched to deal with situations like people in the middle of a mental healthcare crisis, welfare checks, or even literal children throwing tantrums, instead of sending armed police officers who don't know what they're doing. Police and EMS can be dispatched as well if the situation is dangerous, or people are injured, but most of the time they won't be needed at all.
Since police departments won't be dealing with those issues anymore it frees up a lot of their time and resources so money can be diverted from police budgets to fund these new community services without impacting the ability of police to deal with criminals, and police can now focus their attention on actual police work without being distracted by non-law enforcement tasks.
That way the people still get the help they need and police spend less time shooting autistic people, or pepper-spraying 9 year old girls.
Howard E. Hunt (the source of this) was a CIA officer with quite a checkered past including leading the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and involvement in Watergate.
I'm not sure I'd take these stories at face value.
So the assassination was supposed to be carried out by Hunt [1] and Liddy [2], two of the Watergate burglars. Both these guys served time in federal prison. And wrote books, did campus tours, gave interviews, made a lot of money telling people about Watergate and other stuff.
Did they ever tell a lie, or embellish their stories for dramatic effect? In this case, it appears so, because the stories are inconsistent.
The Washington Post article claims the idea came from Charles Colson, who contacted Hunt and proposed assassinating Anderson by using an untraceable poison, like LSD. After that, they brought Liddy in the conspiracy.
But Washington Post also links to [3], where we learn that Liddy considered Anderson a "fit target for killing", not because Anderson was a pain in Nixon's neck, but because he doxxed some American spy who lost his life because of that.
True or not, Liddy says he also planned to kill Hunt himself.
To which Hunt states that Liddy was "a posturer with doubtful credentials as a killer " (one wonders if that was in comparison with his own "credentials") and "suggested he (Liddy) was mentally unbalanced".
What a mess... I'll take anything these guys say with a big grain of salt.
65 comments
[ 9.3 ms ] story [ 1935 ms ] threadIf you're just generally wondering what I mean with my comment, it's that this article is talking about something that happened "historically" ("Nixon's White House") even though similar things are considered today (or I guess 2 years ago)[0].
It is an interesting story, admittedly it may not actually be a distraction piece, but this comment is not a good rebuttal to mine. Certainly the idea of diverting attention from one thing to another is not so nonsensical.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/27/senior-cia-off...
While media can be used as misdirection, it is not always so. Just because some historical information comes out does not mean it was done for the sole purpose of distraction from a current situation. Your comment definitely implies that was the intent. Assuming that is the only reason it is being released comes across as being closed minded to fit an agenda you have.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/cold-war/richard-nixon-nort...
It's a good, plausible story. But it's not terrifically sourced [1].
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-korea-richard-nixon-...
Seriously, though: several of the Trump campaign's architects (Paul Manafort, Roger Stone) got their start in the Nixon administration.
Nixon for life apparently. Stone has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/roger-stone-nixon-tattoo/
This is what everyone tells themselves when they flip on their own morals, or "it's for the greater good" with the trolley problem.
The ends do, sometimes, justify the means -- as best we can understand the ends and the means. And Richard Nixon was just a violent asshole, using the thinnest pretext of "the greater good" for his own short-term and selfish purposes.
All I can hope for, morally, is for people do at least try not to be deliberately cruel to each other. Even that seems too much to ask a lot of the time.
And that’s key - if people can’t have consistency, a system of government never can.
Therefore all governments have a nonzero chance of “evil” and should be, at all levels, distrusted and where appropriate, dismantled.
There's this concept called "emergence" that doesn't agree with that reasoning.
> In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.
It's sort of a corollary[1] to the Fallacy of Composition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition
[1] There's probably a better word here; emergence isn't necessarily true given the fallacy of composition.
Why are Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo saying that officials who had spoken to Yahoo should be prosecuted for exposing CIA activities, if it all is just a conspiracy theory based on a anonymous blog poster?
The first instance (that I still got on archive) of someone claiming that Hillary Clinton wanted to kill Assange occurred in Dec 18, 2010 by The Juice Media, a left-wing Australian company that produces comedic contemporary political and social satire videos. (https://youtu.be/hl4NlA97GeQ?t=237)
Then we have the case of Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson. In 2011 the FBI tried to recruit Sigurdur, who volunteered at wikileaks. "spy on associates of WikiLeaks, sow discord among its members, and steal their electronic devices" is a pretty fair description on what then occurred.
After Assange was granted asylum in 2012, the security company UC Global who was in charge of the building was also working with CIA.
The US embassy was also active in discussion with the Swedish prosecutors during this time about Assange and Wikileaks, which the Swedish government said "did not influence the case". The prosecutor did however break Swedish law in other ways, a fact found by the Swedish high court.
Also around this time there was a leaked document that I can't locate at this point, which showed plans for an extradition. Those where at the time dismissed as rumors, even if we know now that such plans were drafted and put into action in 2019.
