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It's unsurprising that political leaders would want to convince people that the true criminals are those who expose acts of high-level political corruption and

It's unsurprising that political leaders would want to convince people that the true criminals are those who expose acts of high-level political corruption and criminality, rather than those who perpetrate them. Every political leader would love for that self-serving piety to take hold. But what's startling is how many citizens and, especially, "journalists" now vehemently believe that as well. In light of what WikiLeaks has revealed to the world about numerous governments, just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen -- and especially a "journalist" -- to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and it'd be better if we didn't know; and, most of all, to demand that those who made us aware of it all be punished (the True Criminals) while those who did these things (The Good Authorities) be shielded https://www.salon.com/2010/12/24/wikileaks_23/ https://www.salon.com/2010/12/24/wikileaks_23/

microcolonel 8y ago
They believe that partisanship makes them moral people, but really it just makes their party morally bankrupt. When the Democrats got to sit back and watch wars they secretly liked, under cover of Republican administrations, Julian Assange was a hero who would speak truth to big bad Republican power. Now that they think Julian Assange's public service helped Americans choose the current President, they view him as a villain. A seeming majority of the mainstream press in the U.S. is staffed by Democrat partisans, so it's no wonder that they say whatever they can to defend it.
- kbenson 8y ago
  There may be some truth to that for some people, but let's not discount the amount of people (I think a majority) that distinguish between exposing government actions and meddling with an election and colluding with a foreign power in dosing so. To be clear, whether they are guilty of that or not is irrelevant to the point that people beleive they are, and that can explain a lot of the difference in how they are perceived now. Ignoring that in favor of narrative where all the Democrats are complete hypocrites is no different than what you were accusing others of in your comment.
  - raxxorrax 8y ago
    The "meddling in elections" is neither quantifiable nor in any way an excuse for the issue at hand. You want to get someone behind bars because he leaked information about war crimes. Nothing else at hand matters to this case. "meddling in elections".... pff....
    - kbenson 8y ago
      I think you've missed the context within which I was speaking, which was in direct reply to someone. I was not speaking as to whether Assange is guilty or should be prosecuted. I was speaking to someone's assessment of how "the Democrats" opinion changed on Assange over time, and the reasons for which that happened. I think the perception that Wikilieaks and Assange in particular were not acting as the neutral third party they presented themselves as has a lot to do with that, and ignoring that in lieu of a simplistic narrative the denigrates others by reducing their thoughts and motives to base approximations and stereotypes is not useful.
      - raxxorrax 8y ago
        I know how the opinion changed. There was relentless push by media and other organizations to create a narrative that there were some wizards that influenced the US elections. We still don't have any evidence on that by the way. Using this as a justification to omit the governments responsibility in war crimes, people really shouldn't vote for anything associated with your politic platform. And maybe they just didn't. That would actually be an explanation that is far more probable.
  - jonfw 8y ago
    Election meddling is not inherently bad. If your version of "election meddling" is just by sharing facts about a potential electee, than I would say that you have meddled in a positive manner by making americans more educated. If he was engaged in manipulating vote counts, or if he was spreading false information, I would see the problem. But wikileaks for the most part just shared accurate government secrets. You're just using "election meddling" as a negatively connotated buzzword, without supporting how this was negative to the american people. I also meddled with the election by sharing my opinion on the internet, or at least I attempted to. Does that mean I'm anti-american? What if a foreign person retweeted me, or vice versa? Have I now colluded with foreigners to meddle with the election? The support of foreigners is not evidence of wrong-doing, and the sharing of information in an attempt to influence an election is not wrongdoing. Free speech includes speech about the elections, in fact that's where it is MOST important.
dosy 8y ago
they can't break there law and get away with it. what gives them the right to decide what's secret or not? the state is not wholly good, nor are people. but that's okay, a lot of good still gets done. attacking such a system is wrong. attacking it under delusion of moral righteousness, then continuing to live in the shadow of the freedom it provides, is morally bankrupt. it's also stupid. I totally have the authoritarian mindset you refer to, and it's a good thing. now we just have to get Snowden and Kim dot com. isn't supporting these idiots the same as supporting me to break into your house, install a monitoring product, go through how you act in your relationships with your spouse and kids, what you do in private, then decide which of that I personally am offended by or think is wrong or you would be embarrassed by, and publishing it? it seems so obvious to me that idiots like this are driven by ego and arrogance, and the hunger for power they hope to achieve by holding the powerful hostage. it's also obvious to me that they will fail. finally it seems highly likely to me that these useful idiots were used as pawns by factions within the intelligence community to be the mouthpiece for deliberate leaks. The funny thing is these people thought they were revealing secrets about casualties in wars, but in the end they are just casualties in a political turf warf that made fools of them. they're not heroes they're idiots.
