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Quote of the Day: Conspiracy or Incompetence?
“Whenever you’re faced with an explanation of what’s going on in Washington, the choice between incompetence and conspiracy, always choose incompetence.” — Charles Krauthammer
I still miss him. Charles Krauthammer was able to observe the political landscape with savvy and insight, and often nailed the Washington scene accordingly. But when I read this quotation, I wondered if Charles would make the same observation, given the events of the last five to ten years.
I think today he would come to a different conclusion.
Instead, he would likely say that rather than choose between incompetence and conspiracy, an astute observer would need to say that both incompetence and conspiracy apply.
A person wouldn’t have to go far to recognize that several events, to be described accurately, would include both attributes:
- The Russian hoax—clearly the plans of the FBI were insidious and lawless—a conspiracy extraordinaire—but the sloppiness of their efforts has also damaged the agency’s reputation forever.
- Hillary’s efforts to take down Trump were baked into the conspiracy pie, and her explanation for covering her deletion of 30,000 emails was laughable.
- The Great Reset continues to proceed in the background, with the international set conspiring with our own elites(so to speak), already wreaking havoc on our economy.
- Modern monetary theory (MMT) is lauded as the most progressive approach to managing the economy, defying reason and common sense, while its proponents continue to defend it with misguided hopes, expectations, and dreams.
- Marxism is raising its ugly head again (called only “socialism”), pushed by the elites in their attempt to control society, while choosing to ignore the disastrous results of the Marxist agenda in the past.
- COVID-19 management has been a farce, as Washington bureaucrats bumbled and stumbled in their efforts to figure out how to protect the population, yet using strategies that are obvious attempts to increase their control over our citizens.
- The commission investigating the January 6 “insurrection” is an embarrassment to anyone who knows what actually happened. This group is conspiring to ensure that Donald Trump is punished for having been our President, and they are dragging out their investigation with irrelevant interviews of people, just to smear as many people as they can along the way. Their efforts are an insult to our country and the world.
The list could be much, much longer, but it’s clear to me that we are governed by ignorant and incompetent bureaucrats who have exaggerated views of their own competence, and who are determined to unite in an effort to destroy the freedoms that we treasure.
What do you think of my analysis?
Feel free to add to the list!
Published in Group Writing
Which has proven to be a delusion on our part; the majority of the Left might have been well-intentioned statist 20 years ago, but the hardcore base has long since mainstreamed and cemented neo-Marxist, Orwellian racist woke fascism as the guiding ideology of the Democrat party, and their informed supporters have either embraced or collaborated with this agenda. For all practical purposes, good faith from the Left does not exist anymore, just factions who realize people (not on the Right) they care about are now targets of the inevitable purges, or else uninformed voters who are slowly beginning to realize they were fed lies, and migrating away from the Democrats (such as the people who would have voted against Biden had they known about Hunter’s laptop*).
*Speaking of bad faith, Jonah Goldberg-alongside a panel of open Democrats in what was presented, in Orwellian fashion, as a conference against disinformation, dismissed this as unimportant.
But hey, I suppose dozens of intelligence officers dismissing what even the New York Times now admits is true as ‘Russian disinformation’ isn’t evidence of bad faith either, right? Oh, and what happened to their copy of the contents of the Laptop again? There is quite a pattern of ‘incompetence’ going on there….
The 2020 election.
Illegally cast or counted votes exceeded the Biden margin of victory in five swing states. Even the courts have verified that in two states. And a great deal of rigging of the sort Mollie Hemingway describes. And more.
A medley of miscellaneous corruption and incompetence. A spiderweb of interconnected follies, with probably not much central planning. But more than incompetence. There was some real conspiring, as in the infamous Time article, although “collusion” and “networking” are good terms too.
No, being wrong is not evidence of bad faith and this country will never rid ourselves of our current poisonous politics until we accept that.
Also, https://perceptiongap.us/
Or, that there was no colusion because there was no collusion.
Anyone who doesn’t like an exchange can ignore it. A conversation can be annoying and not violate the COC.
If you want to back up and see what the substance of the lies are, let’s take the first one: The Russia hoax. Are you suggesting that fabricating evidence to accuse someone is not two lies? First the fabrication of false evidence, and second the accusation based on the confabulation? The Steele report was completely fabricated and it was known to be fabricated from the first. Secondly, the Trump Tower server that was supposed to be engaging in corrupt communications with a Russian bank server was a lie. Those are just two of the lies that were leveled at Trump and his associates that played into the Russia hoax. And this does not even include that CIA and FBI’s involvement with Mifsud and Papadopoulos and Carter Page.
Clearly a conspiracy.
Most discussion platforms have an “ignore user” button. This is particularly useful when the most prolific and least interesting poster doesn’t edit his responses, so they are huge.
