Under the prior administration, DHS acted brutally, in many cases. What happened to correct that culture?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHckeZoYx04
After watching it I assume China will be invading Taiwan in the next year.
Somebody please explain to the CIA we don't want performative wokie bullshit just for them to stop torturing black bagging and murdering and selling crack and abusing ppls rights.
Just to give you an idea of where the culture is: There's a defense industry "shitposting" subreddit that is full of younger, pro-America, pro defense industry types and its members would likely fit your definition of "woke". There's a whole group of them on twitter too tied in with the osint community.
If conservatives won the culture wars the CIA would be trying to hire Proud Boys and Jordan Peterson fans or whatever.
Go back 20 years when Evangelical Christianity was at its zenith of cultural power and what did we get? Two invasions of Muslim countries and paranoia that agnostics and atheists were national security liabilities because a hypothetical invading Muslim hoard would convert them to Islam (yes, this was actually a scenario bandied about in those circles) and recruit them to become terrorists.
Sure big business pretends to lean left because they want to appeal to a mass global audience but where have all the real wins been?
Roe vs Wade: gone, Gun reform: nonexistant, LGBTQ rights: put on notice.
Hell the left is back to wandering the woods again after the last election. All they have are "paper wins". Ie. rhetoric but no substance.
>Go back 20 years when Evangelical Christianity was at its zenith of cultural power and what did we get?
Was? You mean still is. The continued investment and growth of apartheid-Israel proves that.
Unless you have an argument for how Israel as it stands is on the way out, I don't buy that argument one bit.
Culture drives law long term and so its difficult to admit that the culture war has been won by the left if they keep losing everything except the conversation which clearly does not matter in the long term if it results in no meaningful change.
I think this is a meaningful difference. There is a growing disconnect between the culture of both coasts and the law of the land, which tends to approximate the real balance of leftish/rightish viewpoints across the entire country.
Big business surely plays a lot of kabuki, but some of their statements and policies are sincere. Would major corporations allow you to carry your gun on your person during working hours, argue against abortion rights in a chitchat by the water cooler or even not use the correct pronouns when talking to your nonbinary coworker? Or would you be slapped down by the HR and possibly fired outright?
In recent times, the law has either gone fully right wing or is left wing but on shaky ground(depending on the issue).
>There is a growing disconnect between the culture of both coasts and the law of the land, which tends to approximate the real balance of leftish/rightish viewpoints across the entire country.
This is a result of people in the coasts saying they believe in something but not fully meaning it. Therefore they will not fight for it with all their might. The coasts are more populous, generate all the major economic growth, and as you said, control the narrative. Yet the rural areas are known as "Real America™". How is it that the coasts are continuously losing? It cannot be a grand conspiracy. They just don't really want it. With that you can make the argument: Does the left 'really' control the narrative if the action behind that narrative does not really exist?
The neocons are called neocons because they were Democrats who joined George W Bush and then went back to being Democrats again. Best example is Victoria Nuland from the Kagan "bomb every muslim country" family. See also the Ledeen doctrine:
"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business," which Goldberg remembered Ledeen saying in an early 1990s speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ledeen#:~:text=This%20....
People's personal gender choices, which affect nobody, are not comparable to groups that promote violence, disruption, and the overthrow of the democratically elected government.
https://peacediplomacy.org/2022/06/27/woke-imperium-the-comi...
HRC regularly donates to anti LGBT republicans.
>Transgender individuals are also much more common in the US military compared to the general population.
Ok and? Both entities kill more LGBT people than they've employed or supported (changing Twitter profiles doesn't count as support).
That would most likely be the result of intent persecution of LGBT.
This would be shocking coming from the US military or the general population.
Would you have any statistics or any objective, impartial observation documented that supports it?
"The report, conducted by Moore & Van Allen, a North Carolina-based law firm, offered some room for improvement but largely applauded the private prison giant for its “genuine” commitment to diversity principles, including by raising cultural awareness with a mural of Martin Luther King Jr. at one of its Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in Arizona."
https://theintercept.com/2022/06/27/esg-funds-corporate-resp...
Not anymore: https://www.alternet.org/2013/12/mormon-church-dark-skin-sig...
It's just about a trans person saying "it's ok to be me" (irritating shit and no-one cares, good luck to her, but that's all it is). Nothing else.
What is irritating about it? There's clearly a large problem with abuse of trans people, a serious issue of physical, social, and career safety. Why shouldn't someone address that issue? Why the F should that irritate you?
In a sense, it's a solved problem - once crappy publicity videos like this can be produced, the battle has largely already been won, or the video would never have been produced.
