Update and scripts

Hi, everyone! Things are looking up lately. I'm overall pleased with the new videos, I have a cameo in another channel's video coming up, recording has become easier recently, and my upgraded editing software has given me lots of new choices. I'm hard at work on the latest video, which should be available later this week. Thank you for your ongoing support.

With that aside, here are some episode scripts.

DEMOCRAT TWITTER

Whenever I write about a Republican politician or about the United States' own particular brand of social conservatism as exemplified by the Republican Party, my comments section and social media mentions become stuffed to bursting with Democrats. In and of itself, this is not a problem, not to mention completely expected. Donald Trump is so reviled among Democratic voters that anyone talking shit about him is their ally, and if the person bashing Trump has no immediate signifiers of their party or politics, Democrats will assume the person is one of their own. Democrats despise Trump so much that even when a Republican politician finds it in their best interest to criticize the former president, Democrats will make a mad dash to praise them, trampling over themselves like a mob at a Black Friday sale to shake that Republican's hand and extol their virtues – thanking them for their honorable service like they just returned from World War II. Despising Donald Trump is probably the morally correct position, and I share it! It's just worth noting that the way Democrats go about it has its own unique flavor.

I wear my politics on my sleeve, or at least my Twitter profile. Yet, people who are new to my work sometimes initially mistake me for a liberal Democrat because A) some of my videos criticize individual politicians, usually in the Republican Party, and B) Democratic voters and Republican voters have been conditioned by their parties to disregard anything resembling a political spectrum in favor of a binary – a binary that does not contain the actual left wing. This happened as recently as my video from earlier this month, and I knew it would, so I included a line reminding any Republicans watching that their “whataboutism” on Obama, Biden or either Clinton is even more meaningless if directed at me. If you have heard me say this sort of thing before in other videos, I apologize for the repetition, but it's necessary for my own sake. I also see it as doing my part to “deprogram” people who have clearly been subject to the political propaganda version of brainwashing.

Social media has intensified this binary into sectarianism. Never before in human history have ordinary people had the opportunity to shout their opinions at more people at once. On paper, this is a good thing– it allows for political organizing, not to mention a diversity of political opinions touching the mainstream that might not have had that opportunity before. I certainly benefit from this, at least on some level.

Unfortunately, the stewards of this political organizing are not the people themselves but tech companies. You see, tech companies like facebook and Twitter allow an enormous amount of misinformation and dangerous misuse of their platforms. They not financially incentivized to stop doing this. They are not financially incentivized to ban people, to moderate misinformation, or to be responsible for their own platforms. They are incentivized to allow almost anything so long as it “trends.” Tech companies don't care about the vague concept of free speech or the reductive concept of censorship either. They ban accounts when it is convenient to do so, and never a second before that. Social media engenders sectarianism because the moderators are asleep at the wheel – on purpose. Tech companies do not want to take responsibility. They want to take, you know, money?

So, a platform like Twitter helps raise the voices of people who otherwise might not be heard, but it also raises the voices of people who have no idea what they're talking about, who spread misinformation, and who profit from a binary us vs. them, politics-as-team-sports model. Their followers are invariably people who cannot see beyond the corners of the voter registration cards.

This explosive sectarianism creates insular communities. On facebook, these communities form groups – both public and private. On Twitter, the “communities” feature has only recently been added, but when Twitter users refer to different communities on the platform, they are not referring to these recently-branded, user-moderated communities. They are referring to loosely-organized affiliations – communities that form more organically due to the platform's microblogging and retweeting apparatus. “Hockey Twitter” is not some members-only club about hockey, it's just what people on the platform call the unofficial community on the platform surrounding this interest. Sewing Twitter, Artist Twitter, et cetera. There are also unofficial demographic Twitter communities like Black Twitter, Irish Twitter, and Gen Z Twitter. These communities come complete with their own major figures and important accounts – unelected and unofficial but nonetheless significant to that community.

Behold: Democrat Twitter – the most obnoxious corner of the platform. Notice I did not say “worst” corner of the platform. Democrats love to tell you that Republicans are worse, and admittedly they are – congratulations – but that bar is not too difficult to clear and leaping over it is not an accomplishment. The party line of “Democrats are still better than the Republicans” does not foster enthusiasm but defeatism. An ennui of hard-working, beleaguered people who have been convinced that this about as good as it gets.

I will give this to be average Democrat, though. You can talk to a liberal Democrat. A conservative Republican's more rigid hierarchical social politics always makes their friendship or camaraderie feel conditional on assimilating into that hierarchy. There is only so much I can say to Republicans to stop them from behaving like The Simpsons parody of themselves, but maybe Democrats will be a little more willing to take criticism and listen to someone giving them advice – even if that someone is well to the left of their party platform.

So, here goes. Let's talk about Democrat Twitter.

Remember those major figures and de facto leaders of a Twitter community? Unfortunately for Democrat Twitter, their leaders are chosen by Democrats, and we all know how that goes. Now you might think that the leaders of Democrat Twitter are prominent Democratic politicians, but not really? Democratic politicians don't have spicy enough takes to trend on the platform due to something they said exclusively on the platform. They trend for the normal, newsworthy reasons. Pete Buttigieg is important enough to have a Twitter account with a lot of followers but not interesting enough to be “Twitter Famous.” Well, who is? I already knew quite a bit about Democrat Twitter before I started my research, but I did ask Twitter for their opinions as well, and the results were fascinating.

A disclaimer: Please don't bother these people on Twitter Dot Com. I've made hundreds of videos over the past twelve years, and this is first one in which those who I'm criticizing are basically ordinary people and not politicians. I'm not a drama channel, and you are not a drama audience. My work is simply the product of research, and I don't get into back and forth response video nonsense or Twitch debates.

