Not “you are a loser for having been fooled by those guys,” but “ick, those guys are all gross and pathetic pedos, do you really want to give them your support?”
I'd go even further. Just strip it down to "Ick, those guys are all gross and pathetic pedos!" Once they've gotten themselves that far, they can take the next step themselves. And get that nice feeling of agency for doing so -- people like to feel in charge, especially when they are feeling like helpless victims so much.
One feature of that first step is it doesn't get reflexive defensiveness, because it's not, at least overtly, about them. Their standards for gross and for pathetic are, in the abstract, pretty much like ours. It's just a matter of getting them to apply those standards to Trump et al, without references to anything resembling politics or culture or other devisive stuff.
I would guess it has no impact on the special relationship. Or what's left of it these days.
Trump has no loyalty to others, so the fact that, in the UK , other Epstein buddies are getting taken down? Not going to matter much.
Provided they don't say anything bad about him. Anyone who does that is beyond the pale. If it's a UK media, he'll maybe trash them. But if it's anyone in government, the UK joins his enemies list.
I'm not sure Xi is exceptionally paranoid. The Chinese Communist Party has always been concerned about alternate loyalties, in business as well as in the military. Although the party may worry a bit more about the military, given how many founders of the PRC were generals.
The age of the guys being replaced at least gives a bit of plausible deniability to speculation about an ideological purge.** And it might be a matter, as suggested, of just wanting younger guys who are more up on the changing military technology. Seeing how inflexible Russian generals have been in Ukraine, and how that has played out, would be a motivator there.
** Mass corruption charges, even if warranted, could be a bad look. When Xi first came in, a "new broom" story might have played. But to have a bunch of cases only now? That could look like he wasn't on top of things.
How did the local cops get that person in jail in the first place? They got a warrant and went and took physical custody of them. In many cases, they went to their house and arrested them.
Without an MRAP.
So I think ICE is capable of doing the same.
I beg leave to doubt that ICS is capable of doing the same. It would require a level of competence that they show no sign of possessing.
anyone who is talking about this on the various programs from the dem side rails on ICE and makes no mention of Border Patrol.
I suspect that, for most people, ICE and Border Patrol are indistinguishable. The difference is just too inside baseball for most of us. Made worse by the detail, for those with a clue about the difference, by the fact the Border Patrol's remit only runs within 100 miles of the border, which Minneapolis isn't. Not that those sorts of niggling legal details make any difference to the Orange Nero.
Thanks, lj. I didn't realize how much had changed. Although in retrospect that number for photovoltaic manufacturing should have been a clue -- those factories don't appear all at once.
whereas the US’s total installed solar capacity is on the order of 250GW, “China currently has the capacity to churn out 1,200GW of photovoltaic panels in a single year.”
China has a huge power infrastructure, which currently is overwhelmingly coal-based. Nothing effective happens on the climate front without that changing. Not that we shouldn't all be doing what we can. Just that Chinese power generation is the elephant in the room.
With that kind of capacity to build solar panels, they should be dramatically changing their generation mix. Which, IMHO, is something to celebrate. Not to mention that economies of scale in building them should make Chinese solar panels more affordable for the rest of the world.
IANAL, but this opinion seems extraordinarily blistering.
It's not unusual for a judge to cite the US Constitution in a ruling. Even citing the Declaration of Independence isn't unknown. (Although quoting multiple of its complaints against George III probably is.) But this?
The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.
or
Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency.
or
With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,
I think there is a lot to be said for "a multipolar order, which isn’t a single order but is multiple different orders that are overlapping, very unlike a simple hegemony, more like a mesh " Just for openers, it avoids the risks which are inherent in having a single point of failure.
That, I think, is the lesson of the moment. We had a (relatively) stable world order. With lots of disorder in local areas, but overall stability. But it was based (like it or not, believe it or not) on an implicit assumption that the US, for all its flaws and complicity in local disruptions, would act to keep the overall system stable. But that, whether we recognized it or not, made the US a single point of failure.
Worse, and definitely not recognized by anyone, it turned out the single point of failure was a single individual: whoever happened to be President of the United States. The failing at that one point has been an unfolding disaster, not only for the population of the US, but for the general stability of the world. The collapse has been slower on the international level. But it also looks less reversible.
