Tell that to your blood pressure as you go through the exercise, no matter how lawyerly defined.
9 Likes
I think the problem is deeper and an authoritarian office merely enable the bad elements who laid low before.
5 Likes
“Merely”. I’m just wondering now how such a modifier can be used when the office is authoritarian and enabling authoritarianism.
3 Likes
I mean that it is not Trump that is attracting the petty authoritarians to entry positions, and even if they hadn’t hired anyone, the problem would still happen.
Of course, both things can happen together.
We had a similar problem in Brazil.
Just the election of Bolsonaro, even before he assumed the presidency, was enough to trigger similar problems.
It was not necessary to enact any decree or hire anyone, just signalling to new direction.
5 Likes
You seem to have missed the part where he admitted that he writes “propaganda”, which can easily be framed as an admission of lying. It’s disingenuous to pretend that admission couldn’t come back to haunt him any time the administration takes a dislike to him.
12 Likes
I realize Brazil has its own problems, but lead-up events do not necessarily track the same way, especially where Trump is involved, so…
… this, from The Washington Post article: A growing list of journalists say they have been startled by government officials’ harassment in a country that prizes freedom of the press. The encounters are raising fears that hostile rhetoric led by President Trump and his allies are damaging reporters’ ability to do their job unhindered.
This spring, the called journalists’ treatment in the United States “problematic” for the first time in its 17 years of assessments — and singled out “President Trump’s anti-press rhetoric and continuing threats to journalists” as driving the deteriorating conditions. The U.S. ranking on the index has fallen for the past three years.
Note the three years and Trump’s time in office.
12 Likes
They didn’t literally send him to a concentration camp this time!
What’s the problem?
20 Likes
I’ve heard it with an inversion of countries and presidents countless times.
Your quotation supports what I’m saying that just a rhetorical change is enough to create those problems, and it was not necessary to fire the old CBP officers to replace them with Trump supporters.
Just look at reports about ICE abuses and several of the officers worked for the government for a long time.
3 Likes
The primary ‘news’ source the CBP officer uses at home, that taught him to believe the profession of journalism is propaganda?
Now THAT was propaganda.
13 Likes
no, except yes
this is why people want the whole department abolished
6 Likes
Refusing to let him pass until he says a specific thing is refusing entry, even if the time frame is limited.
21 Likes
“I write propaganda to the same extent that you kill innocent children.” Checkmate, CBP officer!
5 Likes
I don’t know, but it reminds me of the way all the Ba’athists were let go after the invasion of Iraq. Letting them all go at once is generally regarded as a mistake (right? not to mention the invasion itself) because they formed a resistance and caused other problems, like leaving the country without “an Administrative Branch” (that’s both a dig at GWB and a recognition that many of them were doing jobs that needed doing).
One difference is that CBP guys are mostly doing a job that shouldn’t be done.
If we fire them all at once, they’re not going to disappear. What are they going to do? They’re not going to stop talking to each other, not going to stop associating, not going to stop applying for jobs in law enforcement. If you want a highly-radicalized weapons-knowledgable far-right underground in the U.S., one way to get there is to fire a bunch of Border Patrol guys then make sure they can’t feed themselves and their families.
BTW, my neighbor has a shed full of ammo in his back yard. He’s a dealer. He drives around in a pick-up with the name of his ammo business as a decal on the glass of the bed topper. He hates Hillary Clinton (still!) and Barack Obama (still!), for reasons unknown to me. I’d hate for all these guys to find common cause.
11 Likes
Given that the site purports to cover US defense and national security, what are the odds they glorify things like crimes against humanity?
I’d call that propaganda.
Not that the CBP agent pulling this stunt isn’t bullshit that should be illegal if it already isn’t./
1 Like
And that is why he said “For the purposes of expediting this conversation, yes”, which means “I’m only saying this so that you’ll let me go.”
If only there were some way for you to read their articles yourself and see whether they glorify crimes against humanity.
2 Likes
Paraphrasing: “Let’s not waste everyone’s time here. Yes, I write propaganda.”
Which is how his “confession” will be interpreted by any future bad-faith actor wanting to discredit him.
7 Likes
I then post a detailed plan of how I fool the security state on a public forum.
11 Likes
So of course this question is horseshit, but it seems to me that if you answer it straight, like the journalist did, then you are conditioning yourself to have to keep giving an answer. Then it’s just a matter of time until you have to give in to the CBP’s petty power game and answer the way he wants.
What I would do instead to a question like this is not give a straight answer but turn it around and ask, “What do you mean by that?” then keep asking “Why do you think that?” “Where did you get that idea from?” and so forth. In other words, turn the tables and condition HIM to answer YOUR questions. I imagine that you wouldn’t get very far with this attempted mind trick though and the officer would realize what was going on pretty quickly and let you go through.
I’m just an amateur psychologist though, maybe there are some pros out there who could tell me if this would actually work or not.
7 Likes
I’m pretty sure asking the same irrelevant question over and over and only relenting when given the answer he wanted had no bearing on whether the journalist would be let in.
6 Likes
Except CBP definitely does kill children, while this journalist probably doesn’t verifiably write propaganda.
7 Likes