Mueller She Wrote is the official Twitter account of the podcast of the same name. The podcast is hosted by Allison Gill, who at the time of its inception was employed by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. She used the pseudonym A.G. – and when discovered – was terminated. I genuinely do not understand how someone trying to stay anonymous would simply use their own initials and her own voice, but OK. Democrat Twitter loved Robert Mueller – the man tasked with “investigating” Donald Trump's alleged connections to the Russian government. If there's one thing Democrats hate, it's Republicans, and if there's one thing Democrats love, it's a Republican. Democrat Twitter was absolutely in love with this powerless civil servant for years, genuinely expecting the sitting President of the United States to be handcuffed in the Oval Office and dragged out through the front gates. All the late night lib shows talked about it the same way – sometimes in song!

That was never going to happen. We knew from the beginning that a sitting President would not be indicted, and by the time William Barr became Attorney General, it was all but certain that even if the Mueller Report was damning, it would be swept under the rug. Mueller and Barr are old friends, by the way. The idea that Trump would land himself in legal before he was out of office places a completely unearned amount of faith in institutions designed to protect the powerful, not protect the people. That's just not how liberals think of the nation-state. Liberals think that it's a shining beacon of democracy, a polity that exists voluntarily, instead of what it actually is – a territory with a monopoly of violence controlled by the biggest gang.

Mueller She Wrote has since pivoted to unrelated crimes allegedly committed by Trump and garden variety Democrat cold takes. Allison seems like a perfectly nice person, except when she is telling people disappointed by Biden's limited debt forgiveness that they are partially responsible for mass shootings if they don't vote Democrat, but otherwise, yes, very nice, I'm sure. We all have bad days and bad takes, this one is just a lot – and tells us what we need to know about the limited political spectrum and binary absolutism in the minds of many Democrats on social media. The insulting, mindless notion that not being a registered Democrat and not voting Democrat is selling out.

To “sell out” is to violate your principles for selfish concerns, but this take about selling out by not voting Democrat rests on the shaky foundation that not being a Democrat or not voting Democrat is an inherent violation of principles. Even other registered Democrats are not violating their principles by demanding more for their vote. That's part of the democracy that liberals believe they have in the first place. It's the liberal mind prison in 280 characters or less. It presumes too much about the individual principles of others and minimizes economic concerns that are also life or death. More people die every year from preventable conditions due to poverty and lack of affordability than will ever die from mass shootings, and the removal of $50,000 of debt would go a long way toward resolving that problem. Even if she did not mean it like “take your crumbs, losers” or whatever, it still comes across extremely insensitive, especially from someone who had so much more of her debt forgiven.

By the way, trying to guilt someone into voting does not work. It is a well-documented fact, so this does not even make sense as a pragmatic thing to say, let alone an ethical thing to say. Nobody has an obligation to vote for your candidate. Maybe your candidate sucks. Maybe some people are trying to build a new world and focus more of their attention on that. Again, I'm sure she's an otherwise nice person, I'm sure I've said insensitive things as well, but this is garbage. OK, who's next?

Majid Padellan boasts an impressive Twitter account with over one million followers. He calls himself Brooklyn Dad. During the 2020 election cycle, Brooklyn Dad spent his time advocating for Joe Biden, demanding that Bernie Sanders drop out, and casting doubt on the women that Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed and groped. However, Brooklyn Dad is mostly known for his affiliation with a political action committee.

For the uninitiated, a political action committee, or PAC, is a tax-exempt organization that campaigns in favor of a political candidate or political cause. After it receives its donations, the PAC then transfers a limited amount of those funds to its stated candidate or cause, and the uses the rest to advertise its candidate or cause. PAC's have a history of being helpful to unions, but PAC's in the 21stcentury largely exist to shuffle money and get around campaign finance regulations. PAC's are only superficially independent, and any declaration of PAC's having only “non-connected” affiliation with a candidate is naive. Ever since the Supreme Court decision of Citizens United v. FEC, many of the regulations that kept PAC's in some semblance of order have been rescinded. Conservative justices essentially argued that money is free speech– a statement that would not be out of place in dystopian social fiction or a William Gibson novel.

So, who is Brooklyn Dad in all of this? In 2021, it was discovered that a political action committee paid him over $57,000 in the 2020 election cycle, and over $12,000 in the current election cycle. In total, nearly $70,000 that we know of. The political action committee paying him is called Really American PAC, which sounds like something a Martian would call its covert organization, but all PAC's have names like that, honestly. Really American PAC saw Brooklyn Dad's defenses of multiple criminal sex allegations and said “What an opportunity!” and started paying him tens of thousands of dollars to ramp it up on behalf of Biden. This is because Brooklyn Dad had an air of authenticity and writes his tweets with a certain, let's say, “flavor” that might make Joe Biden seem cooler than he actually is.

Brooklyn Dad has pushed back, claiming that he disclosed these payments by declaring himself a “senior adviser” to Really American PAC in his Twitter profile – eventually. From his perspective, he has been up front about these payments. However, there are two problems here.

First, he changed his Twitter profile to reflect his affiliation with this PAC some time after he started getting paid. Open Secrets shows his payments began on July 13. The Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive shows that the next day, July 14, he had made no such disclosure. The earliest record of his affiliation can be found on around the end of the month.

Second, this disclosure did not really disclose anything. “Senior Adviser” is a meaningless title and says nothing of the reality of the relationship or compensation. He's not advising anything. He's tweeting. He's being paid to tweet pro-Biden propaganda and defend Biden from accusations in a way that appears organic and not prompted by money – but it's not organic, and it is prompted by money. He did not disclose anything meaningful by changing a word in his Twitter profile. His compensation was not discovered until 2021, and he was not the one who brought it to public attention.

An advertisement for a political action committee must disclose its origins, printing this disclosure in clear, unambiguous text. Here is an example: [“Mitt Romney. Not electable. Winning Our Future is responsible for the content of this message.”] However, a PAC can get around this by paying social media influencers and giving them meaningless titles. That way, they are simply “employed” by the PAC, and their tweets are not legally, official advertisements, even though, you know, these tweets are functionally exactly that.

