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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   16048 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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I concur. This is shaping up to be the biggest American scandal ever — or at least it should be but won’t.

yeah this is orders of magnitude worse than the iran contra affair - i mean sure IC had sweeping geopolitical implications and directly exposed the judicial system of being a dog and pony show but this hunter biden laptop dick pic story, now this is the real deal.

  • -16

Your sarcasm aside, the story is that Joe Biden and his family effectuated a pay to play scheme. Not good. dismissing it as dick pics is one of the lowest cheapest ways to distract from the meat. You latch on to the sensational to avoid having to discuss the substance.

But my whole post (and Sliders) wasn’t about Biden directly. It was the FBI and the IC interfering in an U.S. presidential election to help one major candidate. That is a major scandal far worse than Iran Contra.

The substance is that Hunter Biden attempted to leverage his father's political status to elevate his personal business prospects. This is shady as fuck, but lots of connected people have shitty kids, its not that big of a deal unless Joe Biden was a willing participant, which as far as i can tell hasn't been shown.

How is the FBI pulling strings at twitter to suppress the distribution of this laptop's contents "interfering in an U.S. presidential election"? Is there any source that shows that the FBI knew that there was no planted information on that laptop? I just think we are applying the clarity of hindsight to a situation that may have been murky at the time, and also assuming a lot of motives. Beyond all that i think funding terrorist organizations in nicaragua and iran is a bit more scandalous than the fbi running interference on a laptop of questionable importance.

There are multiple incidents within the Hunter files showing Joe was involved. There is also testimony. Is it conclusive? No. But there is a decent amount of smoke.

As for the FBI, the evidence is (1) they had the info for a long time (and so were able to test the validity of it — it wasn’t new to them contrary to what you are saying), (2) they kept prompting Twitter (and Facebook) that a hack was going to be coming, (3) an NGO (which had overlapping people it seems) specifically war gamed with Twitter executive a hack and dump of Hunter Biden, and (iv) connected former FBI agents at Twitter pushed to ban the story.

So they knew the laptop was real, they were aware the info might be coming up, they primed the social media networks to think any leak — especially one connected to Hunter — would be illegitimate, and they had personal at Twitter who knew better but pushed in the opposite direction. That is election interference your attempts to downplay the severity of the details.

And yes, it is more scandalous compared to the IC interfering in third world countries. IC doing shady shit in third countries while not great is relatively par for the course for shady organizations such as the IC. But IC interfering in a domestic presidential election because one of the candidates was against the IC? That is eliminating civilian control of the IC; effectively usurping the constitutional order that the president is in charge of the executive.

Lots of smoke no concrete proof, sorry but that's not the biggest scandal in US history by a long shot.

You literally don't know that the FBI knew it was "real", you are just assuming and assigning malice.

  • -12

Is there any reason to think the FBI had reasonable doubts?

IMO yes, state actors really do try to fuck with our elections by spamming shit on social media, and until vetted and combed for irregularities i would be suspicious of a laptop with a bunch of questionable stuff just miraculously showing up in opposition hands. Like i said, hindsight makes the situation look worse than it was at the time- this thread is assuming that the FBI knew the provenance of the laptop from day 1, and thats a big assumption.

So, not a single shred of specific information to suggest that the laptop was anything other than what it appeared to be?

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How convenient for them. The FBI should be beyond reproach for this sort of thing. This is hairline off literal treason and the hairline is on the proof not even the action.

You are being a dishonest actor.

The smoke reference was to Joe being in on Hunter’s dealing (that is, we have multiple messages from Hunter confirming that and personal testimony by Tony B. so there is actual proof — when I say not concrete I mean it isn’t being a shadow of the doubt).

The smoke reference was not directed towards the FBI. I think we have enough evidence now to say yes the FBI and IC actively helped a major political campaign.

Why is malice out of the question? Why is that so totally out of bounds given the pattern of behavior from the FBI over the last half-decade?

I understand the principle behind steelmanning and charitable interpretations, and wish to preserve them to the extent I can. But at a certain point it feels like like they're being abused and I'm being told to bury my head in the sand.

Malice isn't out of the question, but it also isn't as certain and proven as the thread here is assuming

As an aside, I don't think you can call focusing on the dick pics distracting from the meat.

Ah Fruck, I can’t believe you’ve done this.

:Sigh:

Take your upvote and get out.

distracted by the meat

Bravo

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