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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

"But the agency has refused to provide any details about how these determinations are made or why it is choosing to seize some supply orders and not others. Administration officials also will not say what supplies are going to what states."

This seems incredibly negligent at best. If they're afraid of being accused of being partial, transparency about the rules and procedures are essential. They way they handle it now will only stoke the fire of mistrust and conspiracy theories. How can a government be this inept?

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100% serious, not a low-effort political comment: I don't think they're at all afraid of being accused of being partial.

Over the last few years, one of the things that has bothered me the most is that the strategy of saying "fake news" or "bad journalist" (for males) or "nasty question" (for women) and proceeding full steam ahead is proving to be remarkably effective. There is zero accountability.

Far from trying to reduce the current of outrage, their strategy is to blow the fuse. Just make people so tired of all the garbage that they stop trying.

Not my own insight BTW. Got it from this Twitter thread:

https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1247732044903350272

At the same time, the opposing strategy of "everything is a scandal", "nothing good comes from anyone with an R by their name", etc has made people with an R by their name care less about actually being involved in scandals. If you're going to be tarred&feathered either way...

And these two strategies play off each other very well. More scandals (legitimate and not) make each one less significant, which reduces the cost of being involved in a scandal, which...

What opposing strategy? Which people with R's by their names are not guilty? And what terrible things are they being falsely accused of?

> I don't think they're at all afraid of being accused of being partial.

This rings true.

A great deal of deliberate effort has been put into making it this inept, have you not been watching? A common tactic by despots is to eliminate anyone who will disagree with them, and when the despot has an IQ of 25 there are not going to be many left who can function as adults let alone in critical roles at the top of the command chain.

IDK, this has just been the result of the "small government" doctrine. Which in itself isn't wrong, its just insufficient - it should be "effective government". At this point, it is every american's job to change that narrative.

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