Re:NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Uncla...
by error_logic on Friday January 26, 2024 @09:24AM
(#39142899)
I'd argue there's an even more fundamental reason for the hazing process, as you call it, which is that the voting system itself incentivizes negative campaigning as just as if not more effective than positive. In other words, a dollar spent trashing the "other side" is destructive yet effective. This destroys healthy competition and encourages mutually destructive behavior.
The hazing process for electing a president is already cruel enough that nobody sane runs. Add in the risk of the incumbent administration finding a way to leak all your dirty laundry from as far back as the records go and it will be really weird. Probably corrupt, ugly and with bad results for everyone outside the intelligence apparatus.
In some sense that isn't new, there are questionmarks over the US spooks dating back to J. Edgar Hoover. But the damage that sort of actor can do is greater the more data they have to make decisions with.