- loudtieblahblah 8y ago
  Are you honestly comparing exposing war crimesdone on tax payer dollar to someone spying on my private life? I just want to reply here just so you can't delete this crap comment.
  - dosy 8y ago
    haha. "war crimes" why would I want to delete my awesome comment? yes, I'm doing more than comparing, they're analogous. spying and publishing, mind. if you're so huffy about war crimes, why do you pay your taxes? because doesn't that make you complicit? oh no but you're morally righteous. let me get you a badge for that. also, language.
    - msiyer 8y ago
      >> if you're so huffy about war crimes, why do you pay your taxes? because doesn't that make you complicit? No, because I do not have a choice. If I refuse, the system will use violence against me.
jancsika 8y ago
At the same time, this convergence of equivocation on First Amendment protections provides the perfect opportunity for a simple yet effect filter. 1. Start with the set of all potentially serious journalists. 2. Filter out the ones who put forth arguments which downplay the dangers to the press of prosecuting Assange. 3. Filter out the ones who don't explicitly argue against prosecuting Assange on 1st Amendment grounds. Follow the small group that survives #3 to get a variety of (probably) high-quality perspectives from serious journalists. Use set from #2 as a casual guide for when to prick your ears up and listen to the news.
- TrainedMonkey 8y ago
  Step 4 - live in a bubble where you are always correct forever. Filtering out everyone who happens to disagree with your opinion is a good way to get stuck in an echo chamber.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    This goes some way toward explaining the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria...
    - belltaco 8y ago
      Also Pizzagate. Spread by Mr. Assange himself for political purposes. https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate Leading to https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john-podesta-pizzagate-766489/ https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john-pod...
      - Ceegen 8y ago
        Pizzagate is real. Pedophiles will lie even when caught in the act. What happened to Johnny Gosch? Who was involved in the Boystown scandal? How many cases of missing children are not solved or not reported? How many "priests" get moved around instead of prosecuted? I find that most people don't even bother to analyze things like pedogate in-depth, because either this is too disgusting to even touch, or the person is just apathetic. That being said, analyze this problem like a programmer (as you would any other sort of problem), and you begin to see things you hadn't before. Also, Julian Assange didn't spread the rumors, only provided the information. If you think "playing dominoes on cheese pizza" is a phrase normal people use, or that posting pictures of half-naked children and making sexual comments about them is normal, then f* you. (Disclaimer: Also, f* you). Even if you just go by the "~10% rule" for population demographics, that at least 10% of the population belongs to any given demographic group, it makes for a large enough population group of pedophiles to be concerned about. So let's just say (for this example) that 1% of the population of the United States (population of ~350 million) are pedophiles of varying degrees ranging from Jared at Subway, to people like Albert Fish. That's still 3,500,000 pedophiles. Using the Pareto Distribution, a hyper-minority of 1% of the 1% are dedicated to their "cause", would be a group of about 35,000 pedophiles. Given that people congregate based on similar interests and ideals, you can almost bet that about half of "the 1% of the 1%" (in this example, 17,500) are in some sort of group that works together for the mutual benefit of the overall group. 17,500 is a lot of people. What kind of things can you get done with a group of very intelligent predators whose targets are children? And that's just the core group, who knows how many underlings they have working for them with similar interests, given these demographics... I mean, Goldman-Sachs has about 36k employees, and they're worth how much? The US Army reported 1,281,900 service members in 2017, and not all of them are in the "core group" 1% of 1%" that account for high-ranking power brokers, but the armed forces all work together as a well-oiled machine to accomplish a goal. Is it such a far-fetched idea that pedophiles don't have their own goal-oriented group? How many of them work in the entertainment and news industry? (Dan Harmon made a video about raping babies, and he thought it was funny...). Was Corey Feldman lying? FFS people back in the early 1900's thought that "organized crime" was an oxymoron, what is so hard to believe about this? I think it comes down to either you don't know or you don't want to know.
gameswithgo 8y ago
some of us have a bit of cognitive dissonance with assange, where we maybe don’t think he should be prosecuted but holy cow are we enjoying seeing him get pwned by trumps administration after he helped trump get elected.
- eyko 8y ago
  To me it sounds like people are enjoying seeing him go through this because he didn't help Hillary Clinton get elected, which is an important nuance there. Had it been any other candidate instead of Trump, Wikileaks would still have published the leaked emails. The DNC emails leaked were both authentic, and newsworthy, which made it their duty (as journalists) to publish them.