All this time Hillary Clinton where United States Secretary of State, representing the United States to foreign countries. It is unclear how much responsibility she had over FBI and CIA, and with the extradition, but when it came to the cable gates a lot people assumed she was partially in charge of the US reaction in terms of foreign affiars. It is one of the main theories why Jualian Assange seemed to have a personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton 4 years later in 2016.
Hillary Clinton did also get the question if she, as the Secretary of State, ever discussed the assassination of Assange. Her answer was that she do not remember, but if she did so it would have been a joke. That did not reassure people.
I haven't looked into whether it comes from a reliable source
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/julian-assange-drone-strik...
Assuming it's true, yes, because:
1) a Presidential candidate, which is to say a civilian who is not commander in chief, pondering a drone strike, which is not a war crime, is not equivalent to a sitting President acting as commander in chief ordering a war crime.
2) The guy Americans voted for instead - the "peacemaker" to Hillary Clinton's "warmonger" - wound up launching even more drone strikes than Obama anyway. Actual ones, not, you know, rhetorical ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Orlando_Letel...
"If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning"
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-...
1. The prohibition War on Drugs had nothing to do with public health, it was a cynical plot by the Nixon admin to attack its perceived enemies, African-Americans and leftist hippies, using the establishment and media. Ehrlichman admitted it in 1994 on tape.
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
2. The ideological cause of the Nixon admin was recreated by Roger Ailes in the vehicle of Fox News. It largely accomplished its goals of radicalizing millions of Americans towards their warped views and permitted the denigration and exploitation of women employees along the way. I would wager most nursing homes play Fox News constantly and their inhabitants, both worker and housed tend to lean that way. It's inexplicable how many poor whites believe/d Nixon and Trump were their saviors.
3. Nixon's alma mater's newspaper at Whittier College found an old listening device https://rense.com/general20/whi.htm
4. The assassination of Fred Hampton in 1969 by the Cook County's State Attorney, state police, Chicago police, and the FBI (J. Edgar era). Surely, POTUS Nixon signed-off on it. https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/1/24/22244731/new-fbi-reco...
5. The first episode of the Nixon interviews drew a 45 share, the highest in history for a political documentary which still stands. The interviews has its own play and a movie, both named Frost/Nixon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_interviews
Reagan. My mother, born in 1961, adores him for some reason. I was born in 1979. Hell, my father has a room of trinkets to/about him.
I’m a leftist. Reminding them he was an evil man and his wife was a wack-a-doo is.. fun.
Why do you feel the need to do this? Does it provide you some personal validation that lets you sleep better at night? That you "bested" your parents?
I think your issue is deeper than politics. Militant atheists get the same kicks "besting" Christians. It's not a healthy way to go about living.
Perhaps instead of judging based on limited information, you should first look at your own circumstances and mind your own.
Edit: There is a teen-juvenile tendency of some people to annoy their parents. Those who grew up realize their parents were just people, not mythological, one-dimensional figures. At the age of majority, an inconvenient modern truth is familial relations become optional as opposed to required because survival assistance usually ends unless there's a failure to launch. Wise parents should aim to promote self-reliance, 360-degree honesty, considerateness, courage, BS-detecting critical thinking, and confidence as much as possible.
First, get help. Liking a political candidate does not make you unhinged and violent.
> Perhaps instead of judging based on limited information, you should first look at your own circumstances and mind your own.
It's a public forum, sorry I ruffled feathers identifying a problem child that somehow made it to adulthood. I mean, their parents must've done something right. Except for the part where they raised an ingrate that judges them entirely on their affinity to a particularly, extremely popular nationally, candidate.
> Wise parents should aim to promote self-reliance, 360-degree honesty, considerateness, courage, BS-detecting critical thinking, and confidence as much as possible.
Indeed, the person's parent's failed in one aspect. They raised a person who is so high huffing their own, admittedly leftist, farts they cannot even drop the veil for a minute to enjoy the likely little time they have left with the people they've known their whole life. It's pathetic. I say that because there is no word in the English language with more power that I know. It's beyond pathetic. The "dangerous, violent" person is the poster. I am sure you could say the wrong thing to them at a bar (perhaps "trump did some good") and get yourself into a knife fight. I've ran into these people before. They're better off siloed in a room with padding on the walls than out on the street. Perhaps with a hit reel from 2008-2012 Obama speeches playing repeat. If unhinged leftists were capable of anything California wouldn't be having a mass exodus and the streets wouldn't smell like excrement. And yes, they do. I travel there weekly.
Second - “fun” because it is. They are both close in age with me, and we have great rapport with this stuff. Heck, the three Chomsky books my dad bought me last month say plenty.