Third, even if we all concede that everything is above board, and that the FEC and Open Secrets have it wrong and that Brooklyn Dad actually did not start getting paid until after his Twitter profile half-disclosure, and that his senior adviser title is more meaningful than we know, that does not really change the fact that his commentary cannot possibly be taken seriously. He is paid by a political action committee that exists almost exclusively to promote a politician, in this case, Joe Biden.

If you support Joe Biden, then cool, go for it, I guess, but that is not entirely what's happening here. Every tweet is a paid advertisement for the President of the United States that does not need to disclose that it is a paid advertisement for the President of the United States, and is written and posted in such a way that it does not necessarily look like a paid advertisement for the President of the United States. The fullness of his disclosure is not the most significant problem. The most significant problem is that, you know, if you want to know if Joe Biden is a good president, you can't ask a man paid to say that.

What about other Democrat Twitter “leaders”? Occupy Democrats, a fake news media service. Occupy Democrats is among the most unreliable sources of news on the internet, consistently spreading misinformation and hyperbole, frequently fact-checked and frequently found to be lying or at least spreading half-truths. Occupy Democrats also has the worst Twitter practice of ending almost every tweet with “Retweet if you agree!” So, it's like, “Do you think Joe Biden was right to say that kittens are good? We do! RT if you agree! RT if you agree! RT if you agree!” It's embarrassing to watch, but Democrats eat that stuff up. If you're a Democrat, you need to stop following Occupy Democrats. They are fake news. OK? It's not just Republicans who engage in this sort of thing. You are being fooled, and you need to stop.

The average Twitter Democrat does not have a big following, but they are just as easy to spot as the unelected leaders. They can be spotted by their emojis alone. A big emoji for Democrats on Twitter is the globe – signifying globalism – particularly the economic variety. It's also a “reclaiming the word” movement for Democrats because the right tends to use the word “globalism” to wink-wink-nudge-nudge at right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories.

You are more likely to find blue hearts, blue waves and other assorted bits of blueness. The Democratic Party and Democrat Twitter specifically have pushed the “Vote Blue, No Matter Who” talking point and hashtag to consolidate power around the establishment of the party. “Vote Blue, No Matter Who” is not about party unity, though. It is not a talking point meant to create a big tent in which social democrats are part of the No Matter Who. You see, behind the scenes, the DNC can sabotage most candidates to their left, rallying their forces around their establishment candidate, sometimes scumming the opposition in the primaries. Then, in a more public way, the DNC says “Vote Blue, No Matter Who” because they chose who in the primaries. They are telling Democrats with roses in their Twitter profiles who favored the now-defeated and sabotaged left-leaning candidate to vote for the establishment candidate in the general. They are not telling Democrats with bagels in their profiles for vote for social democrats because the they are actively sabotaging social democrats behind the scenes. Therefore, “Vote Blue, No Matter Who” is just propaganda made by the establishment of the Democratic Party that targets Democratic voters and marginalizes politicians to the left of the party platform.

Democrat Twitter loves going after Donald Trump, but remember that “unique flavor” I was talking about? Well, Democrat Twitter loves anti-Trump memes, but the worst kind. A lot of bad jokes and political cartoons. Nobody is swayed by calling Trump “Cheet-o Mussolini” or other boring references to Trump's skincare regiment or hairdo. Nobody. Cares. This is not meaningful, it's a bunch of Boomer facebook memes populating other social media platforms. You're not going to convince anyone to drop Trump with a haircut joke, and you're just feeding Republicans who think that opposition to Trump is superficial or “Trump Derangement Syndrome” instead of what it actually is: opposition to his right-wing politics, his right-wing rhetoric, and his alleged crimes. All this “ha-ha, Trump has small hands” stuff did nothing and continues to do nothing.

Democrat Twitter thinks it has a winner with Dark Brandon – a meme about President Joe Biden awakening from his ancient slumber, suddenly, and without any provocation, finally addressing some of his campaign promises, but, like, he's just doing some basic governing because we are only a couple months away from the midterms. It's not mysterious or scary or anything, it's the election cycle but with a meme that makes Democrats look like they suddenly love “fashwave” – so, I don't know, proceed at your own risk. The glowing eyes meme has more history calling attention to someone being a fascist than claiming that someone is fighting fascists. It's the kind of meme that can and will be weaponized by 4chan psy-ops. would knock that off before it becomes something that neither the Democratic Party nor Democrat Twitter can control.

So, final thoughts? Democrat Twitter is terrible, ha, sorry. I guess when you try to build an online community full of messages with imposed character limits, political parties find this extremely useful because those character-imposed messages are roughly the same size as a sound byte or talking point that they want to get out there. Every tweet feels like an ad for the party, and not just from the grifters. Every bit of internal opposition or just reasonable pushback is attacked by the K-Hive or something because it too closely resembles criticism from the Republican Party. The loudest voices will always be promoted – Twitter is literally designed that way through its trending topics. There is little room for nuance on Twitter, and even less room in party politics. It's the perfect, unhappy marriage.

DEFUND THE FBI

On August 8th, 2022, approximately at 9 AM, the FBI executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, a resort in Palm Beach, Florida and current residence of Donald Trump. The former president is accused of removing and concealing classified documents. A search of this magnitude was unprecedented, prompting the Republicans' central talking points: “If this is unprecedented,” they argued, “then it must corrupt!” Right-wing politicians and right-wing media opted for misdirection instead of engagement, as usual, and desperately tried to nudge the spotlight away from Trump's alleged crimes and on to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Trump bluffed, demanding the public release of the search warrant in hopes that the Department of Justice would deny the request, thereby strengthening his facile argument that this was an illegal “raid” and not a search. By pretending that the FBI and DOJ were hiding the true nature of the search, Trump could exonerate himself – not in a court of law but in the court of public opinion. Trump's request for more information revealed to the public was not made in good faith, because he already had a copy of the warrant, and his lawyers knew there was nothing in the warrant that would back up his claims. The DOJ is often careful about releasing too much information for fear of scuttling an investigation, and with this knowledge, Trump's people thought the DOJ might hold back – at least for a while. However, the DOJ called Trump's bluff and said they would release it, unless Trump's lawyers suddenly object before a deadline. Trump could not object to something that he himself demanded or else he would show his hand.