microcolonel 8y ago

They believe that partisanship makes them moral people, but really it just makes their party morally bankrupt. When the Democrats got to sit back and watch wars they secretly liked, under cover of Republican administrations, Julian Assange was a hero who would speak truth to big bad Republican power. Now that they think Julian Assange's public service helped Americans choose the current President, they view him as a villain. A seeming majority of the mainstream press in the U.S. is staffed by Democrat partisans, so it's no wonder that they say whatever they can to defend it.

kbenson 8y ago
There may be some truth to that for some people, but let's not discount the amount of people (I think a majority) that distinguish between exposing government actions and meddling with an election and colluding with a foreign power in dosing so. To be clear, whether they are guilty of that or not is irrelevant to the point that people beleive they are, and that can explain a lot of the difference in how they are perceived now. Ignoring that in favor of narrative where all the Democrats are complete hypocrites is no different than what you were accusing others of in your comment.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  The "meddling in elections" is neither quantifiable nor in any way an excuse for the issue at hand. You want to get someone behind bars because he leaked information about war crimes. Nothing else at hand matters to this case. "meddling in elections".... pff....
  - kbenson 8y ago
    I think you've missed the context within which I was speaking, which was in direct reply to someone. I was not speaking as to whether Assange is guilty or should be prosecuted. I was speaking to someone's assessment of how "the Democrats" opinion changed on Assange over time, and the reasons for which that happened. I think the perception that Wikilieaks and Assange in particular were not acting as the neutral third party they presented themselves as has a lot to do with that, and ignoring that in lieu of a simplistic narrative the denigrates others by reducing their thoughts and motives to base approximations and stereotypes is not useful.
    - raxxorrax 8y ago
      I know how the opinion changed. There was relentless push by media and other organizations to create a narrative that there were some wizards that influenced the US elections. We still don't have any evidence on that by the way. Using this as a justification to omit the governments responsibility in war crimes, people really shouldn't vote for anything associated with your politic platform. And maybe they just didn't. That would actually be an explanation that is far more probable.
- jonfw 8y ago
  Election meddling is not inherently bad. If your version of "election meddling" is just by sharing facts about a potential electee, than I would say that you have meddled in a positive manner by making americans more educated. If he was engaged in manipulating vote counts, or if he was spreading false information, I would see the problem. But wikileaks for the most part just shared accurate government secrets. You're just using "election meddling" as a negatively connotated buzzword, without supporting how this was negative to the american people. I also meddled with the election by sharing my opinion on the internet, or at least I attempted to. Does that mean I'm anti-american? What if a foreign person retweeted me, or vice versa? Have I now colluded with foreigners to meddle with the election? The support of foreigners is not evidence of wrong-doing, and the sharing of information in an attempt to influence an election is not wrongdoing. Free speech includes speech about the elections, in fact that's where it is MOST important.

dosy 8y ago

they can't break there law and get away with it. what gives them the right to decide what's secret or not? the state is not wholly good, nor are people. but that's okay, a lot of good still gets done. attacking such a system is wrong. attacking it under delusion of moral righteousness, then continuing to live in the shadow of the freedom it provides, is morally bankrupt. it's also stupid. I totally have the authoritarian mindset you refer to, and it's a good thing. now we just have to get Snowden and Kim dot com. isn't supporting these idiots the same as supporting me to break into your house, install a monitoring product, go through how you act in your relationships with your spouse and kids, what you do in private, then decide which of that I personally am offended by or think is wrong or you would be embarrassed by, and publishing it? it seems so obvious to me that idiots like this are driven by ego and arrogance, and the hunger for power they hope to achieve by holding the powerful hostage. it's also obvious to me that they will fail. finally it seems highly likely to me that these useful idiots were used as pawns by factions within the intelligence community to be the mouthpiece for deliberate leaks. The funny thing is these people thought they were revealing secrets about casualties in wars, but in the end they are just casualties in a political turf warf that made fools of them. they're not heroes they're idiots.