Third: Reagan was a fucking terrible president and if I didn’t focus most of my history on how evil Kissinger was, I’d have more to write about ole Ronnie.
'78 myself, social democratic Marxist now having been lied-to early by the billionaire con artists of the libertarians, disappointed by elitist suits of the neoliberal (Clintons), and utopian anarcho-syndicalists. My father was always a Murican Trumpists waiting for his day to open carry and strut the flag behind a Ford pickup. It's sad to say my mother has/had vacillating views, is a terrible judge of character, and was/is easily influenced by anyone around.
Here's my rant no one cares about for the year:
The answer isn't burn everything down, blame migrants, or irrational exuberance over Obama; it's look in the mirror and compare how the rest of the world does things better. American exceptionalism and triumphalism is a resting-on-laurels prescription for a has-been recounting their high school glory days to another junky in the alley with a needle in their arm.
"Defund the police", "stop and frisk", "trickledown economics", and "Big gubberment bad" are all stupid ideas. That there are QAnon-adherents, big coal DINOs, LGBT-washed DINO corporate phonies, CV liars, and worse representing The People, taking a salary from them, acting as tools of billionaires, and sitting in the same building as Greg Casar or Ro Khanna is shameful and disrespectful. It's clear to anyone not a moron that neither US political party can deliver anything substantial except more handouts to billionaires. Bernie Sanders was Henry A. Wallace'd because he was too weak, too nice, and let Clinton steal WV even though she completely lost every county. The only way is for millions of people to (nonviolently, obviously) take over Washington and convince those who support this corrupt corrupt regime to press the reset button. SCOTUS is completely in the tank for the Republicans and will deliver them cake on a silver platter for years. Again, Obama was weak and went over to the side of the corporatist neoliberals. Campaign finance reform is a pipe dream because too many politicians enjoy the benefits of lobbyists' and billionaires' cash and do their bidding. The US isn't a democracy (or a representative republic), it's a kleptocratic plutocracy. The middle-lower classes should be extremely motivated and organized to change the situation as tens of trillions of wealth were transferred (stolen) from them over the past 50 years, but no, Jan 9th was the Tea Party's "winning lottery ticket", an orgasm of disorganized, misdirected violence like that drunk, conspiracy theory-spouting uncle in most families. Voting in such a system legitimizes it when effort is better spent figuring out how to wrest control of it: 1. crowdfund billions to buy leverage to clean it up. 2. ten million people marching in DC. 3. (Maybe your idea here.)
If you don't want power to go to the rich, TV celebrities, or elect a populist fascist, then limited time sortition "jury duty" by competent civil administrator candidates as the Athenians did is possibly the only way to divvy out most roles. Until then, enjoy manufactured popularity contests.
https://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20mater...
PS: Care homes are the most likely hotbeds of neofascist tendencies.
I think we have seen a lot of that in the last 30 years or so, for sure.
"Defund the police" is an incredibly stupid name given to a collection of ideas, some of which are genuinely great ideas.
One example is that police are being asked to insert themselves into situations where they are not trained or prepared, all because we simply don't have any other agency to contact.
We could instead create community services where mental healthcare professionals and social workers can be dispatched to deal with situations like people in the middle of a mental healthcare crisis, welfare checks, or even literal children throwing tantrums, instead of sending armed police officers who don't know what they're doing. Police and EMS can be dispatched as well if the situation is dangerous, or people are injured, but most of the time they won't be needed at all.
Since police departments won't be dealing with those issues anymore it frees up a lot of their time and resources so money can be diverted from police budgets to fund these new community services without impacting the ability of police to deal with criminals, and police can now focus their attention on actual police work without being distracted by non-law enforcement tasks.
That way the people still get the help they need and police spend less time shooting autistic people, or pepper-spraying 9 year old girls.
"Poisoned with LSD?"
Howard E. Hunt (the source of this) was a CIA officer with quite a checkered past including leading the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and involvement in Watergate.
I'm not sure I'd take these stories at face value.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Howard_Hunt
Did they ever tell a lie, or embellish their stories for dramatic effect? In this case, it appears so, because the stories are inconsistent.
The Washington Post article claims the idea came from Charles Colson, who contacted Hunt and proposed assassinating Anderson by using an untraceable poison, like LSD. After that, they brought Liddy in the conspiracy.
But Washington Post also links to [3], where we learn that Liddy considered Anderson a "fit target for killing", not because Anderson was a pain in Nixon's neck, but because he doxxed some American spy who lost his life because of that.
True or not, Liddy says he also planned to kill Hunt himself.
To which Hunt states that Liddy was "a posturer with doubtful credentials as a killer " (one wonders if that was in comparison with his own "credentials") and "suggested he (Liddy) was mentally unbalanced".
What a mess... I'll take anything these guys say with a big grain of salt.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Howard_Hunt
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Gordon_Liddy
[3] http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20...