In retaliation to losing this first round, mere minutes prior to the deadline, someone sent the un-redacted warrant to right-wing internet tabloid Breitbart, complete with the names of people who signed off on the warrant, putting them in danger. At least one individual went into hiding due to death threats from violent extremists – which was almost certainly the intention behind the release of the un-redacted warrant. Since the only people with access to the warrant are the DOJ, FBI and Trump, and the DOJ and FBI do not benefit from doxing government agents and judges, it's not hard to narrow down where the leak came from. In any case, the warrant confirmed that Trump was (and still is) under investigation for a number of crimes, including obstruction of justice and violating the Espionage Act. The warrant with this information was coming anyway, and leaking the un-redacted version at least gave the Trump camp the appearance of power – the appearance of still being dangerous.

Days later, the government released the redacted affidavit, revealing to the public something else Trump already knew – that when asked to turn over classified documents earlier this year, he turned over some, claimed that was everything, but covertly kept much more. This prompted further investigation and the resulting search warrant in August.

Trump's lawyers may still believe that these public releases will give them the upper-hand because the more that's out there, the more they will be able to pick apart in the media and examine for a potential criminal defense. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to claim that Trump is winning his war against the DOJ and FBI. As each day passes, defending Trump becomes more challenging for his allies in the Republican Party and right-wing media outlets like Fox News and Newsmax. Republicans are still talking about it, but some of them are talking around it, hedging their bets as the situation becomes more uncertain.

To counter these incredibly bad and unprecedented optics, Republicans have placed more and more attention on the FBI instead. The rallying cry, popularized by Marjorie Taylor Greene of all people, has been “Defund the FBI!” Republicans have jumped on this opportunity, because it signals support for Trump while not explicitly claiming that he is innocent because it doesn't even reference him. It also draws attention away from Trump and the Republican Party more broadly. In other words, “Defund the FBI” is multiple forms of misdirection wrapped up in one easy-to-remember catch-phrase. It's an attempt to earn back political capital, as well as, you know, the normal kind. It's October now, and with the midterm elections fast approaching, Republicans are campaigning on investigating the FBI should they take control of the House of Representatives, or the Senate, or both.

“Defund the FBI” is a reference to the 2020 activist rallying cry “Defund the Police” – a policy proposal that Republicans willfully do not understand and Democrats never actually adopted or put into action. “Defund the Police” was more popular among people to the left of the Democratic Party – not the party itself. Few Democrats actually openly supported it, and the furthest it went at as policy was some talk of proposing this legislation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but that was abandoned. It's more complicated than that, hang in there, there is more information coming.

So, what is “Defund the FBI”? A greater understanding of the political ideological underpinnings is required to make heads or tails of these talking points and to better prepare for what is coming. The information herein will not be comprehensive but hopefully helpful.

Allow me to speak directly to those who might believe that the investigation into Donald Trump is merely political manuevering without any legal merit. Your party is lying to you, and so is your most cherished media. You want to believe that “your guy” has done nothing wrong because you have attached some of your beliefs and some of your worth to your political party and to a single man. Recognizing the truth would be extremely uncomfortable. Nevertheless, it is the truth and must be confronted. Rather than trying to explain this next part from my political perspective in which what we consider “the state” is inherently illegitimate, I will meet you where you are and explain the merits of the charges from the perspective of someone with more faith in our republic, presumably much like yourself. Everyone else can listen up, too. Here are the facts, all of which will be cited:

The Presidential Records Act establishes that presidential records belong to the United States, not the president, and that these records must be surrendered in their entirety to the Archivist of the United States at the end of the president's time in office. The Archivist is the chief administrator of the National Archives and Records Administration. This administration is a federal agency tasked with preserving and protecting government records and other materials deemed of national importance. This should not be confused with the Library of Congress, which also houses a tremendous amount of records but functions differently and within a different branch of government.

Throughout the Donald Trump administration, there were a number of reports that the President was operating well outside of the norms of the office, with regards to classified documents and documents in general. Trump would often rip apart documents, throw them in the garbage, or in some cases, attempt to flush them down the toilet. The Office of the Staff Secretary was sometimes given the covert task of piecing shredded documents back together. Some of these documents were recovered and pieced back together for the National Archives, and some were simply lost forever. Trump also claimed some documents should be considered his personal property, specifically any communications between himself and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim-Jong Un. Make of that what you will. On numerous occasions, Trump reportedly revealed classified information, most notably to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. This put American lives in danger and US intelligence operations in jeopardy. Trump even admitted to this, but stood his ground in his usual posturing of “I'll do whatever I want.”

When Trump lost the election in 2020 and made bogus claims about his victory, Trump's allies attempted to weaponize the National Archives and steal the election. Right-wing lawyer John Eastman penned a memo that outlined a six-step plan that would eventually result in Vice President Mike Pence overturning the election altogether. The National Archives and Records Administration is responsible for receiving and authenticating electoral college votes. Top officials of the Republican Party in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin sent fake certificates to the National Archives claiming that their state was won by Trump, not Biden. The officials had no actual authority to do this.

The National Archives intercepted these fake certificates and correctly identified them as forgeries. If someone has no legal authority to make this claim, then the alleged “government document” is itself fraudulent and therefore a forgery, which is a crime. It's not unlike impersonating a police officer, especially if the impersonation is designed to provide cover for a secondcrime. Now, the plan was notto simply expect the National Archives to let this fall through the cracks. The plan was to create circumstances in which the Trump administration could claim that there were legally “competing electors” and that this was reason enough to discount the results altogether. Not many people agreed with this interpretation of the law. Fake electors are not legally “competing electors” any more than someone committing identify theft is legally “the competing owner” of your belongings and social security card, or legally “the competing husband” of your wife. The crime itself invalidates its legitimacy. This ludicrous interpretation of the law was rejected outright.

