I feel disgusted by who I'm in agreement with but I am compelled to believe this is a good thing and that the intelligence community needs to be actively opposed as far as their mass snooping goes. I am increasingly beginning to wonder if the intel leaks on Russia against Trump - while I like it - may not have consequences down the road, e.g, the intelligence community takes out a President they don't like who may be perfectly fine?
Again, feeling violently ill but the intelligence community is making me question their motives.
EDIT: I know Wikileaks is going for this reaction and hoping to ding the intelligence community as they work on making the case against Trump. So that makes this even worse.
This is a point that folks like jfern and Averroes have been making; "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a very dangerous doctrine and ignoring questionable activities on that basis is very dangerous practice. When it becomes acceptable for the CIA to undermine the sitting President, you open the door for that to happen to a future President that you may approve of.
The enemy of my enemy is my enemies' enemy, no more and no less. But they
are my enemies' enemy. I didn't like Obama's or Bush's surveillance one bit. And I'm not going to like them any more if they take down Trump. But that doesn't change that removing Trump will be a net good.
I agree that the precedent is very troubling. But on the other hand, if a President actually is conspiring with a foreign power, who is supposed to stop him? Congress? If Congress refuses to do his job, should Trump be allowed to rampage unchecked for years until it can be replaced? Even if he isn't, the very fact that we're having this discussion is destructive. Any removal of Trump - eventual impeachment, removal from office by the VP and Cabinet, military coup, seccession, or revolution is going to hurt America horribly.
I'm sad and sick, at all of this. And I fear it's only going to get worse and worse until he's gone. Even before he was elected, once the media covered him as anything but the vile fradulent clown he was, he started damaging our nation in so many ways. And he's going to keep doing more until he is gone.
So while the precedent is awful, I think it would do less hurt in the future than leaving Trump alone will. If we're lucky, he'll pull a Palin or have a stroke and can go down in the history books that way.
