I know this is an old thread but I think it’s interesting to revisit this comment in light of what happened at Twitter. Musk did, in fact, fire a whole lot of people. And he did, in fact, unban a lot of conservatives without much obvious delay or resistance within the company. I’m not sure how much of an implication that has about your views of the justice department, though. Notably, it was pretty obvious that the decisions at Twitter were being made at the top, and that the people farther down in the org chart had to implement those decisions or be fired. That sort of thing is less often true in government, especially when the actions are on the far end of questionably legal.
Let’s take NSA surveillance of American phone records as an example—plenty of people felt that it was unconstitutional. Without getting into any details, the end result was that it ended up being a political decision whether this sort of thing is acceptable. As far as I know, nobody at the NSA got fired, let alone charged, for allowing such a program. Contrast that with convincing someone to bury the results of an autopsy. They know perfectly well that if that comes out they’ll be charged with a crime; formal authority is basically useless. Even if that person is generally loyal to the organization, that loyalty is contingent on a belief that the agency’s goals are aligned with the person’s goals. And that alignment can change very quickly. Then the person in charge is left with the option of threatening to fire people (do you know how hard it is to fire a civil servant?) or maybe just not promote them (until the next administration comes around), and even that would require a paper trail that I don’t think they would risk. Soft power can go very far, but almost never as far as covering up a murder.
I know this is an old thread but I think it’s interesting to revisit this comment in light of what happened at Twitter. Musk did, in fact, fire a whole lot of people. And he did, in fact, unban a lot of conservatives without much obvious delay or resistance within the company. I’m not sure how much of an implication that has about your views of the justice department, though. Notably, it was pretty obvious that the decisions at Twitter were being made at the top, and that the people farther down in the org chart had to implement those decisions or be fired. That sort of thing is less often true in government, especially when the actions are on the far end of questionably legal.
Let’s take NSA surveillance of American phone records as an example—plenty of people felt that it was unconstitutional. Without getting into any details, the end result was that it ended up being a political decision whether this sort of thing is acceptable. As far as I know, nobody at the NSA got fired, let alone charged, for allowing such a program. Contrast that with convincing someone to bury the results of an autopsy. They know perfectly well that if that comes out they’ll be charged with a crime; formal authority is basically useless. Even if that person is generally loyal to the organization, that loyalty is contingent on a belief that the agency’s goals are aligned with the person’s goals. And that alignment can change very quickly. Then the person in charge is left with the option of threatening to fire people (do you know how hard it is to fire a civil servant?) or maybe just not promote them (until the next administration comes around), and even that would require a paper trail that I don’t think they would risk. Soft power can go very far, but almost never as far as covering up a murder.