Note the update in that article, the server was not in fact wiped. Or rather, it was wiped after the FBI made forensic backups, so all the data was still in the possession of the FBI.
Ah, i remembered that article from when i first read it a year ago, but didn’t re-read the updates. Thanks for the clarification.
I haven’t read this article all the way yet, but I thought it was an interesting take on how we got to this point.
A pair of the quotes that leap out at me, talking about the “protected class versus the unprotected class”:
"The unprotected are all the people in this country who rely on the government in some way to provide for the common good. They actually need public education to be good because that provides opportunity to their children. They need mass transit. They need a fair tax code. They need someone to answer the phone at the Social Security Administration when they get their Social Security check. "
As for what Brill calls the “protected class”: (emphasis added by me)
"Well, they’re the “winners” in our system who don’t need a good system of public education because their kids go to private school, who don’t care about mass transit because they can afford to drive anywhere, and they don’t need public health care because they can pay for private coverage.
In short, they’re not invested in the common good because they’re protected, and the system is rigged to keep them that way."
And that protected class also, due to a combination of concentrated wealth and the terrible Supreme Court decisions of Buckley vs Valeo and Citizens United, find it very easy to influence the system with monetary contributions to politics. That’s the road we are heading down if the bottom 99% continue to fight amongst themselves. It’s sadly similar to the rejection MLK got from working class whites when he tried to form working class cross-racial coalitions. Non-economic divisions end up splitting the economic groups that should be banding together to try to push our economy back onto the path of broad based prosperty.
In my view, that sums up the paired social and economic locomotives of racial/cultural warfare and inequality of wealth that are driving us down the track to ruin.
Thanks for linking that.
It’s completely incomprehensible to me how the state we find ourselves in is not blindingly obvious to anyone paying even marginal attention.
Because when the nation’s attention is divided among hundreds of 24/7 outrages, both real and manufactured, it’s easy to keep that nation’s people divided and focused on hating each other, even when that division and hate are directly counter to the people’s own best interests. The GOP, their donors and the Conservative Media Machine they built have spent the last 30 years perfecting this chaotic division, and now that it’s given them the power to strip mine the American dream, they’re going to do everything they can to keep that power, no matter how badly it damages the country in the process.
People talk about Russia, how bad it is and how the oligarchs control everything. What do they think is happening right here, right now? Do you think America is not in the iron grip of it’s own oligarchs? That the ultra-wealthy haven’t bought their way into control in this country? That all the insane chaos of the past 18 months hasn’t been a thick smokescreen covering the actions of a chosen few who have quietly consolidated power and wealth while using the government as their personal playground?
It’s enough to almost make me wish Civil War 2.0 would happen, as it’s going to take something close to that in scale before the average American wakes up and realizes we’re being sold off piece by piece, and our children will inherit nothing but indentured servitude to a cadre of robber barons. For fucks sake, we couldn’t even agree as a nation that we needed healthcare reform despite literally NOBODY in the country having decent, affordable healthcare. If we can’t all come together over a basic need like that, we’re pretty fucked.
Maybe the poor need to get together and buy up all the property that will be beachfront in 100 years after global warming gets rolling. Then they’ll have the last laugh!
Actually, the 5% have quite good health care, thankyouverymuch, and they don’t want anyone fucking with it.
Doesn’t matter if the other 95% disagree. They know what’s best for you.
Things are getting bad people,
Really bad.
So bad that people on Martha’s Vineyard don’t want to hang out with Fox talking head Alan Dershowitz.
Quelle horreur! What’s next? Riots? Tumbrels? The Dersh not being able to get a good seat at his favorite restaurant without a reservation?
I never thought I would see McCarthyism come to Martha’s Vineyard, but I have.
No you fucking haven’t Alan.
As we all know Alan can no longer make a living because he’s black listed.
Oh wait, he’s on TV and the internet everywhere never shutting up about anything.
I think we all believe that the tone and tenor of Fox News and the RW media have played a large part in how exacerbated the US divisions have become.
So here’s a question - would this have happened if the Cold War hadn’t ended (regardless of the Fairness Doctrine)?
If we still had that clearly defined external enemy to unite us, would we have turned on ourselves and our ideals as we have?
Would Fox News and the RW Media be quite as strident and radicalized in their efforts to play the blame game rather than addressing actual issues? Would Identity politics on the Left and Right have become so ingrained?
Asking questions like that is how you end up going all Ozymandius and dropping a giant squid on New York…
I’m confused, that wasn’t in the movie. Are you just making stuff up?
There would still be Republicans and Democrats. Republicans would still want to give all the money to rich people and the military, and Democrats would still want to…give a little less to rich people and the military. So yeah, there would still be divisions to sew.
That’s the way our system is suppose to work. Change starts at the local or state level via legislation. Then it expands to the Congressional action. Courts are there to insure some level of fairness and to avoid and mediate interstate conflicts.
The evolution of gay marriage and woman suffrage are two examples of the way things are suppose to work. Gay marriage started to be recognized by a few states, over a fairly rapid period of time it became legal in a majority of states, with efforts in almost all states to legalize it. Ideally, Federal legislation to make gay marriage would have been the next steo. However, the court step in because of the issues not having a Federal law was causing. A gay couple married in California was not having their marriage recognized in Alabama. Although a significant chunk of the population still opposes gay marriage, it is clear that tide has shifted an in 20 years its likely to be only a small percentage who oppose it.
Woman suffrage, barely needed any help from the courts at all. Back in the 1870s the suffragettes attempted to speed up the process of getting SCOTUS to rule that 14th amendment applied to women vote. They lost twice, and switched to winning woman voting a state level, starting out in the West and gradually moving east. They followed with a constitutional amendment by the time 19th amendment passed in 1920, there was almost no organization opposition to women voting. Now it took 50 years from Wyoming getting the right to vote before every women did.
If we contrast this with Roe Vs Wade the case was settled in 1973, 45 years ago. During that time there has been almost no movement on the public views on abortion. I contend that despite the religious opposition to both abortion and gay marriage, the fact the courts allowed the legislative process and Democracy to work on gay marriage, but the courts acted pre-maturely on abortion accounts for much of the difference.
See, I am of the opinion that the Civil Rights movement was definitely a response to the America that Black Servicemen came back to, where the rights they fought and died for abroad didn’t apply to them, and that without the cold War requiring us to be perceived as the moral leader of the free world and illuminating the hypocrisy of what we said vs. what we did with regards to minorities, there wouldn’t have been a Civil Rights movement of any consequence.
(and yes, I did end up graduating as a History major, despite going from Chemical Engineering to English to International Economics before getting out with the History degree).
An incomplete survey:
Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada
Shelley v. Kraemer
Sweatt v. Painter
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents
Brown v. Board of Education
Cooper v. Aaron
Bailey v. Patterson
Heart of Atlanta Motel Inc. v. U.S.
Katzenbach v. McClung
Loving v. Virginia
Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
Griggs v. Duke Power Co.
Batson v. Kentucky
United States v. Paradise
You really think Jim Crow would have persisted to the present?
Many would argue it still persists.
But see, this is Trump’s goal - to unite the entire country, to bring us together by making us face a larger foe.
Which, clearly, is Canada.