Our poisonous politics are the direct, and purposeful, result of the now-dominant Leftist ideology, and its institutional support structure. It will be with us for decades to come due to entrenched progressive control over national institutions that has resulted in tens of millions of Millennials and Zoomers not only buying into that ideology (albeit loosely, in most instances), but not knowing any other way of thinking. Hard-fought and bitter effort (which will not come as a result of cooperation between the Republican and Democrat parties) can begin to undo much of the damage, but the majority will retain the ideological beliefs and assumption they were socialized to hold throughout their childhood and early adulthood.
Assuming good faith where it doesn’t exist will simply make us lose each new iteration of game theory that develops.
Illegal as determined by whom?
They won’t provide it. I’m counting on people having the discipline to just pass over them.
Not through lack of trying.
Who “knew” either of those things were false and when?
By the laws.
Do you need details? I have details.
No, our poisonous politics are the result of both sides catering exclusively to their base and the resulting purity tests each base imposes on elected officials. It is not the left alone that has made compromise a disqualifying feature in our politics.
The laws? As adjudicated by?
I don’t know what precisely that means, although I could name a court in PA and another in WI that would probably answer you.
How about “As known by”? I can answer that question much more easily.
Of course, the liars knew. That’s what makes it a conspiracy.
Which court in PA or WI invalidated a sufficient number of ballots to overturn the results in that state?
That is not responsive.
None did. They only said that the votes were illegally cast or illegally counted.
Do you still want to know which courts?
You ignore the whole story. Are you unaware of it all? These accounts have been known and documented and argued for years now, and I’m not going to reargue them here.
But to answer your criticism that I was unresponsive, yes, the real answer is: the conspirators — those who concocted the falsification of evidence around all these folks and instances — knew. And that’s what makes the conspiracy. That we found out about it later does not alter the fact of the conspiracy.
Are you coming from the position that none of these things ever happened? Because that’s an untenable position.
Yes, I would like to know the basis for the ruling. Did the court find the procedure by which the votes were cast defective in some way or did it find they were fraudulent? If the former, that doesn’t call the integrity of the election into question.
I’m not ignoring anything. I am asking you who lied about those things and when.
Collusion:
noun
Is it illegal or improper to meet with someone to hear negative truth about an opponent? I never thought so, but I can go along with the idea that it’s improper and maybe even that it should be illegal in some cases. The problem with this story of Russia Collusion, from the start, is that this accusation was brought to us by a political opponent who purchased this information from foreign agents, all for the purpose of harming a political opponent and influencing an election.
So if actually colluding is accepted from the “right” people and then used as the basis for a silly witch hunt for non-existent collusion, then I take that to be bad faith. Especially after it was pointed out.
That’s what we knew back then, right at the start. We’ve since learned that this went beyond mere bad faith. It was fabricated. The only unknown is who all was involved. The DNC, the FBI both knowingly fabricated and advanced this. The CIA and their lying about the assessment that Putin was out to get Hillary and Help President Trump.
At some point repeated or egregious incompetence becomes a choice and it becomes bad faith at a minimum. Jack from Law and Order made a career out of such cases with charges of Depraved Indifference. I’m sure there are other such concepts for varying circumstances and degrees of competence or knowledge.
Indeed. Even if this were an offer to collude, does merely hearing the offer count as collusion? I don’t think it does.
There are scores of plausible election shenanigan claims, many of which are probable, and some of which are confirmed. Not all of them involve fraud, which is only one variety of illegality. These particular two in WI and PA involve illegalities that enable fraud.
What technical definition you may have in mind for the term “integrity of the election,” I do not know. But I say: An election in which illegally cast or counted votes exceeded the margin of victory in just one swing state is a national disgrace.
Now, as for this particular Wisconsin problem, you may go to this post and follow the links in the first paragraph to find which court. You can read the whole post to find an introduction to the problem and also to, if you are willing and able, join me among those who know about this illegality (with or without “adjudication,” whatever precisely that may be).
As for this particular problem in Pennsylvania, it was the PA Commonwealth Court; you may go to my big post and do a Ctr-F search for the phrase “offer to vote” to find seven short paragraphs that introduce the problem.
It certainly proves a willingness to collude with a hostile foreign power.
Even if the political left had started out with good faith so many years ago (which I do not grant), the position that they thought us evil while we merely thought them wrong has led to justification of extreme measures. Morality and right reason compels these people to Resist, By Any Means Necessary. Of course many of them would reject the very idea of objective morality and right reason based on flawed assumptions can lead to monstrous outcomes.
I have no appetite for any both-sides-ism. The story of at least the last 80 years is the progressive march through the institutions destroying tradition, morality, and truth along the way. This has been accomplished in Alinsky fashion, in other words, embracing bad faith. It makes little difference if that embrace was maliciously intentional or incorrectly justified by pointing to desired ends.
In many ways this march was begun by and aided by direct enemies like the USSR. I suspect that such involvement has continued through the CCCP.
That would sure simplify FBI entrapment, wouldn’t it?