As an aside, I would point out that the Chinese far prefer stability to chaos (both at home and abroad). They have chafed at America's dominance internationally. But I suspect they are starting to be concerned along the lines of "Be careful what you wish for." Having a loose cannon leading the US is ending the era of American dominance. But the chaos that accompanies the way that is happening....
In North Korea (as opposed to Russia or China) what we basically see is a monarchy in all but name.
That has the general upside, internally, of keeping the succession clear. Assuming that the successor is an adult, as was the case the first two times.
But the downside shows in cases like this where the obvious successor is very young. Perhaps her mother will be regent until she is older. Most likely, however, someone outside the family gets made regent. Which can be problematic.
bc: I don’t know if anyone can be “simply murdered.” And your comment implies some sort of comparison between a citizen being wrongfully detained by ICE and a citizen being murdered by an illegal alien. I reject that.
Obviously I seriously unclear. Sorry about that. I was referring to those murdered by ICE. (Which, I agree, is definitely not comparable with unlawful detention by ICE ). Judging from the videos of those killings, I'd say a first degree (or whatever the term is in Minnesota) murder charge would be straightforward.
I totally agree with bc that body cameras and visible badges with numbers ought to be mandatory. As it stands, there's no reliable way to tell whether a particular individual or group is really ICE, or if they are just street thugs taking advantage of the chaos. (Personally, I'd characterize what I've seen of today's ICE agents as thugs. Untrained ones. But that's a separate discussion.)
Likewise I agree that having the local police involved would be good. Pity ICE seems unwilling to let that happen. Perhaps it would impact their photo ops.
I've not seen the violent opposition and interference that bc mentions. From what I can see, the protesters are doing little more than yell, blow whistles, and photograph what is happening. It may be noteworthy the this last seems to be what gets the ICE people most upset. One could almost believe they have something to hide.
I've been around situations where protests devolved into violence and riots. (Decades ago, but I remember.). Nothing I've seen in the last year resembles that.
they will undoubtedly attempt to find heretofore undiscovered “anomalies”.
If “discovered”, they will be bullshit, and I’m not sure what the point is, other than to further fluff his highness.
Why bother to discover "anomalies"? So much easier, once you have control of the ballots, to just trash some and add others. Then turn the "improved" collection over to some useful idiots for a recount.
contemporary vote-by-mail systems include major back-office auditing that makes fraud by election officials very difficult.
Any time somebody starts on about election fraud, that tells me that they have never been a poll worker. Or even an observer at the polls.
Every step of the way, from when the polls open to when the ballots are at the county elections office for counting, everything is dual custody. Meaning no one person is in a position to mess with the ballots. The ledger of who voted (from which you get the number who voted) is entirely separate from the ballots themselves, so if you want to add ballots in, you have to hack that, too. And the in-person ballots are also kept for audit or recount purposes. The only way to cheat requires a horde of people to be in on it. And all manage not to brag about it afterwards.
The number of glitches is microscopic. In 2020, a recount in Arizons (admittedly by a gang of untrained incompetents) only found a couple of hundred errors out of the whole state. (And, to their distress and despite their best efforts, the change favored the other guy, not the one on whose behalf the recount was demanded. Oops.)
And most recently, the people who engaged in a deliberate scheme to overturn a lawful election, all on the right. And I am talking not just about the J6 rioters, although they most certainly are included.
I note this also. The number of examples of actual election fraud (voting dead peoples mail in ballots, etc.) is microscopic. BUT, the vast majority of those have been people on the right....
Trump wants state and local cooperation in rounding up the illegal aliens, especially those convicted or charged with serious crimes. Sanctuary cities/counties/states are actively resisting the enforcement of federal law.
Seriously? I doubt you will find a single official, in any sanctuary city or county or state, who would have any problem at all at all with those convicted of serious crimes being picked up and deported. What they object to, and actively resist, are armed (and untrained) thugs rampaging around their population.
They might not be enthused about rounding up people who had committed no crime beyond coming here illegally. But that's not what's happening. People who are here legally, who have followed the law to the letter, are being grabbed, roughed up, and deported -- deported to, be it noted, countries other than the one they are from, even half way around the world.
