Implausible Deniability
"Democracy itself is in peril, here at home and around the world."
-- President Joe Biden
It is often said that you cannot have democracy without fair elections, nor can you have fair elections without democracy. At a time when the Biden administration and the Democrats in the house and Senate are attempting to both repair the damage the Trump cult has done to the institutions of the federal government, while dealing with numerous other current issues such as voting rights, it is essential that citizens have a solid understanding of how "government" works.
The more accurately citizens are informed, the better the chances the government will function properly. The less informed citizens are, the chance of good government decreases. And the more misinformed citizens are, the more likely it is that democracy will cease to exist. "Information" comes from a number of sources, ranging from formal education to the free press mentioned in Amendment 1 of the Bill of Rights.
Let's briefly consider three types of information. There is accurate information, which consists of facts. There is misinformation, the type that Mark Twain spoke of when he said that the problem today is not one of ignorance, but of people knowing so darned much that just wasn't so. And there is disinformation, the purposeful lies told to an unsuspecting public, such as we see coming from the Trump cult when they claim Donald won the 2020 election, or that the January 6 insurrectionists were mere tourists.
In the context of today's complex, high-tech society, the public has constant exposure to all three of these. The more accurate information an individual has, the more they can compare -- and contrast -- with misinformation and disinformation. Hence, the more they can understand.
Let's consider one example, that of the DoJ's current position regarding a civil trial involving E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump. If one has a full understanding of Paula Jones' civil case against President Bill Clinton, one can both compare and contrast the two. That provides the necessary foundation for understanding that, while one can disagree with Merrick Garland's position, that there are both potential benefits and problems with it -- just as there are for the opposite position. Many times, it isn't a black and white situation, but rather, it is in a gray area.
Now let's consider another extremely serious issue -- the DoJ's spting on journalists and Democrats in Congress. The closest example of an administration spting on "enemies" was found in the Nixon administration. I had posted a lengthy response on the similarities to the Watergate era two days ago (see link below), and was pleased to see similar comparisons being made on MSNBC yesterday. Nixon set a standard for corruption that my generation has compared and contrasted other White House scandals to ever since.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=15515115
As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. documented in his 1973 classic, every president up until that time had sought to expand presidential power, almost exclusively on "national security" -- both real and imagined. Jimmy Carter was the only president since who completed a full term without such an attempt at expanding executive power. Thus, we should recognize that such attempts are as likely to happen under good presidents as with bad ones. The contrast is thus between sincere and corrupt motivation -- which, to quote the Hurricane, is the difference between sugar and shit (also 1973).
Corrupt presidents generally start with attempts to expand their power by having their administration engage in activities in that gray area between clearly legal and illegal. As the corrupt begin to experience pressures, those activities migrate from gray to the clearly illegal. In the modern age, this has obviously involved the spying upon and aggressive attempts to destroy their political enemies. This was true in the wide range of crimes known as Watergate, in the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous "black op" known as the Plame scandal, and in the Trump administration's spying on journalists and politicans they have identified as "enemies."
During the investigations of the enormous series of criminal activities of the Reagan-Bush administration known as the "Iran-Contra scandal," the American public became familiar with the concept of "plausible deniability." This concept had been available to presidents before, and has long been a staple of intelligence agency operations. VP Bush brought it to a new level. We have been subjected to the Trump administration's "implausibe deniability," thanks to William Barr (who had helped cover-up criminality in Iran-Contra investigations).
Now, let us take a look at the man that is currently in charge of the Department of Justice, including both cleaning house and prosecuting those who violated the law. That, of course, is Merrick Garland. Most know that President Obama had nominated Garland to the US Supreme Court, only to have a serious nomination stiffled by republicans. Among his solid qualifications, Garland had served in a senior position in the DoJ from 1993 to 1995. The highlight, at least in my opinion, when he supervised the prosecution in the Oklahoma City bombing case, where rabid right-wing-nuts conspired to attack the federal government.
Did "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" come out from those prosecutions? Perhaps it is important to know that "the truth" comes out in the context of the rules of the judicial system. And there is a range of imperfections in that system, that include everything from a police officer shooting a man for being black, to a USSC decision that selects a president, or rules that corporations are people.
I enjoyed reading an OP/thread about the entities that provided the records of journalists and Democrats (and others), that included questions about why the entities did not fight the subpoenas? An accurately informed community member explained the differences between a DoJ subpoena and a grand jury subpoena. Again, we see the benefit of being familiar with government, specifically the power of grand juries. For it seems very likely that the DoJ is now making use of more than one grand jury. Thought they move slowly, it is safe to say that in a relatively short time, we will be exposed to accurate information, misinformation, and disinformation regarding what they determine.
Peace,
H2O Man
= new reply since forum marked as read
and thanks for the link to your post on the thread about Rachel 
I have never had a problem saying I was wrong but I don't like when folks twist what I write to serve their agenda
I prefer facts to opinions 