"Authoritarian regimes’ unclear laws make anyone a suspect" - https://ge.usembassy.gov/authoritarian-regimes-unclear-laws-...
When combined with a comical inability to secure government systems, it's honestly super cute that any federal agency thinks engaging in such dark patterns is in any way, shape, or form going to achieve their goals.
Well, yeah, but that's the goal. People will correctly conclude that their ability to act unmolested is entirely contingent upon remaining in the good graces of local and remote authority figures. This produces extreme chilling on dissent or disagreement and promotes deals, bribes, and bootlicking. The law is transformed into a transparent legitimization mechanism for what the powerful wanted to do anyway, applied and ignored according to the real power structure adjacent to the legal bureaucracy. This is the default state of human civilization when the rule of law is not proactively defended.
In my experience, folks from a legal/court context who think they can get cute playing the "you can't prove I broke the rules" game will literally void their bowels in fear when the same is done to them by just one skilled hacker, let alone a group of them all focused on a singular task.
Your point only holds if the government is trying to act fairly on behalf of the people and actively uphold justice.
All three seem to be important facts for an Authoritarian Regieme
I point this out, because I believe the US has long had vague laws, and our Due Process helps kick out arbitrary enforcement. I also believe that our Checks and Balance system (part of Due Process) is currently broken
It's like the sudden concern with shipping ICE detainees to play 'jurisdiction' and 'standing' games. This has been going on forever and isn't novel, it's just suddenly defense attorneys care because of the immigration/deportation angle instead of just someone losing their home, job, car, life.
Our system of 'checks and balances' doesn't work when prosecutors/defense attorneys are indifferent to this kind of life destroying consequence simply from an accusation. If they are apathetic to this, what other injustices in the judicial system are all of the lawyers apathetic to?
1.) This has nothing to do with defense attorneys who are not available in these cases nor dealing with them.
2.) The scale of it is massively larger.
3.) The defense attorneys were actually talking about it for years, I know because I read about similar issues for years. And I am not particularly interested in legal system.
There is that rhetorical trick where people just assume that since they just learned about something, professionals dealing with these issues were oblivious too.
Defense attorneys could boycott the system and force reform. How old is the saying 'you can beat the rap, but not the ride' now? You are right, defense attorneys have known that the justice system can destroy anyone just for being a target, for a very long time. I guess I should have written 'they suddenly have energy to challenge it'.
"See look, our terrible law that gives the government arbitrary power to levy ruinous fines treats all races equally, therefore it is not racist, therefore it is fine."
It might actually be racist sometimes but that's beside the point. The whole premise of much of this crap is flawed.
<opens up zoning code>
AreWeTheBaddies.jpeg
"They devise laws that are broad and vague, but then they apply them like a scapel against those that they deem a threat" - William Dobson
~ P. J. O'Rourke, "Parliament of Whores"
and in the meantime people rot in jail but i guess no harm no foul :shrug:
Nobody claimed no foul. Constraining a problem isn't the same as saying it's not one.
That's been the case for at least 25 years. Still bad, but not new or unique to Trump. I'm too young to have a good idea of what the pre-Patriot Act American military/intelligence/secret police was like, but the historical stuff that comes to light from time to time doesn't lend much confidence that they were all that much better - they just did it illegally and ashamedly whereas now it's quasi-legal and fully acceptable.
> Pretending as if this is something Trump started and that will end with him is much more dangerous ... The problem didn't start with Trump, and it won't end with him if you approach it as a Trump problem.
I completely agree with this.
> That ignores the bipartisan consensus among political elites that the common people are to be herded and managed and that liberty and human rights are out-of-date
While I agree with this as well, I often see similar things from Trump supporters who then use it as license to support accelerationism / nihilism / oppression of others they enjoy / etc. That's what I have a problem with - this shameless tyrant has been channeling widespread frustration with many longstanding problems unacknowledged by the political establishment ("a breath of fresh air!"), but it's only a marketing trick and those exact problematic dynamics are being cranked up to 11. He's certainly honed in on many varied things that are rotting in our society, but rather than doing constructive things to address any of them he's just accelerating the rot while setting himself up as a speedbump to line his own pockets.
For reference here I'm a libertarian who was both-sidesing up until 2020 or so. But a critical assumption of both-sidesism is that both parties are similarly bad in magnitude, just with different focuses. And Trumpism is a marked escalation in the blatantly shameless anti-liberty stance of the government.
pre patriot bad things happened people were not even allowed to know the charges against them, not allowed discovery of evidence, compelled to allocute under duress, and court proceedings in total darkness, as in knowledge of the place, procedures, and persons involved could not be allowed.
..and then there was the really bad stuff, when the patriot act became a thing. when the text of law could not even be divulged, when people where interrogated by dog, locked in a cage and fed "leaks" of total defeat, and humiliation and death.
The evidence could be just some regular looking vehicle you can't find anything about and it's just "trust me bro those were feds" and you're out of luck.
Only: the person in charge of that decision is the meanest, most stupid idiot you have ever met and they envy you for your wife and want to live in your house once you have been dispossessed.
The brother of my grandfather was in jail in Germany during WWII because he offended the original Nazis. He said what roughly translates to: "Nazis are all just dumb plebs." And the thing is, he was right.