East or West, it's the Same

The FBI investigation into evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia ended with a “no collusion” finding. Ross Douthat wrote that:

“There will now be a retreat… to more defensible terrain — the terrain where Trump is a sordid figure who admires despots and surrounded himself with hacks and two-bit crooks while his campaign was buoyed by a foreign power’s hack of his opponent.”

Alan Jacobs doubts that’s what will happen next. Instead, he feels the side that hates Trump (common man and media both) will:

1)      Ask for the entire report to be made public;

2)     If only parts of the report are made public (as is likely), they’ll say that the not shown parts are the “key to the whole mystery”;

3)     And if the whole report is shown, they “will find something, anything, in it that, they insist, confirms their worst suspicions”;

4)     Say that the investigating agency was under Trump’s thumb.

In other words:

“The people who trusted them before will continue to trust them, while the people who didn’t trust them before will continue not to trust them.”

Sound familiar with what happens in India?

Or take the EU Parliament passing the Copyright Directive by a margin of 5 votes. Except that 5 Swedish members who voted on the resolution said “they pressed the wrong button, and have asked to have the record corrected”, writes Cory Doctorow. So ok, a goof up that can be fixed, right? No, writes Emanuel Karlsten:

“They’ll add to the record that they intended to vote differently, but that doesn’t change the vote itself. When it comes to voting buttons in the European Parliament, what’s pressed is pressed.”

As Doctorow vents:

“This is the most significant piece of internet regulation ever undertaken by a democratic government (that is, excluding Russian and Chinese internet regulations). It will do untold damage to the whole internet.

And it's because someone pushed the wrong button.”

And you thought only we have systems that make it impossible to correct mistakes?