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Can any of the administration's defenders explain to me how this is actually a good thing and not the exact thing people were warning about a year ago?
by 5upplied_demand 7mo ago
Can any of the administration's defenders explain to me how this is actually a good thing and not the exact thing people were warning about a year ago?
- antonymoose 7mo ago[flagged]
- superxpro12 7mo agoYou're right. This administration has done nothing but sit on it's laurels the past 2 years. I think given the performance of DOGE, the wars, the executive orders, the epstein files, we can make a SMALL logical stretch here and assume, FOR THE MOMENT, that this happened.
- antonymoose 7mo ago[flagged]
- BrokenCogs 7mo agoCan you give examples of a few allegation stories that have been later retracted, in relation to the current administration?
- sieep 7mo ago[flagged]
- 5upplied_demand 7mo agoNeither of these involved legal allegations later proving to be false, they were simple news story retractions (just like Fox News did Sunday with Trump's dignified transfer performance [0]). The topic at hand was a whistleblower report, which would have serious ramifications if proven false. It isn't apples-to-apples. [0] https://thehill.com/homenews/media/fox-news-donald-trump-dignified-transfer/ https://thehill.com/homenews/media/fox-news-donald-trump-dig...
- collingreen 7mo agoTrump suing a news outlet (bbc) for how they edited a piece doesn't seem like "a report of allegations that ended up not being true".
- speefers 7mo ago[dead]
- orochimaaru 7mo agoDOGE was a shit show. It didn’t need to happen and achieved nothing. It was distraction so that musk could gut regulatory organizations probing his self-drive claims. I was for the admin based on claims of lawful immigration enforcement and keeping out of foreign wars. however, after inept efforts with immigration, doge and the Iran war I will not be for republicans again.
- collingreen 7mo agoDo you find those more impactful on your future voting than the lies, the massive amount of money funneled to the trump family, threatening to invade our allies, and the epstein involvement plus its subsequent cover up? I'm not trying to be snarky but I am trying to take the opportunity to gauge how some folks are prioritizing these things when they vote.
- daveguy 7mo agoI think it has a lot to with where people get their information. If you stick your head in the Fox News / NewsMax sand you aren't even going to see the all of the corruption that was clear before the election. And the twitter sewer is full of unsubstantiated rage bait and thinly veiled toxic innuendo. Musk knew exactly what he was doing when he used his direct control of a multi billion dollar communication network to influence the election. I'm just glad some people are finally saying "hey, wait a minute..."
- orochimaaru 7mo agoFrank answer - the total release of Epstein files was a promise during election time. As was not getting into foreign wars. Immigration enforcement is a problem - all they had to really do was turn the tap off at the border and use legal means to deport as opposed to the mess they created. During the previous time they were in power - these were mostly adhered to. Tariffs - again inept. They need to be targeted to keep allies close and wean off of Chinese dependence. So all in all - most of the corruption didn’t exist during trumps first term.
- hsuduebc2 7mo agoHe is talking about explanation of potential situation. He never said it is proven fact.
- ndsipa_pomu 7mo agoMaybe because the constant lying of the U.S. administration means that any kind of whistle-blowing should be treated as fact, especially when there's likely to be significant risks to the whistleblower. It seems very likely to be true.
- jasonlotito 7mo agoWhat's good for the goose is good for the gander. I think it's fine for citizens to hold administrations up to their own standards. Now, your turn to answer the question.
- nilamo 7mo agoI suppose the data just ended up in their hands at no fault of their own, through complete random happenstance, unrelated to their previous employment with DOGE?
- 5upplied_demand 7mo agoI didn't treat it as anything. It really doesn't even need to be proven as fact. The actual thing people were warning about was untrained and unqualified people having access to this data in the first place. I can't find a statement denying that this employee had that level of access. If those people weren't granted unprecedented access to our data, there would be no whistle to blow. You can wait for the "investigation" to play out, the rest can see that obvious risks were ignored to benefit someone.
