/civ/ - Civics

Anonymous 17/05/13(Sat)09:31 No. 302 ID: e7513d

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I think people have been going down the wrong track when it comes to Trump threatening Comey. They're missing the obvious.

Trump spends his life surrounded by conspiracy theorists. They funnel every stupid idea posted on the internet 24/7 to keep him in a perpetually agitated, distracted state. This is a man who think global warming is a conspiracy created by China, that fluoride is a form of mind control, that jet contrails contain biological agents, that vaccines cause autism... it's really not much of a stretch for him to think people are recording his every move every single day.

Given this I find it highly unlikely that Trump was threatening Comey because Trump had recorded conversations. Instead he was threatening Comey because he thought Comey had recorded their conversations.

The threat wasn't about Trump going to the press with a recording. Its a threat against Comey going to the press with recordings of what Trump said.

Anonymous 17/05/13(Sat)16:12 No. 303 ID: e83956

>it's really not much of a stretch for him to think people are recording his every move every single day
Considering how much we know our government spies on people, it's not a stretch at all, and not even in the realm of kooky conspiracy theorist anymore. What's the alternative, not to assume that the FBI would record things? That's an easy way to look like a sucker, and no one wants to look like a sucker.

Anonymous 17/05/14(Sun)11:42 No. 304 ID: c631c6

>>303
The only problem is you're not doing anything remotely worth spying on, so why would they waste space on it?

Anonymous 17/05/15(Mon)02:28 No. 305 ID: eb0366

>>304
I don't think the spy agencies see it that way anymore. We now have the capacity to store data from every phone call and internet transaction that passes through any hardware in the US. We've already been collecting so much of our domestic and international communications that we've needed search algorithms to sort it out for at least a decade. Sure, 90% or so of the data they gather is of no use, but once in a while they get a hit. Of course it isn't free, but the cost of gathering, storing, and sorting that data is now low enough the agencies see it as negligible, and the government agrees with results--one arrest per one hundred terabytes of data is more than enough to justify their budget.

Anonymous 17/05/19(Fri)19:36 No. 306 ID: e83956

>>305
The scariest thing about that kind of cheap storage is that what isn't worth spying on or blackmailing you over today could be dreadfully offensive in a few years. The higher levels of society will do what they've always done, which is to arbitrarily change the rules in such a way that poor people can never figure them out and learn them all.

Anonymous 17/05/20(Sat)14:54 No. 307 ID: b0bc06

>>306
Oh yeah, those higher levels of society, always making sure their actions are A-OK in the future. Trump acting like a slum lord, taking every possible moment to shit on his elderly dying tenants, spending more on frivolous lawsuits (which he usually lost) than on building repairs? Why that's just perfectly acceptable behavior 30 years later.

Anonymous 17/05/23(Tue)05:58 No. 308 ID: e83956

>>307
It can't be that unacceptable or else the dude wouldn't have become president.

Don't worry: with any luck, the upcoming housing crash will be so nasty that you can scoop up quite a few properties for far less than they're normally worth and become a slumlord yourself.

Anonymous 17/05/24(Wed)10:06 No. 309 ID: 1c4022

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>>308
Not really. Negative campaigning not only drives away voters from the opposing side, it also drives away your voters.

When both campaigns went negative for so long, most normal people were driven away from being involved in the voting process. The majority of what remained were of the true believer variety - the kind who wouldn't vote for the opposing candidate no matter what was exposed about their candidate. These people didn't find a candidate. They found religion.