This guest did not do a great job disproving the accusation that J6 conspirators are cranks, simultaneously distancing himself from them while seemingly taken offense at YM’s skepticism. I’m sure someone out there would be a better representative of rational J6 conspiracism, though I admit I don’t know who that would be.
I believe it, and I appreciate what must be a very careful line to tread given that, at least from the episodes I've listened to, a lot of these interlocutors (not this guy, to be clear) don't come off as very good people.
Disappointed that I am 40 minutes in and no mention of Ray Eps. Why worry about the motives of the deep state before we see the evidence that the deep state did something?
Once I knew that the FBI had persecuted MLK, it made sense to ask why he was persecuted. Hoover sometimes pursued the institution's legal agenda, and sometimes the president's agenda, and sometimes Hoover's own agenda. I would not necessarily know which of these applied just from knowing that in fact the FBI targeted MLK.
The video of Ray Eps and his treatment by the feds seems hard to explain unless he was on their payroll. I guess the alternative is that he was just as guilty as the shaman but randomly got mild treatment instead of having the book thrown at him. The mild treatment is hard to explain unless he was an agent provocateur.
I was hoping for an actual discussion of this, including the possibility that there is a more sensible explanation. Disappointed. 50 minutes in now. Skipping ahead, in case this digression eventually ends.
An essential element of the "Ray Epps is a fed" theory is the cover-up. Alongside the broader allegations of feds orchestrating J6, we had to set the stage for who is involved and why, in order to understand what evidence we should expect to see or not see. The contrast with the FBI and MLK is that if we started a conversation about it from zero, there wouldn't be any ambiguity about who we're talking about.
I only had a couple of questions prepared on this point and definitely did not expect it to take so long to get through. I couldn't cut it out though because it was relevant for what we talked about after and we get into Ray Epps in great detail after. I don't agree that Epps was treated with any meaningful difference; his charges and sentences are what you'd expect given how other J6 defendants were treated. I also wrote about that previously: https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/wishing-for-entrapment
If all we knew about MLK's harassment was that he received a letter threatening to reveal embarrassing details about his private life, and someone suggested that the FBI was behind it, I’m not sure motive would be my first question. The ATF had no motive to kill members of Randy Weaver's family, that was plausibly unforeseen and unintended, the result of incompetence and bad luck rather than bad intent at the beginning.
I guess I just had different expectations. I do not know much about the Epps situation. I somehow saw a video where he was acting in a way that I could understand would raise suspicions. If there was an obvious alternative interpretation, I wanted to hear it.
I don’t think it requires a clear motive, since incompetence is always a possibility. Even when things go well, the motives do not always make sense. Why was Bush so eager to invade Iraq? Maybe he believed the reasons he gave, which later turned out to be based on false intel. Why did someone provide false intel? Either they did so by mistake, or had motives that seem obscure to me. For some reason unclear to me, the groupthink in the Bush White House converged on Iraq being a big problem, when it wasn’t. Who caused that and what was their motive? If that matters at this point, it matters less than knowing what actually happened.
Btw I included a link to a transcript given how long this episode was, so feel free to use that if you want to jump around. We definitely talk about Epps's actions that day, referencing his statements directly: https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/the-bailey-podcast-e035-ray-epps
There's different ways to dissect MLK/FBI. If the authenticity of the FBI letter was in question, it's perfectly relevant to ask about the FBI's motivation as a way to evaluate how plausible the allegations are. Compare for example if the threatening letter was alleged to have come from NASA, wouldn't you be curious to know why they would be after MLK? Absent other evidence, I would be much more inclined the believe the letter came from the FBI than NASA because the FBI is a law enforcement agency that had domestic surveillance capabilities as well as an interest in disrupting what it deemed political dissidents.
Sometimes there's no obvious motive to point to, that's true. The key difference with the scenarios you cite is there's no disputing who was involved: ATF shot and killed Randy Weaver's family, Bush did indeed invade Iraq, etc.
Thanks for the link. My point about MLK vs. FBI is that we now know what happened, and I am still confused by the motive. Bureaucracies sometimes do stupid things, for reasons that make sense to the various actors but not as a whole.
There are many coherent reasons to present, the problem is that they're largely woefully insufficient to explain the next step of the premise. Something like "career bureaucrats coordinated and devoted resources towards orchestrating J6 because they wanted to tarnish the reputation of the conservative movement, which in turn would tarnish the reputation of the former president who picked SCOTUS judges that might take up a case that might overturn the Chevron deference" just sounds inane when you string it all together.
Definitely; I'm not trying to defend the overall premise at all (I haven't followed the J6 saga closely but as a casual observer this theory seems quite far-fetched). I was just frustrated listening to that first hour as I thought there were better arguments to make than the ones that actually came up.
This guest did not do a great job disproving the accusation that J6 conspirators are cranks, simultaneously distancing himself from them while seemingly taken offense at YM’s skepticism. I’m sure someone out there would be a better representative of rational J6 conspiracism, though I admit I don’t know who that would be.