None of Trump's plots to overturn the election had a likelihood of accomplishing its primary goal, but it did accomplish a secondarygoal – convince a large portion of Republicans and conservative independents that the electionwas fraudulent, and that his bogus claims were legitimate. This was helpful in inciting the events of January 6, 2021, and may prove helpful to Trump should be run for president again in 2024. This acceptance of bogus claims was achieved not through real evidence, as nothing significant has ever been found or proved, but through repetition and simple confirmation bias. The majority of Republican voters now make this claim, as it has become both talking point and holy writ of the party. That's nowhere near the majority, but the fact that the number exists at all is remarkable and troubling.

When Trump left office, he kept a great number of presidential records that were not his to keep. The National Archives cajoled Trump into finally returning some, but when it became clear that many were unaccounted, the matter escalated. Federal regulations demand that anyone with knowledge of missing and stolen records must alert the Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees the security classification system and related responsibilities. The parent agency of the ISOO is the National Archives and Records Administration. After several attempts to retrieve the classified documents, a warrant was issued, and the documents were collected by the FBI.

Since then, Trump has attempted to claim that he somehow declassified all the documents, a claim that has been fact-checked and debunked by legal experts and government officials. Declassifying top secret documents cannot be accomplished by whispering “I hereby declassify these documents.” in the bathroom mirror. For obvious reasons, it's more complicated than that and has more oversight. Trump has also claimed that previous president did the same thing, but this has also been fact-checked and debunked. It's a claim that removes all the context to make Trump's actions and Barack Obama's actions appear similar. Frankly, even if Obama performed the same illegal action, this “whataboutism” would not absolve Trump of wrongdoing or criminal charges. I don't care about Barack Obama, and I don't care about Hillary Clinton. Whataboutism does not change the nature of the crime that is being deflected through this rhetorical fallacy.

Any claim that the investigation is a “witch hunt” requires evidence to back up that claim. As of yet, there is no evidence of illegality by the FBI or DOJ in this investigation, but there does seem to be evidence of Trump's crimes. Boxes full of evidence. Trump is also being sued for fraud by the New York State Attorney General, and despite it being a civil matter, it could also result in criminal charges. Trump is also being investigated in Georgia for criminal interference in the 2020 election, investigated by the January 6th commission for his role in the insurrection, and sued by others for a variety of reasons. This is not a witch hunt. There is no vast conspiracy among every Democrat and some Republicans in Congress, the office of the Attorney General in New York, the state of Georgia, and a number of private citizens. An errant text detailing this conspiracy probably would be known by now. [laughs] After all, evidence of the Trump team's actual conspiracies have already been uncovered. Trump is simply being credibly accused of crimes because he does whatever he wants without any regards to public safety or common decency.

You can listen to what I have to say from my left-wing perspective and find comfort in rejecting it. You can reject my perspective, but are you really gonna sit there and reject your ownperspective on the sanctity of our nation and importance of our institutions because that deeply-held perspective is now politically inconvenient? Trump did all this stuff, it happened. Almost none of this is really contested by independent, reliable sources, experts and researchers.

If you are still uncomfortable acknowledging “your guy” as a traitor and a criminal, stop thinking of him as your guy. Donald Trump is nobody's guy except Donald Trump. He does not care about you. He's a self-obsessed, unrepentant weirdo who promotes conspiracy theories to grab power and to exploit the people of the United States of America. Every single thing about his life paints the picture of an untrustworthy, abusive ne'er-do-well, a rich kid who never grew up. He has so consistently thrown you and the rest of the people of our nation under the bus, that the moral thing to do now is defend yourself and your nation against him instead of being loyal to him. He's not actually your guy, and you don't have to be loyal to someone who thinks of you as less than human.

As the midterms approach, some Republicans have eased off the phrase “Defund the FBI” because the goals of the movement are completely different from the goals of “Defund the Police” and related left-leaning movements. The goals of the “Defund the FBI” movement is not to reallocate funds from the FBI to solve criminogenic conditions. The goals of this movement are to distract voters from the Donald Trump investigation, cast doubt on the investigation, and politicize the investigation. They do this by claiming that the investigation is already politicized, and that what they want is to de-politcize it. This is just political double-speak and the old right-wing strategy of accusing your enemy of actions you yourself have committed. Republicans are not planning to actually defund the FBI, and they have no actual moral objections to law enforcement. Their claims of merely wanting greater “oversight” is a thinly-veiled reference to their voting base about the legitimacy of the Trump investigation. That's all this is.

Liberal Democrats have attempted to push back on “Defund the FBI” and related talking points by claiming this is hypocrisy due to Republican objections to defunding the police. This so-called hypocrisy call-out is not going to work. Conservatives don't consider it hypocrisy, they consider meme'ing, it is meant to be a wedge issue for voters with a built-in, dishonest rhetorical defense: “Oh, now we can't abolish law enforcement, huh?” Everyone is a hypocrite if we pretend these talking points are similar or have similar goals. They're not. The more recent right-wing talking point purposefully re-used language from an earlier left-wing talking point to confuse the matter and “flood the zone” with nonsense.

There is no policy proposal to literally defund the FBI. It's an orchestrated attack on the FBI as part of a larger ideological project and political manuevering to shape government into what the right wing wants. This is always the true intention behind the right wing's talk of “small government” conservatism. The right wing doesn't actually want to abolish federal law enforcement. They want it to be worsethan it is presently. They want to shape the government to have moreauthority over their specific enemies and lessauthority to prevent this authoritarianism from happening. For example, they want to the FBI to start arresting “Antifa” even though the FBI and anyone who follows the anti-fascist movement know that Antifa is not a singular organization but small, formal, autonomous groups and informal counter-protesting. As another example, they want to protect Donald Trump from arrest and conviction so he may run for office again, win again, and consolidate Republican power indefinitely and unconstitutionally.