For that matter US citizens are getting picked up, shackled,, and hauled across the country for interrogation (without any chance for the legal representation they are entitled to). And then left to get home at their own expense.**
In short, any claim that Trump (or Miller or Noem) has the least interest in legal status is simply not supported by the facts.
As for defunding ICE, at this point I'm not seeing anything less which will work. ICE is basically going to have to be cleared out completely and rebuilt from scratch. There are sure to be some few longstanding employees who should then be rehired. Some. But anyone hired in the last year should never work there again. (And, IMHO, never work in anything resembling law enforcement at any level ever again. All the way down to private security.)
** Far more than the number (citizens and non-citizens alike) who have simply been murdered.
That is asking Trump to deploy the military for immigration enforcement without actually asking him, IMO. Or is that the point? Push escalation until the revolution?
Forgive me for being unable to understand. What do you see being accomplished by giving Trump what he asks for? How often is appeasement a successful strategy for dealing with a bully?
To expand on what russell said: absolutely slash DHS (or, at minimum, ICE) funding. The administration may invent some way around that, and spend the money anyway. But if the funding isn't cut, they will definitely spend it.
So it's a chance (whether large or tiny) of accomplishing something vs no chance at all. Easy choice.
I can't see anyone in this administration as Philoctetes, Hercules, or Odysseus. All of whom had, besides their tragic flaws, great and noble characteristics. That's what makes them "tragic heroes".
i certainly see the self-pity, and the enthusiasm to "repeat their every last mistake." But anything at all that would qualify as admirable? If someone like that snuck into this administration, she's keeping an incredibly low profile. (Probably, admittedly, as a matter of self preservation.) But it seems far more likely that anyone like that has walked away long since.
Actually it's a wonder that so many Trump-appointed judges keep stepping up and ruling against him. Perhaps the Federalist Society's vetting is less robust that they thought....
And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
It seems clear that he has missed a couple of relevant details:
1) several decades of diligent work by the Federalist Society have produced a court system, now including the Supreme Court, which is no longer a reliable strong defender of those democratic values. With a bit of venue shopping, it's often possible to get a judge who is an ideologue rather than a jurist. When that's not possible, the majority on the Supreme Court is -- the main check there being that they can only hear a limited number of cases, so some precedents guarding democracy remain. For now.
2) turns out the Congress depended on tradition and good faith on the part of its members in order to function reliably. Gingrich started chipping away at that, and McConnell raised bad faith to a high art. At this point, one has to search really hard to find a Republican Congressman who shows signs of having ever heard of good faith. Or has something resembling a backbone; at least until their reelection is seriously threatened.
3) a lot of the institutions in the Executive Branch were staffed by people who are actually experts in their field. The Civil Service Act protected them from politics, so they could do their jobs. But thru a variety of ploys, the Civil Service Act has been neutered for those who will not knuckle under to the ideologues placed at the top.
In short, on the national level, those institutions are far less robust than we thought they were. The state and local levels are still solid, at least in the places most of us live. But their ablility to resist Federal overreach is limited, especially when it entails use of the court system.
As for our people, we always knew we had those among us who disliked democracy -- at least when the results were not perfectly aligned with their views of the moment. But there are rather more than we thought. Worse, there are way too many who simply can't (or at least couldn't) believe anyone would be elected and then trash the system. They are learning ("Hey, I didn't mean you coud do that here!"), but whether it will be soon enough remains to be seen.
We may yet avoid a Rome-style collapse.** But it will be a near run thing.
** Domestically. In international relations that ship has sailed. And won't return, at the earliest, until everyone in the world currently past their teens has not just passed from the scene but died.
I keep thinking of it as Trump's Bored of Peace. Because he certainly does seem to be. Who needs peace, as long as he's got a supply of "losers" (whether ICE thugs or the US military) to do the fighting and dying for him.
Well, this administration had already gotten our (pretty nearly all ex- by this point) allies to stops sharing some info. Just because they can't be trusted. If Patel publishes this, expect them all to just walk away. US satellite intel will take time to replace, so they may keep up with restrictions on which of their people can talk to us. But even that will be just a limited, temporary expedient.
After all, it's about intelligence. And for this administration, intelligence seems to be generally anathema.