- jdross 7mo agoThe steelman is that this issue is politically loaded, and there is not yet proven public evidence for the most explosive version of the claim. That makes it an easy target for partisan amplification, especially because it maps perfectly onto an existing fear people were already primed for. It is emotionally potent by design.
- hobs 7mo agoAnyone whose looking at this administration as anything but corrupt thieves that need to be immediately jailed is a patsy, a fool, or a thief themselves.
- 5upplied_demand 7mo ago> there is not yet proven public evidence for the most explosive version of the claim. Again, there doesn't need to be evidence. The point is that a claim like this is clearly plausible and worth investigating because of political decisions this administration made. They took a non-political issue (access to social security data) and explicitly made it political. You don't get to later use those same politics as a protective shield for criticism. > it maps perfectly onto an existing fear people were already primed for. People were primed because of the repeated warning that experts were giving about the security of this data and carelessness in allowing access. You are helping to prove my point that the administration encouraged this by their own actions.
- yifanl 7mo agoTo clarify, "steelman" is just another term for making up a fictional scenario that doesn't bore out in reality, like "strawman"?
- LiquidSky 7mo agoWell, there was the previous whistleblower complaint that members of DOGE accessed and shared sensitive Social Security data without the awareness of agency officials, which the government denied...until this January when they were forced to admit in a court filing that it was true. [https://archive.is/efY6S https://archive.is/efY6S] That is to say, there is no reason to extend this administration or anything DOGE-related the benefit of the doubt.
- victorbjorklund 7mo agoYou can of course discuss whether a thing is good or bad, even before it has been proven a fact. As an example, you could discuss whether it would be good or bad if it turned out that Trump fucked a minor in the presence of Epstein. Doesn't have to be proved first. You can still discuss whether it's good or bad. You could even discuss things that are totally hypothetical: if we colonize the moon, should we make murder legal or illegal on the moon? We can answer that question even if it hasn't happened yet.
- mervz 7mo agoThis coming from the same group of morons crying election fraud without an ounce of proof is amazing.
- hsuduebc2 7mo ago[flagged]
- everdrive 7mo agoNo they cannot. They don't offer real arguments, they make pre-textual arguments and they bullshit. (bullshit in the formal Harry G. Frankfurt sense of the word.) If an argument they make suits them, they will stand by that argument. If an argument ends up not suiting them, they will readily discard and fabricate a different justification. So many years of dealing with this administration, and people are still attempting to point our hypocrisy and hold people to standards with regard to principle, past statements, character, etc. None of it will work here.
- 5upplied_demand 7mo agoI agree. I'm not trying to point out the hypocrisy, it is obvious to anyone watching. I am more interested in testing the limits of how people will justify actions to themselves and others. It is fascinating to see the twisting happen in real time.
- 0xy 7mo ago[flagged]
- techblueberry 7mo agoSo your argument is "Biden bad"? That's not even a cogent argument. Biden Bad therefor people totally unrelated get to do a completely unrelated thing, that we're not evaluating on the merits? Get that Woke shit out of here.
- paxys 7mo ago"Musk says he'll fix the corrupt Democrat-run government and reduce two trillion in spending and given his track record I have no reason not to believe him." Real quote from a friend when this whole thing was going down.
- askl 7mo agoGiven his track record, spending should be at four trillion now, right?
- mnmnmn 7mo ago[dead]
- raverbashing 7mo ago> A young programmer asked if he should go work for DOGE, or whether it would end in disaster. I told him that it would at least be interesting, and that if he was worried it would end in disaster, that was all the more reason to take the job. Maybe he could help prevent that. https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/1888555241055948981 https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/1888555241055948981 I guess this aged like Windows Me
- miltonlost 7mo agoI'd switch friends.
- glaslong 7mo agoGiven his track record of raising ever more money on idealistic claims only to deliver less and less... I think he delivered exactly as expected
- jimt1234 7mo agoMusk's goal was never to reduce government spending or waste. It was to get unrestrained access to government spending data to serve his own goals. It's a conspiracy theory - I don't have any real evidence to support it, but I tend to believe it.
- deleted 7mo ago
- pwillia7 7mo ago> “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre
- MathMonkeyMan 7mo agoAnyone know where I can buy/borrow an ebook version of "Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate"? Can't find it anywhere.