In simpler terms, in order to have more authority against their enemies, certain institutions need to have lessauthority to prevent this from happening. For reference: see the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 shifts in law enforcement and homeland security. Republicans have been referring to the “7thfloor” of FBI headquarters. For the uninitiated, the seventh floor houses the offices of senior agents and the FBI director. Republicans want to replace any and all FBI agents ostensibly doing their jobs with hand-selected right-wing loyalists who will sweep whatever they want under the rug. Since its official establishment in 1935, all eight directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have either been Republicans, or in the case of J. Edgar Hoover, a registered independent who was staunchly conservative. That's it.

The FBI has existed for nearly a century, and the closest a Democrat has ever come to the Director position was Thomas Pickard, who was only actingdirector for a few weeks in 2001 and purely due to the line of succession. He was not the real director, though. Pickard was just filling the seat until the Senate could confirm Robert Mueller. A Democrat has never been confirmed as Director of the FBI. Any claim that the FBI has ever been (or is presently) an institution that is biased againstthe Republican Party is historically inaccurate and outright laughable.

I don't like the FBI either, but my objections to the FBI are routed in my objections to state power in general and the FBI's specific history of spying on leftist movements, not some pretense about the innocence of a fascist demogogue. Trump is probably guilty of somecrimes, and I shed no tears for him, even if his current enemy is the FBI, because his greater enemy is us – the people. Condemning Trump's crimes is not deference to federal law enforcement or the Department of Justice. It's just, you know, the only way to legally hold him accountable right now. My problem with the FBI is not the Republican Party's problem with the FBI.

The Republican Party's only problem with the FBI is that the federal agents sometimes follow the law in ways that do not benefit Republican politicians. That's the whole thing. Republicans don't want to de-weaponize the FBI. They want to weaponize the FBI exclusively in their own favor. That is what the “Defund the FBI” movement is all about. It's not about opposition to federal law enforcement, it's not about the “Defund the Police” movement of 2020, and it's not about protecting ordinary Americans from witch hunts. It's about Republicans protecting the powerful from the consequences of their actions, ensuring Republican victory in the 2024 general election, de-legitimizing the opposing political party, and establishing even greater power for the right wing in the United States.

DEFUND THE POLICE

“Defund the Police” describes a series of policy proposals to significantly reform and reorganize modern policing. The “defund” part is only one step in a series of institutional changes, funding reallocation, and the creation of substitute services. In its current form, the modern centralized police is not preventative. The police generally do not prevent crime. The police respond to crime. There is precious little evidence that suggests that police surveillance and police presence significantly impact crime. The police are reactive, not preventative. Those who advocate for “defund the police” policy proposals believe that reallocating funds towards preventative measures makes a lot more sense. Research shows that criminogenic conditions – the circumstances that create crime – can be better resolved through equity in education, infrastructure, and the reduction of poverty through public housing, universal healthcare, greater resources for the unhoused, and drug rehabilitation. Some crimes are not the direct results of these social problems, but many are. Endlessly funding an increasingly militarized police force has a limited effect on crime because it is reactive, not preventative, and does not address criminogenic conditions.

Politicians can read the same data we can but they rarely address these matters. Politicians prefer to support increased police funding because they need your vote, and they would rather you feel safe than besafe. In addition to this, resolving criminogenic conditions does not benefit the corporate interests that donate to politicians. Eliminating poverty would give greater bargaining power to the workers, forcing a sizable increase in wages, strengthening union power, and reducing income inequality to the point that capitalists would have less control over its employees – less control over the population. Resolving criminogenic conditions is in the best interests of society and humanity, but it is not in the best interests of the people with all the power, the people with all the money, and the people who make all the decisions. And that's why it does not happen.

Advocates for “defund the police” policy proposals also want to create substitutes for certain emergencies. The police

respond to a number of emergencies, many of which are outside of their area of expertise or ability to contain. Those who support defunding the police propose that the police department's budget should be reallocated to other services that can better contain particular emergencies. For example, a police officer is not a social worker or a psychiatrist. Nevertheless, when someone is having a mental health emergency, the police are dispatched to resolve the emergency, often with catastrophic consequences. A mental health counselor could be dispatched instead. For another example, when there is a dispute between two people that has not yet turned violent, the police are still dispatched to resolve the dispute. A conflict mediator could be dispatched instead. The police cannot be expected to resolve a conflict with a gun. It's a cliché, but when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Police training varies, but on average, prospective officers in the United States train at the police academy somewhere between thirteen and nineteen weeks – basically, four or five months. Police academy training focuses heavily on protecting the officer more than protecting those at the scene of the crime. By comparison, social workers generally have college degrees – often advanced degrees – and their training is almost exclusively about protecting others. Defunding the police and reallocating funds to other public services would actually be beneficial to police departments in the long run as well, because less overall crime would result in fewer instances of police officers injured or killed in the line of duty. Fewer instances of police shootings and police brutality would result in fewer riots that erupt when communities witness injustice. Less fear of police would result in greater community cooperation against common foes like violent gangs, and it would go a long way toward reducing the detrimental psychological toll of being a police officer.

In short, “Defund the Police” does not mean simple budget cuts or randomly taking money out of local law enforcement. It's part of a broader public safety initiative with specific goals and specific actions to achieve those goals. These seem like common sense solutions, but again, advocating for these solutions is not in the best interests of the people with the money and the people who are controlled by money.

So, how far did “Defund the Police” actually get? Basically, nowhere. It got the most traction in Minneapolis due to their police department's responsibility in the murder of George Floyd. There were some members of the city council who did propose dismantling the police and replacing many of their responsibilities. The mayor rejected this outright. There was a small cut to police funding and reallocation to other public safety systems in 2020, but that was restored in 2021. Almost nothing was allowed to happen. New York did cut some of its funding but not in the way that “Defund the Police” activists wanted. They reassigned some officers, shifted a handful of responsibilities, saved some money, but the size of the force remained the same. In 2021, New York elected a police officer as the new mayor, who promised to expand the police. There were some significant cuts in Austin, Texas and Des Moines, Iowa, but the funds were not reallocated to replace police responsibilities in any meaningful way. The actual goals of the “Defund the Police” movement were not accomplished or even attempted because a simple budget cut is not what “Defund the Police” really means.