loudtieblahblah 8y ago
Are you honestly comparing exposing war crimesdone on tax payer dollar to someone spying on my private life? I just want to reply here just so you can't delete this crap comment.
- dosy 8y ago
  haha. "war crimes" why would I want to delete my awesome comment? yes, I'm doing more than comparing, they're analogous. spying and publishing, mind. if you're so huffy about war crimes, why do you pay your taxes? because doesn't that make you complicit? oh no but you're morally righteous. let me get you a badge for that. also, language.
  - msiyer 8y ago
    >> if you're so huffy about war crimes, why do you pay your taxes? because doesn't that make you complicit? No, because I do not have a choice. If I refuse, the system will use violence against me.

jancsika 8y ago

At the same time, this convergence of equivocation on First Amendment protections provides the perfect opportunity for a simple yet effect filter. 1. Start with the set of all potentially serious journalists. 2. Filter out the ones who put forth arguments which downplay the dangers to the press of prosecuting Assange. 3. Filter out the ones who don't explicitly argue against prosecuting Assange on 1st Amendment grounds. Follow the small group that survives #3 to get a variety of (probably) high-quality perspectives from serious journalists. Use set from #2 as a casual guide for when to prick your ears up and listen to the news.

TrainedMonkey 8y ago
Step 4 - live in a bubble where you are always correct forever. Filtering out everyone who happens to disagree with your opinion is a good way to get stuck in an echo chamber.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  This goes some way toward explaining the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria...
  - belltaco 8y ago
    Also Pizzagate. Spread by Mr. Assange himself for political purposes. https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate Leading to https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john-podesta-pizzagate-766489/ https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john-pod...
    - Ceegen 8y ago
      Pizzagate is real. Pedophiles will lie even when caught in the act. What happened to Johnny Gosch? Who was involved in the Boystown scandal? How many cases of missing children are not solved or not reported? How many "priests" get moved around instead of prosecuted? I find that most people don't even bother to analyze things like pedogate in-depth, because either this is too disgusting to even touch, or the person is just apathetic. That being said, analyze this problem like a programmer (as you would any other sort of problem), and you begin to see things you hadn't before. Also, Julian Assange didn't spread the rumors, only provided the information. If you think "playing dominoes on cheese pizza" is a phrase normal people use, or that posting pictures of half-naked children and making sexual comments about them is normal, then f* you. (Disclaimer: Also, f* you). Even if you just go by the "~10% rule" for population demographics, that at least 10% of the population belongs to any given demographic group, it makes for a large enough population group of pedophiles to be concerned about. So let's just say (for this example) that 1% of the population of the United States (population of ~350 million) are pedophiles of varying degrees ranging from Jared at Subway, to people like Albert Fish. That's still 3,500,000 pedophiles. Using the Pareto Distribution, a hyper-minority of 1% of the 1% are dedicated to their "cause", would be a group of about 35,000 pedophiles. Given that people congregate based on similar interests and ideals, you can almost bet that about half of "the 1% of the 1%" (in this example, 17,500) are in some sort of group that works together for the mutual benefit of the overall group. 17,500 is a lot of people. What kind of things can you get done with a group of very intelligent predators whose targets are children? And that's just the core group, who knows how many underlings they have working for them with similar interests, given these demographics... I mean, Goldman-Sachs has about 36k employees, and they're worth how much? The US Army reported 1,281,900 service members in 2017, and not all of them are in the "core group" 1% of 1%" that account for high-ranking power brokers, but the armed forces all work together as a well-oiled machine to accomplish a goal. Is it such a far-fetched idea that pedophiles don't have their own goal-oriented group? How many of them work in the entertainment and news industry? (Dan Harmon made a video about raping babies, and he thought it was funny...). Was Corey Feldman lying? FFS people back in the early 1900's thought that "organized crime" was an oxymoron, what is so hard to believe about this? I think it comes down to either you don't know or you don't want to know.

gameswithgo 8y ago

some of us have a bit of cognitive dissonance with assange, where we maybe don’t think he should be prosecuted but holy cow are we enjoying seeing him get pwned by trumps administration after he helped trump get elected.

eyko 8y ago
To me it sounds like people are enjoying seeing him go through this because he didn't help Hillary Clinton get elected, which is an important nuance there. Had it been any other candidate instead of Trump, Wikileaks would still have published the leaked emails. The DNC emails leaked were both authentic, and newsworthy, which made it their duty (as journalists) to publish them.