It's just that they are constrained by the fact that the truth never seems to fit with their needs or desires. So the only way to maintain their (and, at least for the grifters, more impirtantly) and their dupes "alternate reality" is to lie. Doctoring evidence being just one of many techniques for that.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Separated by a common language”
I'd go even further. Just strip it down to "Ick, those guys are all gross and pathetic pedos!" Once they've gotten themselves that far, they can take the next step themselves. And get that nice feeling of agency for doing so -- people like to feel in charge, especially when they are feeling like helpless victims so much.
One feature of that first step is it doesn't get reflexive defensiveness, because it's not, at least overtly, about them. Their standards for gross and for pathetic are, in the abstract, pretty much like ours. It's just a matter of getting them to apply those standards to Trump et al, without references to anything resembling politics or culture or other devisive stuff.
"
I would guess it has no impact on the special relationship. Or what's left of it these days.
Trump has no loyalty to others, so the fact that, in the UK , other Epstein buddies are getting taken down? Not going to matter much.
Provided they don't say anything bad about him. Anyone who does that is beyond the pale. If it's a UK media, he'll maybe trash them. But if it's anyone in government, the UK joins his enemies list.
On “Xi and China’s military: an off the wall theory”
I'm not sure Xi is exceptionally paranoid. The Chinese Communist Party has always been concerned about alternate loyalties, in business as well as in the military. Although the party may worry a bit more about the military, given how many founders of the PRC were generals.
The age of the guys being replaced at least gives a bit of plausible deniability to speculation about an ideological purge.** And it might be a matter, as suggested, of just wanting younger guys who are more up on the changing military technology. Seeing how inflexible Russian generals have been in Ukraine, and how that has played out, would be a motivator there.
** Mass corruption charges, even if warranted, could be a bad look. When Xi first came in, a "new broom" story might have played. But to have a bunch of cases only now? That could look like he wasn't on top of things.
On “It is never “Simple as that””
nous for the win!
"
I beg leave to doubt that ICS is capable of doing the same. It would require a level of competence that they show no sign of possessing.
Say, rather, that ICE should do the same.
On “Moral insanity”
I suspect that, for most people, ICE and Border Patrol are indistinguishable. The difference is just too inside baseball for most of us. Made worse by the detail, for those with a clue about the difference, by the fact the Border Patrol's remit only runs within 100 miles of the border, which Minneapolis isn't. Not that those sorts of niggling legal details make any difference to the Orange Nero.
On “Adam Tooze”
Thanks, lj. I didn't realize how much had changed. Although in retrospect that number for photovoltaic manufacturing should have been a clue -- those factories don't appear all at once.
"
China has a huge power infrastructure, which currently is overwhelmingly coal-based. Nothing effective happens on the climate front without that changing. Not that we shouldn't all be doing what we can. Just that Chinese power generation is the elephant in the room.
With that kind of capacity to build solar panels, they should be dramatically changing their generation mix. Which, IMHO, is something to celebrate. Not to mention that economies of scale in building them should make Chinese solar panels more affordable for the rest of the world.
Take the damn win.
On “Moral insanity”
IANAL, but this opinion seems extraordinarily blistering.
It's not unusual for a judge to cite the US Constitution in a ruling. Even citing the Declaration of Independence isn't unknown. (Although quoting multiple of its complaints against George III probably is.) But this?
or
or
Zing!
On “Adam Tooze”
I think there is a lot to be said for "a multipolar order, which isn’t a single order but is multiple different orders that are overlapping, very unlike a simple hegemony, more like a mesh " Just for openers, it avoids the risks which are inherent in having a single point of failure.
That, I think, is the lesson of the moment. We had a (relatively) stable world order. With lots of disorder in local areas, but overall stability. But it was based (like it or not, believe it or not) on an implicit assumption that the US, for all its flaws and complicity in local disruptions, would act to keep the overall system stable. But that, whether we recognized it or not, made the US a single point of failure.
Worse, and definitely not recognized by anyone, it turned out the single point of failure was a single individual: whoever happened to be President of the United States. The failing at that one point has been an unfolding disaster, not only for the population of the US, but for the general stability of the world. The collapse has been slower on the international level. But it also looks less reversible.
As an aside, I would point out that the Chinese far prefer stability to chaos (both at home and abroad). They have chafed at America's dominance internationally. But I suspect they are starting to be concerned along the lines of "Be careful what you wish for." Having a loose cannon leading the US is ending the era of American dominance. But the chaos that accompanies the way that is happening....