I suppose the over-produced slickness of this, with it's almost zero contenet annoys me.
I'm not watching it to find out whether you mean that, or whether that's sarcasm. But Russia talked very similarly to how China is talking, and it turned out that Russia meant it.
Most of us anti-imperialists condemn both Russia for invading and NATO for the constant threats, proxy warfare and helping Ukrainian fascists coup the government in 2014.
When two imperialist forces fight, the working classes of either should refuse to fight each other.
Victoria Nuland dictating exactly who would be in and out of the next govt in a leaked state dept recording: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6sxCs5k
She didn’t dictate anything, we was advising and negotiating. That’s what diplomats do. It’s literally their job. Did they have a lot of influence? Sure. Did the Russians have a lot of influence with the previous lot? Absolutely. At the end of the day though the Americans think the Ukrainian people should have a say, and the Russians don’t.
The reason the Russians took over Crimea wasn’t because of anything the US did, it’s because of what the Ukrainian people chose to do.
There were some very cringe recruitment videos for the Russian army that went around online that made the thing look like some macho combination of push-ups and a video game yet look how they performed in war.
I think it would be pretty moronic to conclude much from some recruitment videos.
Nothing in it indicates: - she didn't earn her promotion - isn't competent - will make the CIA any less competent
To the contrary, diversity makes organisations more effective.
> diversity makes organisations more effective.
Especially an intelligence agency, which has a national security interest in understanding and working with, in very difficult and effective ways, just about any culture in the world.
It is concerning how many throwaway comments are made like this by ignorant people unable or unwilling to back up what they say. If they're just going to repeat standard, right-wing (or left) talking points they should at least be willing to defend them.
You probably already know the answer to this and are asking it to spur discussion, but of course the answer is: absolutely nothing.
I guess you might get it at the EPA in a more left wing, environmental way, but then polluting mega corps are probably more able to defend their interests than dissidents.
I am not sure how you deal with that sort of perverse motivation issue?
Most US civil servants are hired through a competitive process. Given positions, these people all had security clearances.
There are exceptions that are hired as political appointees though. Normally these are the politically shrewd players, but regularly phd brainiacs, albiet politically inclined.
Most US civil servants are good people, and well credentialed and are hard working folks.
> How are they trained?
Federal Law enforcement are trained at the FLETC locations [1]. Federal law enforcement training is generally considered vastly superior to local law enforcement.
> How are they preventing abuse of power?
Pretty much every federal system has strong auditing and logging capabilities, and internal affairs/Inspector General. It doesn't always mean you can catch a perpetrator misusing a system, but you do have the data to get them after the fact.
> What is the culture there?
This is really an organization by organization thing.
US Secret Service historically had the best mission culture.
DHS, allegedly, is more of a dog-eat-dog organization. Many former DHS folks told me it was not a good place to work. Personally, all the DHS people I met were qualified. They have some immense challenges in DHS and that stress is probably part of the problem.
> Under the prior administration, DHS acted brutally, in many cases. What happened to correct that culture?
Civil servants, like the military, take their marching orders from civilian management. When an administration takes over the federal government in a transition, they assign political appointees to the highest positions that may receive senate confirmation, if they pass it. Given President Biden, the Biden administration installed the current leadership.
When you swap the leadership, you do significantly impact the culture. However, if civil servants are not following orders of the SES management, they can get in big trouble, to include, losing their positions.
Racist abuse of migrant kids and breaking the bones of unarmed protesters really eats at the soul over time, I'd imagine. Those poor DHS agents - won't someone think of their stress levels?
https://theintercept.com/2020/10/06/homeland-security-dhs-mi...
Lots of stuff in our modern post-DHS security era is a total joke. Removing shoes and throwing out liquids over a certain size doesn't protect anyone.
But it doesn't address the question, and even sweeps it under the rug by implying that because of these systems there can't be serious problems: There may be serious problems at DHS
> US Secret Service historically had the best mission culture.
The US Secret Service has had numerous, serious scandals, including some that led experts to say they were a failing organization. Several times people getting drunk and also abusing locals during overseas missions. One used their power and organization resources to intimidate their (ex-spouse's new lover? I don't remember it exactly.) Under Obama, IIRC, the attacker who made it into the White House and was discovered by accident. Etc. Etc.
Thankfully, nobody who consumes a certain illegal plant-bases drug, and are fine with working for someone who counts that as a criteria.
..this probably self-selects assholes much more efficiently than you would think.
Agree that the DHS is out of control and should be disbanded.