A smattering of barely-known, local Democratic politicians may have supported the notion, if not the practice, but prominent Democrats avoided the talking point like the plague – or rejected it in public. Joe Biden campaigned against defunding. Bernie Sanders, who is an independent but caucuses with the Democrats and runs as a Democrat for president, wanted no part of it and actively denounced it. Who supported it? Some but not all of the so-called Squad. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cori Bush as well. Karen Bass also flirted with the idea but did not end up supporting the policy proposal. Basically, a few of the newer Congresswomen with no real power more or less endorsed it.

There is this selectively-edited video floating around allegedly showing top Democrats saying “Defund the Police” but it's not that. It's Nancy Pelosi, in a completely non-committal way, saying “maybe, perhaps, shuffle some money around” and then Kamala Harris supporting New York Democrats' aforementioned limited efforts that were not actually designed around the true goals of the movement, but almost nobody was supporting the actual movement or the actual goals or using the actual name for it besides a handful of mostly powerless Congresswomen. The Democratic Party ran away from the movement from the very beginning. What did we expect? Their politics do not align with the goals of the movement, and they are, you know, cowards? For their cowardice, they were not repaid, because Republicans still try to attach the movement to the Democratic Party to this day. Sanders never went for it, but that didn't stop Lindsay Graham from recently pretending that he did anyway. Midterm election attack ads make similar charges against Democratic politicians. The facts don't matter.

It was never a mainstream talking point in the Democratic Party, never an adopted policy position, and never truly endorsed by the leaders of the party. Joe Biden went as hard as possible againstit during the most recent State of the Union. Nothing reallyhappened, because you can't count on the Democrats to do anything cool.

Every time there is some disaster that the police do not solve, Republicans pretend that the police actually have been “defunded” by the Democrats in so-called Democrat Cities. Fox News is inundated with this talking point. Trouble in Detroit? “Well, this is what happens when you defund the police!” Rising murder rate in Chicago? “Well, perhaps if they would be faring better if they hadn't defunded the police!” Protests in New York? “The city is has been burned down, and it's all because Democrats defunded the police!”

Except, nobody did. Nobody really defunded the police, and no cities were burned down. Arson on structures did increase in 2020, but not by much. According to the FBI, in 2019, the year prior, arson on structures totaled 14,026 nationwide. In 2020, the year of the so-called “burned down” cities, it was 15,079, an increase of only 7.5%. Fires do not equal “burned down city” and the increase is not the sole responsibility of the riots. There were burglaries and thefts during the riots in 2020, but these were not widespread. In fact, in 2020, burglaries dropped 7.4% and larceny-thefts dropped 10.6%. Incidents of looting and fires sensationalized on right-wing cable news do not equal a nationwide looting spree or a burned-down city.

Now, violent crime rose during 2020 and 2021 but not because of riots or lack of police protection. Violent crime rose largely because of the pandemic, which fostered significant economic downturn, social instability of our radically altered lives, traumatic psychological damage, personal loss, increased gun ownership due to paranoia, and overworked, understaffed hospitals that could not save victims of violent crime as effectively. Attempted murders became murdersmore often simply due to lack of resources. That's why the numbers look the way they do.

Right-wing media loves to tell you that cities were razed to the ground and everyone lost their shirt, but arson went up a tiny bit, burglaries and thefts both went down a tiny bit, violent crime went up due to unrelated circumstances, and that's it.

Right-wing media and social media spread false rumors, like the one about six police officers being murdered in ten days during the protests in June 2020. This was debunked, and it did not happen. They died of natural causes during those days or incidents unrelated to the protests. Another false rumor is that Black Lives Matter murdered thirty-six people and caused eight billion dollars of property damage. This was also debunked. Both numbers were made up, and there is no proof that Black Lives Matter protesters were responsible anyway. More to the point, none of this was the result of defunding anything because the incident that caused the riots preceded the talking point, and the talking point never got off the ground anyway.

Even the mild reforms that were passed in a handful of so-called “Democrat cities” were actually not responsible for the rise in some crimes in some cities. According to research by the Brennan Center for Justice, “Despite politicized claims that this rise was the result of criminal justice reform in liberal-leaning jurisdictions, murders rose roughly equally in cities run by Republicans and cities run by Democrats. So-called 'red' states actually saw some of the highest murder rates of all. This data makes it difficult to pin recent trends on local policy shifts …”

It's 2022, and opponents of defunding the police continue to claim that it would never have worked the way activists claimed, but we will never know because it largely did not happen. So, why didn't it happen?

Some have tried to argue that the biggest problem with “Defund the Police” as a policy proposal is simply the name – that it is “bad branding” of sorts. I do not agree with this, but let's examine this anyway. “Defund the Police” immediately communicates the first potential, major action of the policy, but it also leaves itself open to misunderstanding or even willful mischaracterization. But is that it? Is that why it didn't catch on? That seems doubtful.

Any policy proposal or political position boiled down to its bare basics has that potential. For example, if people were to characterize themselves as pro-choice, their opponents would (and do) respond “It's a child, not a choice!” or use the word “choice” to describe unrelated policy proposals and political positions common among people with those social politics. “Pro-choice, huh?” they say. “What about my choice to deny services to same-sex couples?” as if the mere word choice meaningfully connects these positions and proves some form of hypocrisy. Here is actor Kevin Sorbo saying, presumably with a straight face, “So, my body, my choice … except for when it comes to student loan debt?” Jesus Christ, there is no meaningful connection here, Hercules. Comparatively, if people were to characterize themselves as pro-life, their opponents would (and do) respond “If you care about life so much, why don't you advocate for gun control?” This might make for good rhetoric, but the connection is tangential at best.