On “When will someone take this approach with our administration”
In North Korea (as opposed to Russia or China) what we basically see is a monarchy in all but name.
That has the general upside, internally, of keeping the succession clear. Assuming that the successor is an adult, as was the case the first two times.
But the downside shows in cases like this where the obvious successor is very young. Perhaps her mother will be regent until she is older. Most likely, however, someone outside the family gets made regent. Which can be problematic.
A lot depends on how long Kim pere keeps going.
On “Moral insanity”
bc: I don’t know if anyone can be “simply murdered.” And your comment implies some sort of comparison between a citizen being wrongfully detained by ICE and a citizen being murdered by an illegal alien. I reject that.
Obviously I seriously unclear. Sorry about that. I was referring to those murdered by ICE. (Which, I agree, is definitely not comparable with unlawful detention by ICE ). Judging from the videos of those killings, I'd say a first degree (or whatever the term is in Minnesota) murder charge would be straightforward.
"
I totally agree with bc that body cameras and visible badges with numbers ought to be mandatory. As it stands, there's no reliable way to tell whether a particular individual or group is really ICE, or if they are just street thugs taking advantage of the chaos. (Personally, I'd characterize what I've seen of today's ICE agents as thugs. Untrained ones. But that's a separate discussion.)
Likewise I agree that having the local police involved would be good. Pity ICE seems unwilling to let that happen. Perhaps it would impact their photo ops.
I've not seen the violent opposition and interference that bc mentions. From what I can see, the protesters are doing little more than yell, blow whistles, and photograph what is happening. It may be noteworthy the this last seems to be what gets the ICE people most upset. One could almost believe they have something to hide.
I've been around situations where protests devolved into violence and riots. (Decades ago, but I remember.). Nothing I've seen in the last year resembles that.
"
Why bother to discover "anomalies"? So much easier, once you have control of the ballots, to just trash some and add others. Then turn the "improved" collection over to some useful idiots for a recount.
"
Any time somebody starts on about election fraud, that tells me that they have never been a poll worker. Or even an observer at the polls.
Every step of the way, from when the polls open to when the ballots are at the county elections office for counting, everything is dual custody. Meaning no one person is in a position to mess with the ballots. The ledger of who voted (from which you get the number who voted) is entirely separate from the ballots themselves, so if you want to add ballots in, you have to hack that, too. And the in-person ballots are also kept for audit or recount purposes. The only way to cheat requires a horde of people to be in on it. And all manage not to brag about it afterwards.
The number of glitches is microscopic. In 2020, a recount in Arizons (admittedly by a gang of untrained incompetents) only found a couple of hundred errors out of the whole state. (And, to their distress and despite their best efforts, the change favored the other guy, not the one on whose behalf the recount was demanded. Oops.)
"
it does look to me like MAGA’s Gettysburg.
MAGA being, quite properly, assigned to role of the Confederates in this reprise.
Here's hoping he's correct.
"
And most recently, the people who engaged in a deliberate scheme to overturn a lawful election, all on the right. And I am talking not just about the J6 rioters, although they most certainly are included.
I note this also. The number of examples of actual election fraud (voting dead peoples mail in ballots, etc.) is microscopic. BUT, the vast majority of those have been people on the right....
"
Trump wants state and local cooperation in rounding up the illegal aliens, especially those convicted or charged with serious crimes. Sanctuary cities/counties/states are actively resisting the enforcement of federal law.
Seriously? I doubt you will find a single official, in any sanctuary city or county or state, who would have any problem at all at all with those convicted of serious crimes being picked up and deported. What they object to, and actively resist, are armed (and untrained) thugs rampaging around their population.
They might not be enthused about rounding up people who had committed no crime beyond coming here illegally. But that's not what's happening. People who are here legally, who have followed the law to the letter, are being grabbed, roughed up, and deported -- deported to, be it noted, countries other than the one they are from, even half way around the world.
For that matter US citizens are getting picked up, shackled,, and hauled across the country for interrogation (without any chance for the legal representation they are entitled to). And then left to get home at their own expense.**
In short, any claim that Trump (or Miller or Noem) has the least interest in legal status is simply not supported by the facts.
