For better or worse, I'm dipping my toe back into the Off Topic forum to get some answers from the pretty smart left-leaning posters on this forum, because I had this discussion with my mom (very liberal) and we could not figure this out. My guess is it's "TRUMP!!!", but I'll leave it to you guys.
Some general observations:
- The traditional left view of the US Intelligence Community was that it was power-hungry and anti-American. Domestically, our IC invades civil liberties. Abroad, our Intelligence Community has toppled dozens, if not hundreds, of foreign governments and killed literally millions of people. Hawks/tough on crime folks on the right supported this, while people on the left traditionally did not.
- I was in high school when the Iraq War started, and I specifically remember the complete bullshit that the intelligence community engaged in to garner public support. The IC would leak something to a major news outlet, the news outlet would run the story with thin corroboration, and then you'd see Cheney/Rumsfield/Rice on Meet the Press stating, "There's been a report in the New York Times" .... about the exact bullshit they leaked! I was 17 years old and remember seeing the shell game for what it was.
- Then came the Patriot Act. I had a post critical of the Patriot Act on here before, and I was accused of being a Russian asset. Umm, since when do liberals support the Patriot Act? It is arguably the most invasive act ever taken against civil liberties. Almost every city in the country (most of them Democratic controlled) passed resolutions stating they would not comply with the Patriot Act. There were huge protests. Now it's sacrosanct, and if you're against it, you're a Russian asset?
- People like Ed Snowden and Chelsea Manning used to be lauded by the left as heroes and whistleblowers, while the right labeled them as traitors. Now, because they were associated with Wikileaks, and RUSSIA!!!, they are no longer heroes to the left.
- The IC is doing the same thing now that it did during Iraq. The largely uncorroborated Steele Dossier was "presented" to Trump by the IC; the IC then leaked the news of the meeting with Trump; which then gave grounds to publish the dossier; and then former members of the IC went on TV to discuss the Dossier and all the evidence the warrants stemming from it produced.
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So I guess what I'm asking, is when did this turn? Is this purely a Trump dynamic in the same way that union voters used to vote democrat, but many have now turned to Trump because of his "tough on trade!!!" bullshit? What's going on here?
Some articles from traditionally left-leaning writers that caught my attention:
Glenn Greenwald:
https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/the-inspector-generals-report-on-2016-fb-i-spying-reveals-a-scandal-of-historic-magnitude-not-only-for-the-fbi-but-also-the-u-s-media/In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It’s brimming with proof of FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled.
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If it does not bother you to learn that the FBI repeatedly and deliberately deceived the FISA court into granting it permission to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign, then it is virtually certain that you are either someone with no principles, someone who cares only about partisan advantage and nothing about basic civil liberties and the rule of law, or both. There is simply no way for anyone of good faith to read this IG Report and reach any conclusion other than that this is yet another instance of the FBI abusing its power in severe ways to subvert and undermine U.S. democracy. If you don’t care about that, what do you care about?
Charlie Savage in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/politics/fisa-surveillance-fbi.htmlAt more than 400 pages, the study amounted to the most searching look ever at the government’s secretive system for carrying out national-security surveillance on American soil. And what the report showed was not pretty.
The Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, and his team uncovered a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process in how the F.B.I. went about obtaining and renewing court permission under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
And Matthew Taibbi at the Rolling Stone:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/horowitz-report-steele-dossier-collusion-news-media-924944/Officials on the “Crossfire Hurricane” Trump-Russia investigators went to extraordinary, almost comical lengths to seek surveillance authority of figures like Trump aide Carter Page. In one episode, an FBI attorney inserted the words “not a source” in an email he’d received from another government agency. This disguised the fact that Page had been an informant for that agency, and had dutifully told the government in real time about being approached by Russian intelligence. The attorney then passed on the email to an FBI supervisory special agent, who signed a FISA warrant application on Page that held those Russian contacts against Page, without disclosing his informant role.
These are all liberal columnists going against the grain of many of the left lauding clowns like Clapper, Comey, and Brennan, who liberals previously despised for their abuses of power.
TRUMP!!!! is probably the explanation, but I'm just curious what people here think.