Hacker News Reader

But this one is just pure cartoonish moustache-twirling evil.

I think it's in line with mainstream conservative messaging. Their first resort is to argue against policy goals, but some "liberal" policy goals, such as keeping poisonous chemical out of rivers and streams, have broad popular appeal. To deal with that, conservatives rely on a broad anti-government message that they have been repeating and reinforcing for decades. No matter what the mission is, no matter how straightforward it seems, the government will find a way to cause more harm than good. That's how people can grow up next to a waterway, eat fish from it every week growing up, see it poisoned by dumping, reluctantly stop eating the fish, see animals die after drinking the water on a bad day, forbid their children from playing near it, and still thank God for their Republican congressmen gutting environmental regulations. The stream should have been kept clean, the dumping should have been prevented, but environmental protections would have made things worse, because it's just common sense that government makes everything worse. Everybody knows that.

Another message conservatives have been drilling for decades is that liberals are only interested in helping degenerate, parasitic subsets of society. Conservative voters on the lower end of the economic spectrum don't trust law enforcement much more than liberals do. They can easily imagine themselves being railroaded by corrupt or incompetent law enforcement using bogus forensic data. However, they don't imagine that liberals, or a program set up by liberals, would help someone like them. Conservative messaging has drilled it into their heads that liberals are only interested in helping lazy, dishonest, dissolute, parasitic people, and that's not how they see themselves. So they see government programs as indifferent to people like them, which adds an extra layer of distrust on top of the perception that the government gets everything wrong anyway.

Trump is not a conservative, but he understands the voters that conservatives have created.

But liberals cannot be brainwashed at all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH5JinMJnHM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LFwU5dI7I4

However, they don't imagine that liberals, or a program set up by liberals, would help someone like them.

No wonder, when it's even OK for fox news to say that the left wants to "destroy everything" and "wish death on everybody".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MEmqqvH2Aw&ab_channel=yazak...

it's utterly terrifying that this seems to be totally OK to say on one of the most watched news networks of the U.S.

It's the other side of blind worship of law enforcement and "tough on crime". If you assume that police, prosecutors etc are always acting in the best interests of "honest citizens" beset by criminals, then second-guessing them on anything becomes unthinkable - it doesn't matter if the science is wrong or not, they know what they're doing, and if they lock someone up, that person deserves it. From there it's one step to concluding that anyone who so much as asks questions about whether the science is legitimate, is only doing that solely to undermine crime fighting, and is a "bad guy".

The mission of NIH, EPA, NOAA and many others is science. Science seeks facts, not beliefs. These agencies only practice advocacy to the extent that it is 1) based on scientific fact finding, and 2) to the overall benefit of human health and safety.

It is "the perspective of very very conservative people" that has forced these agencies to be politicized by failing - or refusing - to accept the findings of scientific research.

In order to make an effective argument you need to sympathize with and understand the positions of your opponents. You should be able to produce an honest, excellent argument in support of the opposing position before you should expect your opposition to believe you are discussing in good faith. That's what I'm attempting to do. Saying "You are wrong you hate science science is correct" and ending your argument is satisfying but it is a horribly ineffective rhetorical strategy, and worse doesn't respect the intelligence of the person you're discussing with. If you don't respect them and try to understand their perspective, why should they respect or listen to you? Remember, their vote counts as much as yours. Probably more, since likely they live in a smaller state than you.

You claim these 3 organizations are paragons of objective fact and science and they have no political agenda and motives at all other than where the science happens to lead. And yet we all know this is not true: they are organizations of (almost entirely liberal) human beings who I believe try to do their best to be objective in their work. Plenty of people don't think they are objective or that they don't even try and that's not an objection you can dismiss out of hand without argument. A quick google search turned up this example (http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/261307-why-c...) of someone who thinks the CDC (not one of your examples but close) was for some time taking part in explicitly political anti-gun advocacy (taking the political position first, then finding the science to back it up later). He thinks that is the case because there is a quote from the relevant section head of the CDC saying literally exactly that.

A lot of these positions are also moral/value judgments intertwined with science. Environmental impact analysis is scientific. Suggesting there is some imperative to do something about the results is a value judgment, which is (arguably) not in the purview of the EPA. Voters and their representatives (i.e. Republicans) are the ones who get to decide whether these environmental protections are something we as a country want to put into place or if they are worth the loss in industrial efficiency. Voters and their representatives get to decide if it's morally acceptable for the government to assist and advocate for birth control, abortion, sexual health, etc. It doesn't matter what the science says -- science can only tell you how effective the measures are. If the representatives know they will never be implemented no matter how effective because they are morally opposed by politicians (as proxy for the voters), doing studies on them is arguably not an effective use of time, money, and expertise for a policy agency, since the object of the study will never affect policy.

The EPA and NASA are wasteful? Did you drink water or breathed clean air or used the internet today? (rhetorical question)

It's a question of sheer amount of corruption. We're at a point where the revolving door has become an expressway, and the connection has become so hardened, that the only option becomes to shut them down.

Most agencies are now captured by the large interests. https://i.imgur.com/UiH0Dmb.png https://i.imgur.com/ZQsJN6T.png

Anyone who mentions anything about this must face an army of shills and dependents, while actual whistleblowing goes unreported and ignored. https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/JessRowlandMari...

Sure, in a perfect world you'd rather have functioning agencies operating in the public interest, but people need to remember that every agency created represents yet another attack surface for corruption.

> We're at a point where the revolving door has become an expressway,

Yes

> and the connection has become so hardened,

maybe (but probably not)

> that the only option becomes to shut them down

Not even close.

The answer is to prosecute the corruption, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

So your answer is to rely on the DoJ, that itself is so corrupt it couldn't prosecute its way out of a paper bag?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the entire system is corrupt to the core.

> What do you do when the Attorney General, a person with near unlimited power to imprison anyone in the country is explicitly and blatantly malicious and corrupt?

We consider ourselves lucky that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No seriously: a wingnut DoJ can do terrible damage, but one thing Sessions doesn't have is a "near unlimited power to imprison". Courts are still courts. They've been doing their job so far.

Except when they don't, as described by the link in the parent comment

If you have a good lawyer. What they've been building and want more of is classism in justice, justice as a product. You get more and better justice if you can afford more and better lawyers. If you can't, well that's merely unfair but good luck getting justice out of unfairness.

The response was to an apparent fear that Sessions will start using the administrative power of the DoJ to imprison political enemies. He can't do that, because separation of powers.

Obviously injustice exists. And it did under Lynch and Holder too.

The Supreme Court allowed the Executive to imprison all Japanese-Americans for a time. The separation of powers dissolves under the right circumstances.

I'm tempted to agree with you ignoring some concerns mentioned downthread: in wartime (which looks like it is approaching fast), the judicial branch tends to let the executive do what it wishes. Imprison every American citizen with a certain proportion of Japanese blood, for example. And we could quote President Jackson, the president Trump compares himself to most, when he said, "John Marshall [supreme court chief justice] has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" after the court ruled against one of his orders (specifically the order that caused the Trail of Tears IIRC)

But the larger concern is that if you investigate or follow someone around long enough, you'll find a reason to lock them up. And if not, evidence can be easily fabricated (this very ruling facilitates fabricating evidence more effectively!). The courts can do nothing if a prosecutor provides legally (or "legally") obtained evidence of one of the thousands of federal felonies. Would they even if they could? The courts have been obedient servants of the law enforcement/national security apparatus for quite some time now. Plus there are many, many avenues available to Law Enforcement (especially federal) that no longer require any input from the judicial branch, like administrative subpoenas, national security letters. Asset forfeiture requires some but minimal judicial oversight.