As for defunding ICE, at this point I'm not seeing anything less which will work. ICE is basically going to have to be cleared out completely and rebuilt from scratch. There are sure to be some few longstanding employees who should then be rehired. Some. But anyone hired in the last year should never work there again. (And, IMHO, never work in anything resembling law enforcement at any level ever again. All the way down to private security.)
** Far more than the number (citizens and non-citizens alike) who have simply been murdered.
"
Forgive me for being unable to understand. What do you see being accomplished by giving Trump what he asks for? How often is appeasement a successful strategy for dealing with a bully?
"
To expand on what russell said: absolutely slash DHS (or, at minimum, ICE) funding. The administration may invent some way around that, and spend the money anyway. But if the funding isn't cut, they will definitely spend it.
So it's a chance (whether large or tiny) of accomplishing something vs no chance at all. Easy choice.
On “Feeling Philoctetes”
I can't see anyone in this administration as Philoctetes, Hercules, or Odysseus. All of whom had, besides their tragic flaws, great and noble characteristics. That's what makes them "tragic heroes".
i certainly see the self-pity, and the enthusiasm to "repeat their every last mistake." But anything at all that would qualify as admirable? If someone like that snuck into this administration, she's keeping an incredibly low profile. (Probably, admittedly, as a matter of self preservation.) But it seems far more likely that anyone like that has walked away long since.
Actually it's a wonder that so many Trump-appointed judges keep stepping up and ruling against him. Perhaps the Federalist Society's vetting is less robust that they thought....
On “Moral insanity”
And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
It seems clear that he has missed a couple of relevant details:
1) several decades of diligent work by the Federalist Society have produced a court system, now including the Supreme Court, which is no longer a reliable strong defender of those democratic values. With a bit of venue shopping, it's often possible to get a judge who is an ideologue rather than a jurist. When that's not possible, the majority on the Supreme Court is -- the main check there being that they can only hear a limited number of cases, so some precedents guarding democracy remain. For now.
2) turns out the Congress depended on tradition and good faith on the part of its members in order to function reliably. Gingrich started chipping away at that, and McConnell raised bad faith to a high art. At this point, one has to search really hard to find a Republican Congressman who shows signs of having ever heard of good faith. Or has something resembling a backbone; at least until their reelection is seriously threatened.
3) a lot of the institutions in the Executive Branch were staffed by people who are actually experts in their field. The Civil Service Act protected them from politics, so they could do their jobs. But thru a variety of ploys, the Civil Service Act has been neutered for those who will not knuckle under to the ideologues placed at the top.
In short, on the national level, those institutions are far less robust than we thought they were. The state and local levels are still solid, at least in the places most of us live. But their ablility to resist Federal overreach is limited, especially when it entails use of the court system.
As for our people, we always knew we had those among us who disliked democracy -- at least when the results were not perfectly aligned with their views of the moment. But there are rather more than we thought. Worse, there are way too many who simply can't (or at least couldn't) believe anyone would be elected and then trash the system. They are learning ("Hey, I didn't mean you coud do that here!"), but whether it will be soon enough remains to be seen.
We may yet avoid a Rome-style collapse.** But it will be a near run thing.
** Domestically. In international relations that ship has sailed. And won't return, at the earliest, until everyone in the world currently past their teens has not just passed from the scene but died.
On “Carney’s speech”
I keep thinking of it as Trump's Bored of Peace. Because he certainly does seem to be. Who needs peace, as long as he's got a supply of "losers" (whether ICE thugs or the US military) to do the fighting and dying for him.
On “Moral insanity”
Well, this administration had already gotten our (pretty nearly all ex- by this point) allies to stops sharing some info. Just because they can't be trusted. If Patel publishes this, expect them all to just walk away. US satellite intel will take time to replace, so they may keep up with restrictions on which of their people can talk to us. But even that will be just a limited, temporary expedient.
After all, it's about intelligence. And for this administration, intelligence seems to be generally anathema.
On “Rememory”
Oh, I think they could.
It's just that they are constrained by the fact that the truth never seems to fit with their needs or desires. So the only way to maintain their (and, at least for the grifters, more impirtantly) and their dupes "alternate reality" is to lie. Doctoring evidence being just one of many techniques for that.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.