287
Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Is a National-Security Risk | The Senate can stop her.
(www.theatlantic.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
287 points (97.4% liked)
politics
19120 readers
3379 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, I'd hate to burst your bubble, but they're only going to be less effective against right-wing organizations. If anything left-wing groups have more to fear, nor less.
I know, anything western is bad in your opinion, but they are trying to strengthen right-wing authoritarianism. Whatever you claim to believe in is going to suffer from it, though I don't want to accuse you of being honest with your claims.
You're trying to pick a fight with me for some reason, but nothing you said contradicts anything I said, but does contradict the article's position. You're saying that the agencies will be just as competent, but wrongly directed under Trump, which I completely agree with. The article is whining that they won't be competently run, which is only a problem because of the assumption that their objectives would be good things. If that assumption isn't true (it isn't) and the things they're trying to do are bad, then it would obviously be better if they persued those objectives ineffectively, and the article would make no sense.
Any reasonable person on the left should recognize that an incompetent and unqualified person being in charge of Trump's spy network is the best case reasonable possibility. The idea of anyone claiming to be on the left clutching pearls about the intelligence community being incompetently run under Trump is completely absurd and laughable.
It's only going to be incompetent at the objectives it had previously. It's assuming the objectives remain the same, which it won't. Their objectives are going to shift towards singularly targeting political enemies. I don't believe she'll be as incompetent as implied, because she has plenty of competent Trump sycophants willing to help out. She just needs to be there to ensure the goal is being persued. Even if she's a complete idiot (which she isn't) she doesn't need to do anything but enforce the agenda of the Trump administration.
She's going to be horrible for things like undermining Russian or Chinese power structures (which some may believe to be good or bad), but she's perfectly competent to allow others to persue leftists.
The only thing I disagree about is that persuing leftists is an objective they previously had. The intelligence community is, always has been, and always will be, an enemy.
They persued other things too. Yes, the left as well, but it wasn't their only focus. You can be sure now it will be.
Boo hoo. I don't give a shit about protecting people who hate me or their agenda.
Or anyone else but yourself I guess.
Yes, clearly my insufficient level of sympathy for the fucking CIA proves that I'm just a misanthrope who hates everyone.
Or, alternatively, it's precisely because I give a shit about the vast majority of humanity, which has been harmed by them, that I despise the CIA.
Again, y'all's ideology is completely incomprehensible. Anyone who's unsympathetic towards the CIA can't possibly be a real leftist, right? Where the hell do you even get this ideology from? Is there, like, a book I can read that makes Anarcho-CIAism make sense?
I didn't say anything about sympathy for the CIA. Having the CIA focused on a specific group of people, rather than what they actually should be focused on (things like Russia influencing elections, not just in the US, for example) is bad. The CIA is not going away because of this.
Then I don't know why we're even having an argument.
I said that agencies like the CIA being competently run was a bad thing because it would mean that they're better at doing bad shit like hunting down leftists. You accused me of not being a leftist for saying that and corrected me to say that the CIA being competently run was a bad thing because it would mean that they're better at doing bad shit like hunting down leftists. Then I said that I don't have any sympathy for the CIA. You accused me of not being a leftist for saying that and then said that you don't expect me to have sympathy for the CIA. Like, what even is this conversation? You're just agreeing with everything I say in a bizarrely combatative way.
What's really happening is that you're twisting yourself into knots trying to reconcile the inherent contradiction between the obvious fact that the CIA sucks shit and the obsessive need to paint everything the Orange Man does as THE WORST POSSIBLE THING EVER and anyone who isn't on the same page about whatever the latest story of the week is The Enemy, no matter what their actual positions are. And of course, if you can reaffirm your loyalty to the state and pass yourself off as "one of the good ones," all the better.
Some of us are capable of recognizing that Trump is bad without 24/7 freaking out about everything he does, to the point of this bizarre doublespeak you're doing about how the CIA is both bad and good. All it does is discredit the left and allow people to paint us as representatives of the widely (and correctly) hated establishment, which helps Trump (ridiculously) pass himself off as an outsider, while at the same time crying wolf and discrediting the left when we call out the actually heinous shit he does.
Of course, the US intelligence community is a much larger threat to what semblance of democracy we have than Russian intelligence could ever dream of. To say otherwise is to suggest that they lack either the capability or the willingness to interfere, both of which are absurd. The last president who seriously went against what the wanted was JFK, when he fired the guy who's job was assassinating world leaders, then got assassinated shortly after, with the guy he fired being placed on the investigative committee into his death. Do you seriously believe that the agencies that would overthrow democratic governments around the globe if it meant a banana company could make 3% more quarterly profits didn't put contingencies in place for Americans electing a socialist, or just anyone who would get in their way? Or do you think that Russian spies are just so much more competent that they have more influence than American spies do, even in their home field?
Oh, but those American spies are American, is the difference, isn't it? Nevermind which class they work for, we have to put aside all those pesky class divisions and unite on national lines against the foreigners, amirite? But, like, in a totally leftist way.