Donald Trump and US politics

You really need to stop saying "buy Hillary would have done worse" to defend Trump, this is a very VERY stupid way of thinking. If Trump does shit like this, you need to DENOUNCE it. Not shrug it off like it's nothing because infringement of the first amendment is something you should all be very worried about regardless of your political view.

This is a step towards fascism.

Just to be clear, the twitter account is the anonymous account of someone that works in a government position, i.e. a distant employee of the president.

This is the president trying to get the name of an employee...
that is publicly and anonymously vowing to act against the mission of his employment...
so that he can fire that person for being a purposefully bad/sabotaging employee...
and prevent wastage of tax dollars.

If someone is working at Pizza Hut and makes an anon account on twitter saying "I spit in people's pizzas! Fuck Pizza Hut!", then this is that scenario.

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I happily denounce this attempt to pierce anonymity and Twitter's defense of free (anonymous) speech, but this is so far removed from the "TRUMP IS TARGETING PEOPLE THAT ARE MEAN TO HIM" headline that I don't even know what to say.

I also strongly feel that this would not have happened if the roles were reversed. Twitter is notorious for its slant. Relying on them to defend your free speech only works if they like your speech.

This isn't a "step towards fascism".

Just because someone works for you doesn't mean that person isn't allowed to have an opinion of you. he's also allowed to share that opinion with others if he feels like it and the first amendment means (in the case of a government worker) that he shouldn't be persecuted in any form for these actions.

Now, if these actions are illegal, that's a different notion but I don't think this is the case here.

And no, your comparison isn't good. A better one would be if the pizza hut employee said that the pizzas weren't to his taste and that he didn't like the politics of the brand.

Edit: also, unlike the employee of the pizza hut, the employee of the government is protected by the freedom of speech.

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faerwin wrote:

A better one would be if the pizza hut employee said that the pizzas weren't to his taste and that he didn't like the politics of the brand.

If he said "this is my opinion but I'm still going to do my job (i.e. enforce the existing laws)", then there wouldn't've been any problem. It obviously transcends "just my opinion" when you are actively not doing your job because of your opinions.

The only difference between this asshat and Kim Davis is that this asshat had the foresight to not post personal information.

I mean, if he's so morally against it, why not just quit and save everyone the trouble?

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pneuma wrote:

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faerwin wrote:

A better one would be if the pizza hut employee said that the pizzas weren't to his taste and that he didn't like the politics of the brand.

If he said "this is my opinion but I'm still going to do my job (i.e. enforce the existing laws)", then there wouldn't've been any problem. It obviously transcends "just my opinion" when you are actively not doing your job because of your opinions.

The only difference between this asshat and Kim Davis is that this asshat had the foresight to not post personal information.

I mean, if he's so morally against it, why not just quit and save everyone the trouble?

Where did you see that the person isn't doing his job? I didn't see that in the text.

And why would you quit your job because you don't agree with the the government that's in place? This would be quite unreal if everyone that disagree with the government just quit their job even if it's not directly related to it. Imagine if public school teachers quit because they don't agree with Trump, how much of a mess it would be... (both for the system and the workers)

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pneuma wrote:

Just to be clear, the twitter account is the anonymous account of someone that works in a government position, i.e. a distant employee of the president.

This is the president trying to get the name of an employee...
that is publicly and anonymously vowing to act against the mission of his employment...
so that he can fire that person for being a purposefully bad/sabotaging employee...
and prevent wastage of tax dollars.

If someone is working at Pizza Hut and makes an anon account on twitter saying "I spit in people's pizzas! Fuck Pizza Hut!", then this is that scenario.

You are missing the point. I will paraphrase you:
"But this dude from twitter did something wrong, so why can't POTUS get his name?"
What you said is common sense, and in case you are right about him doing something wrong then most people would side with you, but is this the way how things work? Of course it isn't.

If he did something wrong then there must be a law against it right? If he is leaking classified information for example then Trump team could say: "He is leaking, it's against the law, this are the papers necessary, so now give me his name(or whatever)", if he did threaten the president it would be almost the same, but the crime he is being accused of would be a different one, the paperwork would be slight different too I suppose.

But that is not what is happening here, it seems the trump administration asked for his info without accusing him of a crime. Even if the guy did a crime, if you don't get a mandate or something you can't just ask to unmask someone. Even if you are right, even if it makes sense, that doesn't matter, have you never heard of people getting away in a crime because some stupid mistake in the process of arrest on in the trial?

No matter if you are the President or a beggar, democrat or republican, you shouldn't be able to skip due process in the law and just force a private company to just give you the personal data of someone.

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pneuma wrote:

I happily denounce this attempt to pierce anonymity and Twitter's defense of free (anonymous) speech, but this is so far removed from the "TRUMP IS TARGETING PEOPLE THAT ARE MEAN TO HIM" headline that I don't even know what to say.

I also strongly feel that this would not have happened if the roles were reversed. Twitter is notorious for its slant. Relying on them to defend your free speech only works if they like your speech.

This isn't a "step towards fascism".

I mean, if he managed to skip the due process within the law, and people let him get away with it because "it makes sense" then I would say that it is a step towards fascism. The way it is now it seems like they are either testing the waters or they are just sloppy in their work.

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faerwin wrote:

And why would you quit your job because you don't agree with the the government that's in place?

Why would you quit your job doing the government's bidding when you don't like what the government is telling you to do?

Possessing a backbone, maybe? Then again, that sweet, sweet government cash is pretty nice.

You keep trying to make this about a "general disagreement" or "personal opinion". This isn't a schoolteacher in Montana complaining about the way the government handles international affairs. This is someone working in the USCIS complaining about the official immigration policy that they are specifically employed to enforce.

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soneka101 wrote:

You are missing the point. I will paraphrase you:
"But this dude from twitter did something wrong, so why can't POTUS get his name?"

I was trying to give reasoning for why Trump requested the info other than "he's fucking evil", which is all you seem to be able to comprehend.

Your paraphrasing is extremely wrong, as usual.

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I believe in anonymity, and I think that the right thing happened: a request was made and was denied. Due process was not skipped. "Seems like they are testing the waters" is just your own paranoia showing.

I also believe that anyone that is willing to trust Twitter, of all companies, to defend their anonymity is a moron.

Just because your paycheck ultimately comes from the government doesn't mean that you should quit your job if you disagree with how it's handled. With that same logic, you should always quit your job if you disagree with your employer. There's other ways to disagree with an employer than quitting your job straight away (because if you just quit, you'll just get replaced and nothing will ever change).

Until the person in question does something illegal, then the request to access private information that would be used to persecute someone exercising his right to free speech should be seen as a fascist move and be denounced so that it doesn't reproduce itself.

Just because you work for the government doesn't mean you can't criticize and neither does it mean you automatically have to resign. There's middle ground.

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faerwin wrote:

Just because someone works for you doesn't mean that person isn't allowed to have an opinion of you.

Depending on the position in the federal government, the employee may or may not be allowed to publicly voice an opinion on govt policy. Yes, it seems bizarre, but some positions have it, and people do get penalized for it, or lose their jobs.

I don't know that this is the case for this person and their job.

US attacked Syria with cruise missiles.

Looks like neocon warmongers are back in power in the White house (or they never left?). Trump completely fucked up. This whole situation with a supposed governmental chemical attack (as claimed by al-Qaeda linked sources), stinks too much. There wasn't even an impartial & formal investigation on what happened, yet the Trump admin immediately jumped on the opportunity to attack the Syrian army.

Trump is either a retard for ordering the attack, or he is not the one in control of the government.