These two opposing terms are designed to be the most innocuous and innocent-sounding as possible, but they are nonetheless taken apart and inflamed, often using the innocuous wording. If advocates of “Defund the Police” called it “Reallocate Community Funding” instead, opponents would respond “The police are part of the community. The police protect the community. You can't have a community without a powerful police force!” Also, it's hard to get activists or voters motivated by a policy proposal that sounds like corporate double-speak.

Furthermore, when people on opposing sides of a political issue or two different political parties use completely different terms for the same topic, it does not necessarily win over the other side or force the other side to adopt their language. For example, when debating immigration, Democrats have adopted the term “undocumented immigrants” whereas Republicans almost exclusively use the term “illegal immigrants” and neither side has convinced the other to use the opposing term. In short, choosing a less incendiary name for “Defund the Police” would not necessarily reduce its opposition. If its advocates called it “Reallocate Community Funding” instead, its opponents would use a different, stronger term to denounce it, like, you know, “Defund the Police” or something. They would say “Oh, you just want to 'reallocate community funding' huh? We all know what that means. You want to defund the police, and that's what we should call it!”

Branding in politics does not work the same way as branding in marketing. Because a corporation can call their product whatever they want on the box, and their competition will still probably call it that. The Pepsi Challenge commercials did not call Coca-Cola by a different name. In politics, your policy is called whatever your opposition wants it to be called half the time. Pro-choice advocates don't always use pro-life to describe their opposition, they say “anti-choice” or some other term. Pro-life advocates don't always use pro-choice to describe their opposition, they say “pro-death” or some other term. The problem with getting “Defund the Police” off the launch pad was not its name. That's just an excuse made by political figures who did not want to endorse it in the first place.

The reason that defunding the police did not catch on in mainstream American politics is because it did not have enough mainstream political advocates. It is a policy proposal to the left of the Democratic Party, and the United States does not have a political party to its left. Leftist politics were marginalized in the United States in the 20thcentury, and this has continued well into the 21stcentury. There is no “wing” that can advance the cause. There are two major political parties to oppose the cause. If the Republican Party is completely against it, and the Democratic Party is almost completely against it, who was supposed to pass it into law? The Democratic Party is not going to suddenly adopt an ideology of social democracy, socialism, communism or anarchism overnight – or ever, for that matter. I'll say it again. You can't expect the Democratic Party to do anything cool.

The people who came closest to making this happen are the very people that both the Republican Party and Democratic Party denounced: rioters. Sometimes the only way to make a revolutionary change is a revolution, but we got caught up in trying to maintain good optics. We wanted to force the issue, but didn't force it enough. The revolutionary potential was squandered. I'm not blaming the rioters because we didn't make something happen. I'm saying we didn't have enough rioters to make it happen.

If you watch right-wing media, they will try to connect the protests, uprisings and riots as a result of police defunding, but they have the order of operations wrong. The protests happened because of a tipping point in community relations with the police in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and only after the protests caught on, the concept of defunding the police was broached in the public discourse.

Both the phrase “Defund the Police” and the policy proposals related to the phrase should not be confused with “Abolish the Police.” “Defund the Police” is not a radical proposal. It is a middle ground or compromise between the status quo and an actual, radical, revolutionary proposal: police abolition.

As a political position, police abolition does not conform to the policy proposals of “Defund the Police.” Police abolition does not propose merely redirecting police funding and reforming how policing is accomplished through the existing police. Police abolitionists believe that mere reforms cannot resolve all the inherent problems with the modern centralized police. To police abolitionists, the very structure of the police, what they protect, what they ignore, who they protect, who they ignore, how they are deployed, and why they exist in the first place are irreconcilable with a vision of a just society.

Police abolitionists would also claim that that even if the defunding-and-reallocating were enough, the resistance to reform from within the police would minimize the impact of these policy proposals, and resistance to reform from politicians would block these proposals in the first place. In other words, police abolitionists recognize that some of the policy proposals of “Defund the Police” either cannot be codified into law or enforced as law because of the police. It's a series of proposals that rest upon on the foundation that we can squeeze justice from an unjust system.

What should replace the modern centralized police varies from abolitionist to abolitionist. Some abolitionists believe that the model of defund and reallocate is apt but simply does not defund or reallocate enough. Some abolitionists believe the that in order to make real change, the police must not only be defunded but disempowered by a series of laws. For example, laws that legalize some drugs and decriminalize other drugs would drastically reduce the police population. For another, resolving the aforementioned criminogenic conditions would reduce the police population further. Finally, laws could remove the ability of the police to resist further changes, such as eliminating immunity, eliminating internal affairs and replacing it with community oversight with more power than the police, and reclassifying the Fraternal Order of the Police as an organization that provides cover for criminals – which it is. When all is said and done, what remains would be highly-trained detectives for major crimes like homicide and sexual assault, and rotating community patrols for everything else, made up of temporary members to remove any above-the-law privileges that officers believe they have.

And other police abolitionists believe that the police are the agents of capitalism and that the police can only be truly abolished after we abolish capitalism. Any attempt to abolish the police or even dramatically reform the police within capitalism will fail. Look at the “Defund the Police” movement. This movement was a half-measure. A “lib sh*t” compromise between abolition and the status quo, and it still went nowhere. Capitalism needs the police to protect private property interests. Capitalism needs a reactive force instead of preventative measures because preventative measures would empower the workers by reducing poverty and other social ills. We cannot truly escape the shadow of the modern centralized police while we exist under capitalism because it is capitalism that casts that shadow.

Police abolitionists believe that we should be building a society in which what we presently consider the police are unnecessary because our needs are met. Police abolitionists do not believe in disorder or lawlessness. Instead, police abolitionists believe that the current incarnation of law enforcement creates disorder. Under this presumption, the modern centralized police must be abolished and replaced with new solutions to create real order. A truly just society.

To put it in more recognizable terms, police abolitionists do not want The Purge – the fictional “everything is legal at midnight, no consequences” sci-fi scenario. Instead, police abolitionists want to abolish the institutions that created The Purge and that profit from The Purge.