- GuinansEyebrows 7mo agoamazon sells a kindle version for ~$6. looks like deadtree copies retail under $10 online (or ~$17 from PRH). IA has it but it's covered under their stupid pseudo-library false scarcity bargain so you might have to get in line. if you're okay with physical, i bet your local library has it. otherwise... can't check from work, but perhaps anna's archive/slsk has you covered?
- tokai 7mo agoYour local library can get it through ILL.
- ZeroGravitas 7mo agoOpenlibrary has a scanned copy in French and English it seems: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1161327W/R%C3%A9flexions_sur_la_question_juive?edition=key%3A/books/OL6032226M https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1161327W/R%C3%A9flexions_sur...
- Cipater 7mo agohttps://limewire.com/d/78gwF#5ggn4AJCfX https://limewire.com/d/78gwF#5ggn4AJCfX
- zetanor 7mo ago[flagged]
- 5upplied_demand 7mo ago> In due time, this one will fall out of your mental stack, too. I bet you said the same thing a year ago when people were warning about exactly this scenario.
- vntok 7mo agoIf so then they were right, everybody promptly forgot from then on until just now.
- 5upplied_demand 7mo agoThis whistleblower didn't forget, neither did I. It does sound like a bunch of people in this thread forgot. Perhaps they found it more politically convenient to forget rather than admit a mistake?
- TheGRS 7mo agoGotta break a few eggs to, uh, make things worse with no definable purpose.
- scarecrowbob 7mo agoDamn, hoss, I wish this shit would just fall out of my stack. Instead, I have a steady and ever-growing list of real and vicious shit that the US has done, going back to its formation. You can pretend that everyone is just outraged because of some flavor of the month. You can pretend you're okay with breaking eggs because you don't think they are your eggs. But at the end of the day some of us really don't like this stuff because we pay attention and have a memory- if you don't, then that's something you should work on.
- enraged_camel 7mo ago>> In due time, this one will fall out of your mental stack, too. Unless you get stack overflow first!
- Helloworldboy 7mo ago[dead]
- SV_BubbleTime 7mo agoI’m not sure the unsanctioned actions of an individual are the best attack that someone could make on the Trump administration. I don’t believe anyone here if they say that is honestly a standard that they held through previous administrations. I think there are plenty of ways to criticize Trump without abandoning my own principles.
- miltonlost 7mo agoSO you're not defending the administration, you're just attacking everyone who does attack it. Nice.
- red_hare 7mo agoThat person's actions were only possible because the administration explicitly decided to put that much unchecked power into poorly vetted individuals.
- SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago> poorly vetted individuals. Interesting choice of words and application when discussing gripes against entire administrations.
- lovich 7mo agoWhy is it interesting? Why does this admin get a pass from you for their employees actions?
- Sabinus 7mo agoYou wouldn't hold a Democrat admin responsible for the broad competence of their appointees and direct hires?
- SV_BubbleTime 7mo agoI would. I’m saying, that you didn’t.
- 7mo ago
- charcircuit 7mo ago[flagged]
- miltonlost 7mo agoSounds like you suffer from the opposite of Elon Derangement Syndrome, where he can do no wrong even when the evedience points otherwise.
- charcircuit 7mo agoI assume good intent instead of assuming he is a cartoon villain.
- goatlover 7mo agoNo need to assume, Elon is a very public figure. We have plenty of receipts on what he's said and done. DOGE was a disaster, it was unconstitutional, it did not find significant fraud, waste and abuse, it did put our information at serious risk and we still don't know who all gained acces.
- dovesky 7mo agoI fail to understand how a random "special government employee" dumping sensitive government data into a flashdrive and trying to share it with private corporate is not a big deal?
- charcircuit 7mo agoIt is not a big deal as it doesn't affect the average American like what may be implied. Our data already has been leaked and stolen before this. So this is smaller issue of a government employee breaking the rules.
- dovesky 7mo agoYou are focusing on "what" was leaked, and not "how" and "why"