Finding willing interlocuters has always been a huge hurdle on this and similar topics.
I believe it, and I appreciate what must be a very careful line to tread given that, at least from the episodes I've listened to, a lot of these interlocutors (not this guy, to be clear) don't come off as very good people.
Disappointed that I am 40 minutes in and no mention of Ray Eps. Why worry about the motives of the deep state before we see the evidence that the deep state did something?
Once I knew that the FBI had persecuted MLK, it made sense to ask why he was persecuted. Hoover sometimes pursued the institution's legal agenda, and sometimes the president's agenda, and sometimes Hoover's own agenda. I would not necessarily know which of these applied just from knowing that in fact the FBI targeted MLK.
The video of Ray Eps and his treatment by the feds seems hard to explain unless he was on their payroll. I guess the alternative is that he was just as guilty as the shaman but randomly got mild treatment instead of having the book thrown at him. The mild treatment is hard to explain unless he was an agent provocateur.
I was hoping for an actual discussion of this, including the possibility that there is a more sensible explanation. Disappointed. 50 minutes in now. Skipping ahead, in case this digression eventually ends.
An essential element of the "Ray Epps is a fed" theory is the cover-up. Alongside the broader allegations of feds orchestrating J6, we had to set the stage for who is involved and why, in order to understand what evidence we should expect to see or not see. The contrast with the FBI and MLK is that if we started a conversation about it from zero, there wouldn't be any ambiguity about who we're talking about.
I only had a couple of questions prepared on this point and definitely did not expect it to take so long to get through. I couldn't cut it out though because it was relevant for what we talked about after and we get into Ray Epps in great detail after. I don't agree that Epps was treated with any meaningful difference; his charges and sentences are what you'd expect given how other J6 defendants were treated. I also wrote about that previously: https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/wishing-for-entrapment
If all we knew about MLK's harassment was that he received a letter threatening to reveal embarrassing details about his private life, and someone suggested that the FBI was behind it, I’m not sure motive would be my first question. The ATF had no motive to kill members of Randy Weaver's family, that was plausibly unforeseen and unintended, the result of incompetence and bad luck rather than bad intent at the beginning.
I guess I just had different expectations. I do not know much about the Epps situation. I somehow saw a video where he was acting in a way that I could understand would raise suspicions. If there was an obvious alternative interpretation, I wanted to hear it.
I don’t think it requires a clear motive, since incompetence is always a possibility. Even when things go well, the motives do not always make sense. Why was Bush so eager to invade Iraq? Maybe he believed the reasons he gave, which later turned out to be based on false intel. Why did someone provide false intel? Either they did so by mistake, or had motives that seem obscure to me. For some reason unclear to me, the groupthink in the Bush White House converged on Iraq being a big problem, when it wasn’t. Who caused that and what was their motive? If that matters at this point, it matters less than knowing what actually happened.
Btw I included a link to a transcript given how long this episode was, so feel free to use that if you want to jump around. We definitely talk about Epps's actions that day, referencing his statements directly: https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/the-bailey-podcast-e035-ray-epps
There's different ways to dissect MLK/FBI. If the authenticity of the FBI letter was in question, it's perfectly relevant to ask about the FBI's motivation as a way to evaluate how plausible the allegations are. Compare for example if the threatening letter was alleged to have come from NASA, wouldn't you be curious to know why they would be after MLK? Absent other evidence, I would be much more inclined the believe the letter came from the FBI than NASA because the FBI is a law enforcement agency that had domestic surveillance capabilities as well as an interest in disrupting what it deemed political dissidents.
Sometimes there's no obvious motive to point to, that's true. The key difference with the scenarios you cite is there's no disputing who was involved: ATF shot and killed Randy Weaver's family, Bush did indeed invade Iraq, etc.
Thanks for the link. My point about MLK vs. FBI is that we now know what happened, and I am still confused by the motive. Bureaucracies sometimes do stupid things, for reasons that make sense to the various actors but not as a whole.
I'd like to offer an answer to the question you were trying to nail down in the first hour: why did career bureaucrats feel threatened by Trump?
They feared that the Supreme Court justices he would appoint would view the federal administrative state's power with skepticism, and try to water it down, e.g. by overturning Chevron deference (https://newrepublic.com/article/172321/supreme-court-case-kills-administrative-state-chevron-deference).
There are many coherent reasons to present, the problem is that they're largely woefully insufficient to explain the next step of the premise. Something like "career bureaucrats coordinated and devoted resources towards orchestrating J6 because they wanted to tarnish the reputation of the conservative movement, which in turn would tarnish the reputation of the former president who picked SCOTUS judges that might take up a case that might overturn the Chevron deference" just sounds inane when you string it all together.
Definitely; I'm not trying to defend the overall premise at all (I haven't followed the J6 saga closely but as a casual observer this theory seems quite far-fetched). I was just frustrated listening to that first hour as I thought there were better arguments to make than the ones that actually came up.
I suspect the reason that particular defense didn't come up is precisely because it couldn't be expanded to support the broader J6 entrapment claims.